Silly Humans...

I think the speed of my speech directly correlates to the speed of my thoughts. Racing brain = practically unintelligable speaking...except only to some people. Others follow along just fine...hm. I'll leave that alone for now... ;0)

What do Determinists think about the "aha" phenomenon? How does that cause-effect, antecedent-consequent relationship work? Does that fall under Freud and the notion of an unconscious?

OOOH - put all that on hold - THIS JUST IN!!!

Tots aren't smarter than apes, just more social:
Researchers hunt for which learning abilities are distinctly human

Hehehe - Simple Math: Apes = 1, Tots = 0. Social Learning Skills: Apes = 0, Tots = 1. It's a tie!

The way in which such studies are interpreted/reported is funny - sometimes scary, actually, but funny in this case. Allow me to share one of my favorite snippets:

"Human children are not overall more intelligent than other primates, but instead have specialized skills of social cognition," concluded the lead researcher, Esther Herrmann of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "They learn in a way that chimpanzees don't learn."
But the findings, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, conflict with other research that suggests the great apes, humans' closest relatives, are quite good at social learning, too.
In fact, a second study in the same journal suggests chimps and monkeys have some capacity to infer someone's intentions by their actions. That is pretty complex, human-like thinking."

Where to start...

So, this is a rather shocking study (dripping with sarcasm, btw). Maybe we didn't originally believe apes are smarter than our small children - didn't want to believe it - STILL don't want to believe it (enter first study) - Planet of the Apes, anyone? But - *gasp* - amazingly, the apes and chimps and monkeys in the second study are exhibiting "pretty complex, human-like thinking." WOW. What does this all mean???

Seriously, should it really be so surprising that primates are capable of social learning? Did we bother reading any Goodall prior to reporting this?

And, yes, tots still performed "better" at the social-learning tasks in the first study, but human children immitated human adults, whereas the primates were asked to immitate a human, as well, not a member of the same species...

Also, I love that these apes MUST be taking after humans - not like "complex" thinking may have already exhisted in the animal world, or anything. Not like humans are animals...heavens, no! It's the animals that are living in the human world exhibiting human-like characteristics.

My-oh-my.

Don't get me wrong, though - the studies themselves sound relatively thorough, well-designed and very interesting, and the researchers totally took the above into consideration. Well, I may have a few reservations regarding the first-mentioned study, but that's more due to personal bias. But that aside, the researchers thought things through carefully. It's just the way in which the research is being reported that cracks me up.

Alright, back to the world of actual research papers. Give it a read, though - like I said, the researchers do sound like they've got all their ducks in a row - it's just the first half or so of the article that is a hoot. Enjoy!