h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay, I see your point. Perhaps we are the only animal capable of understanding what it means to create, if we accept the fact that the only reason we are capable of the abstract is that we have made the physical come to pass through our abstract. I.E. I can envision a house, I design the house, I build the house. My mental image becomes a physical manifestation. But what about the things humans imagine that never come to pass in a physical manifestation. I.E. world peace. Does that mean it can not be manufactured in the human brain? Obviously not. So I was proposing that perhaps animals are capable of imagining things that for obvious reasons (our lack of a common lanuage) we cannot ever know about. This would give us the possibility that animals that are intellectually inferior to us would be able to imagine or believe in a creator that for all I know may look like a giraffe to them.
But then again I have sustained a lot of head trauma in my life. So maybe not. I am just throwing it out there.

Hi again Ssubnel. Sorry you got caught in the crossfire between self and Ben. Still, that's part of the joy of the open forum! Hume had something of interest to say about whether we could imagine anything we had never experienced.

I give animals credit for a lot more insight than is usually attributed to them. I wonder if giraffes can envision a higher being though!

No problem, it was entertaining to read, I guess. What did Hume think anyway? I would assume you can, otherwise D. Adams would never have come up with the fiction he did.
I don't know how bright animals really are (considering I include myself as an animal) but giraffes might think of birds as "higher beings."

That last point has force, Ss! Hume said that we can't have any idea of anything we haven't experienced. We can, however recombine parts to yield centaurs and unicorns etc. Expect you could describe DNA's work that way!

I guess I can see where Hume is coming from. But I think that we can, it may just be that the vocabulary we have forces us to relate any experience to one that fits within the current language. Perhaps if we were able to communicate in image or maybe with sound or maybe I'm really tired and not getting to where I thought I was going. Perhaps Hume is right after all, did they make a comic book or readers digest version of his writing?

Oddly enough, Ss, Hume himself wrote the 'Enquiry' as a simplified version of the first part of his 'Treatise'. Bibliography is here: http://www.bartleby.com/people/Hume-Dav.html

Bet that surprised you

Hume is one rockin' dude. And you are too Toxxin. Thanks for the heads up.

coming to jump in: always missing 'heated discussions'

Dagnabbit!

We've been going so long I forgot where we started.

Dagnabbit FwT! What ya doin' hidin' here?

That be my phrase

Hiding from the God Fact or Fiction thread: Hoovooloo is at his caustic best!