Folks,
I have actually searched for a good answer to this question for a long time. I have ben trying to determine what makes humans unique among all creatures.
It could be one attribute, or a collection of them.
I have heard various theories put forth.
For my purposes here I'm looking for a test of sorts. A mechanism where I can hold up any creature and observe attributes and say "This is Human" and "That is not."
One I heard as a child was that the opposable thumb was it. It took me about 5 seconds to see that failed the test.
One I heard is that humans are "moral agents". I'm not sure how to judge this one so it stays on my possible list.
Another I have heard is that humans, apparently, are the only creatures that engage in sex for recreation. However, anyone who has studied primates knows that theory goes the way of the opposable thumb.
Recently I have heard that only humans create music for recreation, and not only as some type of communication with others. I must admit, this one might be accurate. Of all the vocal creatures I have experienced none appear to use sound for pleasure.
What ideas do you have?
Is it possible there is no forumla?
Regards,
HM Alexander of Hanover
I'm fairly certain that animals do not fall in love. Humans have an immortal soul capable of great thought, great hopes, great aspirations. We dream great dreams and plan our futures accordingly. We're capable of music, of art, of poetry, of literature, of classic T-Birds, of Taj Mahals, of dill-flavored potato chips and of reality TV. We tear up at the national anthem and cry at weddings and when watching Old Yeller. We can send rockets to the moon and submarines to the bottom of the ocean and govern our societies in very complex ways. I know of no species of animal which is capable of the things humans are.
To me the distinctions are legion and entirely apparent. The fact that humans create music for pleasure, to use the example posited, speaks of something which goes far beyond the mere creation of sound. Animals govern themselves according to instinct alone, whereas human beings have much more than instinct to refer to. What distinguishes us is our spirit.
How do you know that animals don't fall in love? How would you measure that? What about animals who mate for life and seem to grieve at the death of a mate?
Humans have an immortal soul? Really? How do you know? If it's immortal, what happens to it after the death of the physical body?
I'm not at all sure that animals are governed by instinct alone. Particularly the more intelligent, such as apes.
What distinguishes us is our spirit
I don't really know what that means. spirit. What is it, exactly?
The examples you give of what humans have accomplished that animals cannot, are primarily traceable to our greater intellect. I think the development of the greater human intellect is the primary distinction between us and other animals.
Well, Mr. McAlpin, I believe we were invited to share our thoughts on this topic according to our own perspectives. It wasn't my understanding that we would have to undergo a cross-examination by Perry Mason following our remarks.
I'm unable to prove the existence of the immortal soul at the moment, I'm afraid, Mr. McAlpin, but I suspect you're equally unprepared to prove that it does not exist so perhaps you should just leave your demands for scientific evidence outside the courthouse. The thrust of my post, however, was not to prove that angels have wings and can dance on the head of a pin but rather to express my thought that the difference between man and animal was quite obvious.
Note here, Majesty, that in order to express my dissatisfaction with Mr. McAlpin's inquisitorial reply I composed a sharp, catty response designed to minimize the effect of his pointed questions. If I were an animal, however, I would have simply bit him in the face. <_<
Uh, ok.
I can think of two things:
1. People act through rational choice (most of the time), animals work through instinct.
2. People can delay gratification (again, most of the time) while animals work in a perpetual now
Rational thought? Might be hard to prove.
Dolphins do not learn through instinct but rather are taught the skills they need to hunt which is different depending upon where they live. The fact that they do not live by instinct alone one might conclude that they too are capable of rational thought.
Show me the dolphin cities, the dolphin religions & philosophies....
Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins have ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believe themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.
- Douglas Adams
My answer would be symbol manipulation. Humans can represent the world around them in different ways - by assigning words to things in language, by representing numbers of things in mathematics, et cetera. Then by manipulating those symbols they can communicate and think much more deeply than they would if they could only rely on the natural world. I wouldn't put it past dolphins to have the same skill, nor even dogs to some degree (my dog knew what the words "bone" and "ball" meant), but there's not much evidence at the dog level at least that they can make and use their own symbols.
Arguments about the seperation of the human and animal world are logically flawed. Humans are a subset of the set of animals. Comparisons between the set of letters and the set of the letter X run into the problem that X is a letter. Just the same way that comparisons between the set of animals and the set of humans encounter the problem that humans belong to the set of animals.
Now the set of animals and the set of plants are both subsets of the set of living things, and thus arguably comparison is possible.