Posted by Sam Stan at host212-140-118-191.host.btclick.com on June 19, 2000 at 21:40:57:
In Reply to: Re: The definition of Free Will and a question... posted by Chrees on June 19, 2000 at 19:55:44:
It depends I studied psychology for a bit and last time I remeber they were unable to determine wether animals had the ability to make desicions.
Basically everything you see hear and sense in any way is processed in the brain into a schema which is sort of a file, things that we don't know what they are get there own schema therefore we learn and our mind expands.
As yet in animals it has been impossible to determine wether they have the same kind of process or wether it is all instinctive (if you chuck a frog deprived of its mother into water it swims like a bastard immediately, also some animal that is hunted by the hawk (I have no idea what kind of animal) if deprived of its mother will still cower when the shape of a hawk is passed overhead on a wire. In short we don't yet know wether animals learn things through assosiation (A touch Pavlovian sort of "If I piss on the carpet I'm gonna get battered so I wont piss on the carpet" no desicion just association of the pissing on the carpet to the getting battered. This is why animals don't really get smarter (were not sure about chimps etc yet they could just be humans wating to evolve [a touch like the French] in a way)
To finish I think its pretty arogant to assume that humans aren't just animals with better processing abilitys, after all most of our dailly routines are instinctive (e.g women putting on make up etc is to attract a mate, do not listen when they say it makes them feel better about themselves how many times when they're alone are they dressed up to the nines with enough make up to paint walls on?) if we really did learn everything as we got older wouldn't Bill Clinton have learnt to keep the love sausage and the happy sacs in his pants for half an hour (Answer : No he's controlled by the instinct to mate, thats why blokes give 5 minutes of honesty after sex, think about it you do. After you've blown your wad your inherited need to free the seed is gone wether it was at the target area or sprayed up her bedsheets its not in you anymore and instincdtively you don't care wether your boys are celebrating in the wombal area or stopping passing bedbugs to ask "Have you seen an egg anywhere round here" (even though they're all blokes so they might refuse to ask for directions and just sit on the pillow waiting for the pubs to open). So are humans really that better or did we just evolve higher thought quicker after all, all we all is biological machines.
You'll have to forgive me i do go off on one but it should be there if you can translate it