Re: [APD] Disposing of Unwanted Fish

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

Perhaps you missed the point. I don't think anyone was looking for a proof of anything for each species.

Chris raised the notion about cows. He seemed to suggested that, whatever goes on in their heads, it seems to be pretty inaccessbile to humans. In that, he agrees, after a fashion, with Wittgenstein. I think he might have been suggesting that this awareness and thinking stuff comes in degrees, and probalby in different forms that that you cannot simply map from one life form to another. Sort of eschewing the whole Cartesian notion that language is just words for all the concepts we're born with. 

For that matter, there are more and less complex brains. It was in an encyclopaedia descripition of a stegasaurus's brain that I first come upon the phrase, "it's brain was so small that it was probably only dimly aware of its own existence." So what counts as a brain isn't quite a sharp black and white, and even for all those things that jsut about anyone would say they have brains, of some of those there's much in there behavior to suggest that they don't think much about much.

And now for something entirely different. . . Have folks had much luck "stunting" the growth of crypts, say wendtii, without provoking meltdowns?

sh
----- Original Message ----
From: Jerry Baker <jerry at bakerweb_biz>
To: aquatic plants digest <aquatic-plants at actwin_com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 1, 2007 1:39:47 PM
Subject: Re: [APD] Disposing of Unwanted Fish


S. Hieber wrote:
> As for cows, the first question to ask, is why do you think cows think at all

Because they have a brain? To demand proof on a species-by-species basis 
of the ability to think is sort of like asking for proof on a 
ball-by-ball basis that ALL bowling balls will fall when dropped from a 
building. We know that the machinery for thought is the brain and its 
neurons. I don't see any empirical reason do believe that the animal in 
which those neurons are located should have such a tremendous affect on 
their basic operation, do you?
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