matt writes...

both Proto-Mammals and Dinosaurs evolved from Reptiles. Proto-Mammals were very reptilian, but with some very Mammalian characteristics. they laid eggs, but probably nursed their young sometimes too. they lived at the beginning of the age of dinosaurs and most are considered "dinosaurs' in a very broad way, though scientifically they are not. Proto-Mammals would go on to evolve into mammals and what i'm wondering is if they also went to evolve into Gargates. from everything i know and you've told us, they fit the profile. some, like Dimetrodon, even had primative solar radiaters which could have evolved into the ability to store solar energy. in fact, Dimetrodon looks very similar to a garg beast to me, with a sail. i once asked you if gargs were related to Platypus cause of the varied similarities they have, and if Gargates did evolve from Proto-mammals than they were related since platypus is one of the few remaining Proto-Mammals not extinct. are proto-mammals the ancestors of gargates?

Denis writes...

Hello, Greg!
First thing first, thank you for your explanation about OTS.

Now to the "main course", I'm wondering, since Team Atlantis got axed, can you answer question related to the series?

Anonymous writes...

Did Mab have any children besides Oberon? If so are they more or less powerful than Oberon?

Anonymous writes...

Was it intentional to make Nick Maza similar to Captain of the Guard since both are described by you in the Garg bible and the 2198 contest as much like a gargoyle as a human can be?

matt writes...

since Fox has twice as much Children of Oberon blood in her as Alex and Alex has managed to live til 2198 would Fox herself still be alive in 2198?

Punchinello writes...

Mr. Weisman,

I'm sorry I did not acknowledge your response before now. I only realized that you had addressed my post on sentience a moment ago.

I did not really think that you condoned the obliteration of a family of polar bears (anthropomorphic or otherwise). I was raising the issue because I think I am observing a trend wherein people are only assigning value to a life based upon an inference of anthropomorphism. That is to say, some people are investing their ethical concern in something based upon how much it resembles a human being; and this is hardly an objective premise to begin with. Semblance to human beings, mental or otherwise, can not constitute a requirement for being worthy of consideration or protection. However I do believe that it is reasonable to assign values based upon certain criteria from within our own perspectives (it's the only thing we can assign values from) as long as we make a concerted effort to avoid an obviously centrist sentiment like using ourselves as a template for what is worth consideration.

If someone were to ask me what criteria I thought were appropriate, I would probably return to what has already been implied. Intelligence. Emotional intuition. Volition. And a whole host of perceptual characteristics. Those things from which emerge a picture of mental life. Perhaps an ability to suffer and to anticipate conditions which cause or alleviate suffering, and to desire to distance ones self from a cause of it. However, if we are going to determine the presence of those capacities with nothing but purely verifiable data, then we fall in league with the evolutionary psychologists foundation of mental within the biological. And the biological machinery necessary to mediate these abilities is certainly not the exclusive domain of Homo Sapiens. (I _do_ subscribe to the evolutionary psychologist foundation by the way. I like to have data I can verify beyond "it is true because it is so.")

For a lot of people though, these emergent mental properties are always considered as something transcendent of biology, immeasurable, even inviolate, because I have observed others react with hostility to the reduction of mental qualities to biology. On numerous occasions. Thinking that way leads to all kinds of misunderstandings, however. Another contributor to this board, Entity, had taken the position that humans and gorillas were intelligent but dogs were not. I found this extremely interesting because even outside the realm of biological architectures in the brain I could use as a foundation for taking the evolutionary psychologist position, it needs to be acknowledged that even within social psychology dogs are attributed a measurable intelligence. It's not extraordinary. My dog has an IQ of 12 or so for instance. And of course these kinds of figures are disputable, because it really requires the participation of the test subject past his simple presence to get accurate results. I would submit that the whole concept of IQ as it is accepted within the social sciences borders on being fraudulent anyway. The point is that the ascription of non-intelligence that was made about the dog was arbitrary. It was not informed by the physical _or_ social sciences. It was just an assumption. And that kind of casual valuization can be dangerous when it functions as the basis for how much respect we offer another. This is not a slight against this Entity. I'm just using this as an example to outline the stated purpose of my original post. If people are going to hold these positions they maintain, then they need to ask themselves why they have that particular belief. If they have this mental dialogue with themselves and they cannot answer that first question, then it is time to evaluate how much their beliefs represent reality.

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I'm probably as guilty as anyone of overusing, or rather overbilling the issue of "sentience". I think the concept has its uses. But it's probably used as a crutch too often.
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I would agree. I think of it as a crutch of language. Some people subscribe to an ideology that is a holdover from religious impulses. It maintains that the mantle of "human" is sacred and unapproachable. They need to define what the quality of "human" is that makes it thus, without any background knowledge of cognitive science so that it fits their sensibilities. They can adopt the hazily defined expression, "sentience", imported from popular culture, via star trek, to articulate their position. For some others, the mental capacities of non human animals may be very well understood. They may acknowledge capacities for reflection and emotion, but they still need a convenient means of distinguishing various abilities. So an imprecise language becomes common.

matt writes...

in the gargoyles universe, why did the chicken cross the road?

i'm not telling a joke, i'm looking for an answer. i swear theres a good one here somewhere... and this will keep me busy til the next contest!

Lacey writes...

Which character do you feel is most like you, or closely resembles you physically and/or mentally?

Yttrium writes...

You mentioned you were in a play called THE WARRIOR'S HUSBAND and played Theseus. Could you tell us what it was about?

---Ytt