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The human animal
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The human animal

swstephe
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Posted 08/15/08 - 01:31 AM:	#31
unenlightened wrote: I'm not sure the criticism from archaism is much of an improvement on that from mumsiness. I would be interested if someone would criticise the substance of my post rather than fixating on the word 'morality.' The claim is very specific in giving a cognitive capacity which 'makes a difference'. One could argue that there are animals that have this capacity, or that humans don't have it, or that it is not a significant difference. I don't know why arguing over animal experience is fruitless - unless it is fundementally different from human experience. I am not focusing on particular games, altruistic acts, or other social behaviours. If you want to obsess on one word, obsess on 'shame' Humans are the ashamed animal, the self-covering animal, the animal that only really exists in the eyes of another, and has to invent an all seeing God to see into their internal lives in order to be really real. I'll start with "shame", though I agree it probably isn't the important point. Both pack animals and humans behave in a way that signals submission in response to condemnation that we readily interpret as shame. Animals definitely show a rise in the same hormones we do when we feel shame. In the case of any emotional or instinctive pack animal reaction, I'm sure they react that way even when there is no observer. We humans can smile at something even there is nobody to see it, and dogs wag their tails even if they don't know anyone is watching. I'm not sure about covering up -- how much or what gets covered up seems to be cultural. Where I live, (Borneo), it runs the extremes from almost nude tribesmen, to fully covered Islamic women. In that case, clothing is more a signal of identity and a way of not standing out too much from their group. The problem with comparing an animal signaling what we interpret as shame or any other emotional state with what we feel is that we end up with "the problem of other minds". We don't know what is going on inside Rover's mind when he acts like he is happy. It may not be "real" happiness, just a response that is known to achieve other goals, but we can't discount that they do feel the same. I read that the British Medical Ethics board decided to include octopuses as not subject to medical experimentation because they changed color when they experienced something that would have caused us "pain". They couldn't prove that they felt anything, but the doubt made it unethical to take the chance in their view. I guess that is a way of solving the current dilemma, but it leaves questions about killing other animals for food that obviously signal distress and pain over being killed. At the same time, morality might benefit by a great human-animal merger. We can understand an animal might be better off dead than in unrecoverable pain and suffering, but not fellow humans. We can understand and manage animal hostility much better than human hostility, which affects us more subjectively and avoid broad categorizations or value judgments, (the difference between saying "that is a bad dog" compared to "all pit bulls are bad dogs").
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

Epicurean Delight
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Posted 08/15/08 - 08:12 AM:	#32
I don't get what you are trying to say, I never made any suggestion towards us being a superior animal, and I created this thread to talk about it. Anyways if you do not think you are an ape then all I can do is say read Darwin I can not convince anymore than he would be able to. Secondly while humans have created many things with their intellect I was merely referring to the people who go out everyday for their whole lives and do as their told without thinking about it. To me that is no smarter than any other animal. I am not saying that humans do not have more intellect, but that does not make us superior. By the same token you say a gorilla is superior because it has more physical strength. Sure we have used our intellect to "conquer" nature, but does that make us superior? Look at what we have done to nature, we have destroyed it. That just singles short-sightedness and nothing else.

The Escapist
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Posted 08/15/08 - 03:28 PM:	#33
Epicurean Delight wrote: I was merely referring to the people who go out everyday for their whole lives and do as their told without thinking about it. To me that is no smarter than any other animal. I am not saying that humans do not have more intellect, but that does not make us superior. By the same token you say a gorilla is superior because it has more physical strength. Sure we have used our intellect to "conquer" nature, but does that make us superior? Look at what we have done to nature, we have destroyed it. That just singles short-sightedness and nothing else. I don't know anybody who goes out and does what they're told without thinking about it. Nearly everybody I meet has a highly complex mental life, even if their lives are relatively simple compared to some other humans. We are superior to animals in nearly any way you can think of, because we can choose to change the way we do things. If we want to do something an animal can do, we can do it, we are stronger, faster, more powerful, because of our machines and tools and factories. The life of any ordinary person in many parts of the world today can be paradise. People eat well, live in comfortable houses, many illnesses and injuries can be effectively treated and we are able to devote increasing amounts of our life to play of one kind or another. We haven't destroyed nature, we've damaged some bits of it, and now we are trying to reverse the damage. Using the world damages it. Other animals and plants damage the world when they use it, and destroy environments or other species. They can't decide not to. We can. That's another very important way we are different to all other animals. You're so lucky not to be an animal!

unenlightened
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Posted 08/15/08 - 04:07 PM:	#34
There are three connected questions. 1. Are we different in some significant way from all other animals? 2. What makes us think and behave as if we are different (morally)? 3. Are we morally entitled to do so. 1. The argument from evolution does not answer this question. Steve Jones said something like, "We share 98% of our genes with chimps, but we share 50% of our genes with a banana." We have evolved from something like bacteria, but we are not 'really' bacteria. So my answer to this question is that it is a uniquely human thing to ask such a question; its not something any other species worries about at all. There may be some sense in which our pets think that they are human, but even then, I don't think they question it. 2. My answer to this question connects with the first but is historical, and based on an interpretation of Genesis - hence talk of a particular (moral) knowledge and of shame. This is what we in the west have been thinking for a few thousand years, rightly or wrongly. There has been a more recent emphasis on language and tool-making, which I have ignored. 3. If I was going to approach how we ought to relate to other kinds of beings on the earth, I would want to give some consideration to the ideas of deep ecology, but that is probably best kept for another thread. As swstephe has pointed out, there is a difficulty in proposing differences of mind functioning, that we cannot claim to 'know' animal's minds even to the extent that we can know each other's by communication. Yet it is clear, I think, that this is where there are, or might be, the 'significant differences' of the original question - not being hairy doesn't cut it. But exactly how to characterise such differences is debatable and subject to refinement and possible rejection. Epicurean Delight wrote: we have used our intellect to "conquer" nature, but does that make us superior? Look at what we have done to nature, we have destroyed it. I agree with the sentiment behind this. And the blame is often put on another aspect of Genesis, in which man is given 'dominion' over the animals. But I would say that it is not quite the same thing to say that we are significantly different from other animals, and to make the total separation from all of nature that allows us to think and talk of it as an enemy to be conquered. My hand is completely different to my belly, yet my hand feeds my belly and my belly feeds my hand, and both are part of my human nature.
The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

kkiiji
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Posted 08/15/08 - 06:06 PM:	#35
I think the problem with the question is that people are using different value scales to answer it. Of coures from a rather objective evolutionary perspective, we can't say that we are superior than animals. Though why should we use that perspective? That perspective is quite a bit beyond the value scales of mankind, and since we're all humans, why not use our own value scales? It could easily be said that creative progression and growth is the thing that seperates us from animals. We are capable of rising beyond simply surviving, we are capable of the greatest of meaning that animals aren't capable of. Of course once again from an evolutionary perspective all this meaning maybe no better than the chemically induced feelings that animals possibly experience, but that's not the point. It's quite absurd to argue from a third person perspective when we are humans, since such perspectives can not provide anything for an ethicial discussion for HUMANS. Sure Sparky may not feel that he is inferior to us, and he may regard all of our so-called advancements as useless, but we're not Sparky, we don't know what Sparky thinks, and I personally don't care. Animals' actions are driven in cycles of life, death, and natural selection, and that's seemingly all they are capable of(a great majority of them anyways). They're merely driven by chemicals, unaware of it, and simply act through nature's course. It could be argued that we do the same things, but the difference is we can notice these cycles, we observe and analyze them, and I say we can break them all. We're already capable of art, something that has pretty much nothing to do with survival. Our naturally selected chemical/neuro dispositions are pushing us beyond survival, to perhaps meaningless acts to a third person perspective, but to us these actions are extremly meaningful, especially comparing to our previous capabilities as mindless beasts. Edited by kkiiji on 08/15/08 - 06:10 PM
Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But Doctor... I am Pagliacci." Good joke, everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum... Curtains.

The Escapist
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Posted 08/15/08 - 10:43 PM:	#36
kkiiji wrote: I think the problem with the question is that people are using different value scales to answer it. Of course from a rather objective evolutionary perspective, we can't say that we are superior than animals. Yes we can. We have transcended evolution. They are subject to evolution and we aren't, or at any rate our own actions and choices have effects that make Darwinian evolution insignificant. We evolve our own animals now, we have for thousands of years.

Epicurean Delight
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Posted 08/16/08 - 07:55 AM:	#37
You can not say that we are not subject to evolution. Whether you like it or not evolution is an unstoppable process for every animal. Have you thought of the organs that serve no purpose in the human body any more, and wisdom teeth? We have evolved not to need those anymore so they have become useless, and in the case of wisdom teeth need to be removed. Or the fact that humans have gotten taller and taller compared to our ancestors. While there have been no significant changes over the last few years, evolution doesn't happen over night. It takes millions of years for a species to undergo a change. While we do create our own species of animal and bacteria, we are still subject to the changes of evolution.

kkiiji
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Posted 08/16/08 - 11:18 AM:	#38
Evolutionarily speaking, we are just as good as the next mammal that survives in the wild. Neither of us has been deselected, and a lot of them have been around for a lot longer than us humans have. From an evolutionary perspective, transcending evolution is just another branch of evolution, since it could be considered useless. So what if we can evolve our own species? So what if we understand how evolution works? If this knowledge was given to a wolf, he'd simply be thinking too much, and would end up getting deselected for it. You're thinking in terms of human value scales once again, which SHOULD be how to answer these human ethical questions, so I'm not disagreeing with you. Though I must say evolutionarily speaking we aren't a lot better than anything else that's around. If you want to judge it by how long a species has been evolving/selected for, we actually lose to quite a number of species.
Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But Doctor... I am Pagliacci." Good joke, everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum... Curtains.

The Escapist
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Posted 08/17/08 - 02:41 PM:	#39
kkiiji wrote: From an evolutionary perspective, transcending evolution is just another branch of evolution, since it could be considered useless. Considered by who? Evolution isn't a person, it is just maths. So what if we can evolve our own species? So what if we understand how evolution works? If this knowledge was given to a wolf, he'd simply be thinking too much, and would end up getting deselected for it. So, we don't. That's another way we're different. If you want to judge it by how long a species has been evolving/selected for, we actually lose to quite a number of species. Why would you want to judge it by that? Those other species were too dumb to evolve our superminds. We are the latest thing, we have only just evolved. It is going to be cool, and all you can think about is ways to persuade yourself that cockroaches are our masters.

kkiiji
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Posted 08/18/08 - 09:47 AM:	#40
You have obviously not read my post. I'm saying that evolutionary perspectives aren't the proper ways to judge whether we are better than animals or not, our humanistic perspectives are, because we're humans. Everything you've said about us being superior only in the end makes us different evolutionarily speaking, not superior. So what if we have a bigger brain? So what if we survive by thinking? So what if we have useless stuff like art that doesn't help us survive any better? Regarding evolution, all that stuff is absolutely meaningless. Sure evolution isn't a person, but it's a concept with a value scale all of its own. Its value scale is whether species get naturally selected or deselected, and how long each species has been naturally selected proves the superiority of that species compared with other species. Theres simply no other way to judge from an evolutionary perspective, whether it's intelligence or strength, in the end this is what it comes down to, whether you get selected and for how long. So you're barking up the wrong tree, you're trying to prove that evolutionarily speaking we're superior, when we're not. We'd literately have to kill off all other species or at least outlast the ones that currently exist to be superior, theres simply no other way, everything else is only good to our own value scales of judgment, which is sufficient and preferred, because we're humans.
Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But Doctor... I am Pagliacci." Good joke, everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum... Curtains.

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