All content © RJ Robinson 2002-8
I have long been concerned with science’s failure to notice some of the key expressions of intelligence. I do not know what the reasons for these extraordinary oversights are, although natural science’s indifference to the facts of human nature and the facility confidence which ‘nothing but’ arguments are bandied about that eliminate problems by brushing them under the intellectual carpet probably have a lot to do with it.
So here, in epigrammatic form, are some basic propositions that I believe need explaining. In some cases the same point could be extended to any intelligent life form, but I do not believe that that fact detracts from science's abject failure to recognise, let alone explain, the phenomenon itself.
These aphorisms do not imply any break with natural science, but they certainly take more explaining than the sciences have deigned to offer them so far. And of course, these are precisely the topics this website is concerned with.
-
Many organisms change. Only human beings have history.
-
There is no biological difference between me and a Cro-Magnon man. Yet the real difference between us is so great that no reasonable evolutionist would classify us in the same species.
-
Only human beings are afraid of death. Or life. Only human beings try to explain life. Or death.
-
We should accept the intelligence of other species when, and because, they present their case themselves.
-
The most rational defence against neo-Darwinism's Just So stories is not argument but laughter.
-
I last shared a common ancestor with my fellow primates six million back; with dolphins ninety million; and with the African grey parrot two hundred million years ago. In between? Not an inkling of reason. But neo-Darwinians say they can explain the intelligence we all share. Who says they have no sense of humour?
-
Intelligent life can no more be explained without history and consciousness than life in general without evolution or heredity.
-
Mark Twain once observed that only human beings blush. Or need to. Explain.
-
Faith and fundamentalism mean that God gave us reason on the condition that we did not use it. He might as well have asked us to live with our eyes shut.
-
Asking a biologist to explain human history is like asking a butcher to explain the world food industry.
-
How is it possible to ask the question 'How is it possible?'?
-
A human being is no more 'nothing but' an organism than an organism is 'nothing but' a chemical reaction.
-
The theory of evolution no more explains our ability to theorise evolution than the theory of relativity explains Einstein.
-
Neo-Darwinism shares with behaviourism, vulgar Marxism and Freudianism the conclusion that it is impossible to know whether something is simply true or false. As such, it is the antithesis of science.
-
I am intelligent because I can ask whether I am intelligent.
-
If there is no qualitative difference between intelligence in particular and life in general, then pets are slaves, meat is murder and the dog, the tulip and the paramecium are our ethical peers.
-
It takes a truly intelligent being to do something truly stupid.
-
We share 99% of our genes with chimpanzees. And about 1% of our way of life. In what way is New York like a nest, is a global economy like foraging or are nuclear weapons like a branch torn off to make a club? In what sense does any gene-count explain any of that?
-
I do not know whether human reason is capable of achieving absolute objectivity. But I do know that it is capable of dreaming of it. And that is enough to separate it absolutely from unreason of every kind.
Science
Etc.
Work in progress