donosld:
First off my name is Strop, not Stroop, I dislike that test greatly :P
"Red...yellow...blue- argh, I mean red!"
Anyway, I'm somewhat surprised to get a reply, but hooray. Having come to this stage, I will now say that this is the time to introduce anthropocentric criticisms because I agree we're getting past the point of getting facts straight. Let's look at your arguments here:
These are usually considered the highest orders of functionality of the human brain
and
However, among the veterinary community, it is largely considered to be a fairly accurate measure of how advanced the mental abilities of a species will be.
(Emphases mine.)
I agree with most of your statements in a limited sense, except, of course, where Zophia has pointed out counterexamples. However I'm going to propose a slightly different perspective which will be compatible with most of the content of what you're saying.
You may have noticed that there is much discussion of "different" kinds of intelligence. I suppose the first thing I would have to do here is to ask you to
define intelligence, since the way you would do so will reflect on the manner in which you argue.
My definition would be something along the lines of: "Task-oriented aptitude." This kind of definition allows for humans to claim that we have the broadest range of tasks generated as well as abstract, conceptual and metaphysical systems that we presume to be unique to humankind. I don't see a problem with that. All I will say here is that we should acknowledge that humans aren't the only species with intelligence (we've already granted this), nor do they necessarily have the 'best' or 'greatest' intelligence for reasons I will allude to below.
Where we probably differ is that I don't see this as being intrinsically distinctive from any other set of tasks or "lower order" sets of intelligence (not to mention I myself am not sure how "lower" and "higher" orders of intelligence are properly defined...these appear to be arcane and loaded terms most of the time). Even if these terms were to be somehow meaningful, I would furthermore dismiss them as valueless in a moral argument re: animal rights. The reason I say this is because humans have their own way of relating to each other and the world, but so too do other species. Reduced to these fundamental functions, there is a spectrum of commonality between living beings- to varying extents we relate to the Earth in some way or another.
In this light, whether one is intelligent/sentient or not doesn't actually matter: we still cohabit and form ecosystems. To me, this implies that there is a greater importance of exercising our capabilities responsibly, granting animals rights where we somehow see fit in order to practice sustainable living.
The bottom line is that yes, it appears likely that humans are the only species to whom the concept of rights is meaningful. Furthermore it goes almost without saying that we don't
have to give rights to any animal, human or otherwise. However the effects of discussing and granting of rights is meaningful in broader and more important senses, therefore we should at the very least entertain the argument that we
ought to grant rights to other animals, since we're prone to talking about rights in the first place.
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Finally:
I would define it as thought which is not a direct result of an environmental stimulus.
There's your hard problem right there. Can you find a way to parse this statement in a way that is somehow meaningful? As I've mentioned before, I'm a fan of Dennett's models in this field.
