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[Jude]

To the current discussion:
I agree completely that we are animals, very complex ones, but are inherently subjective to whatever subconscious motives being an animal involves. Freud? Seeing as the only difference between us and monkeys that affects intelligence is brain size and complexity, I'd assume that less complex and/or large brains can do slightly less complex and large cognitive behavior. So that Octopus was driven by instinct to cross to the other tank, but his consciousness is what allowed him to figure out a way?

Well, the distinction between "instinct" and "intelligence/consciousness" is an artificial one. They're both the product of mental machinery which evolved for certain reasons. Intelligence is basically a collection of interconnected, very sophisticated instincts which together make for very adaptable and novel behavior.

That didn't make sense to me. The notion that minds like ours would develop on alien worlds laughable. Hell yes. Laughable that they would NOT have traits like our animals? What? It sounds like you just said that a specific trait would not develop (trunks), but the trunks would not be different from ours at all? The notion that minds like ours would not develop I immediately said "laughable" because they WOULD have different traits from ours.

Huh?

Basically what I was saying is that on any given alien planet, the odds that an animal would evolve with a trunk like an elephant's are extremely miniscule. Same goes for the human mind. But because people have such an attitude about our own minds, we tend to see it as natural that life if it exists will ultimately result in intelligence that looks like ours. But our gut feeling doesn't foresee the same outcome when it comes to other animal traits - like an elephant trunk.

Similarly, our minds are no different than elephant trunks other than that one happens to grant its owner the power to develop culture and technology and ultimately dominate the planet, and the other is good for myriad other things which don't result in those developments. There's no qualitative difference between the organs in a human's head and on an elephant's face in terms of evolutionary development.