Thread: Remember..we are just animals!

Nothing and everything...

The End.

Originally Posted by SolSkye

Nothing and everything...

The End.

I would not expect anything else form you Skysaw.

The Easy.

You mean like the difference between humans and other animals? Or what exactly do you mean?
The difference between humans and other animals is defined through man made abstraction. As SolSkye pointed out, there's no real difference. Or whatever.

The difference between humans and animals is the exact same difference as that between diamonds and rocks, or spinach and vegetables.

But I think the answer you're really looking for is 'the neocortex'.

Originally Posted by Korittke

You mean like the difference between humans and other animals? Or what exactly do you mean?
The difference between humans and other animals is defined through man made abstraction. As SolSkye pointed out, there's no real difference. Or whatever.

By using a vague approach, I had hoped it would force people who post to think.
As society would have it, we can't be so cruel and unreasonable to think animals don't share similar feeling to us.
We also cannot be so politically incorrect as to say two humans that are from many different origins do not share all of the same attributes that two who do have.

Our society has no problem saying there are different breeds of animals, but they can yet fall under a same category. i.e. dogs, cats, horses. Similarly, we categorizes humans as different ethnic groups derived from their physical qualities. We have Chinese, Japenise, African american etc. Yet do we dare say that we are mentally different? Breeds of animals are deemed to be different in that manner. We are both animals, so what makes us different? <>

Originally Posted by Howie

I want to consider the following.
note:
● When two dissimilar dogs are breed together, we no longer have a purebred. But we have a dog.
● When people breed together, white - black - yellow - red - orange
we still have a person.

● We are both animals.
What makes us different?

Self awareness.

There are plenty of self aware animals.

I think this is a kind of stupid idea.


Yes we are animals.

We are very different to most animals, but we fall into the category, ok.


so what?

Originally Posted by Howie

Our society has no problem saying there are different breeds of animals, but they can yet fall under a same category. i.e. dogs, cats, horses. Similarly, we categorizes humans as different ethnic groups derived from their physical qualities. We have Chinese, Japenise, African american etc. Yet do we dare say that we are mentally different? Breeds of animals are deemed to be different in that manner. We are both animals, so what makes us different? <>

Oh, I didn't catch that you were asking about that in particular.

The first thing that pops into my mind here is selective breeding. All domesticated dogs were bred by humans with specific traits in mind - anything from general domestication to sense of smell (bloodhounds) to speed (greyhounds). Because of this, most dog species have a fairly specific set of unique traits which matter a lot to their human owners (otherwise they wouldn't have been selectively bred that way). These traits are, therefore, certainly not just irrelevant little quirks.

Humans, on the other hand, have evolved simply to survive best in our particular environments - there is no conscious driving force behind this evolution, and so our 'unique traits' don't really relate to social interactions very much.

This, coupled with human nature, which makes us all want to be considered equal to our peers, makes us unwilling to acknowledge the specific traits of different races very much. We consider them irrelevant (you have more melatonin... so what?) and a possible challenge to the notion of 'all men are created equal'.

Originally Posted by Omnius Deus

There are plenty of self aware animals.

Which ones?

Even if they are aware they exist, they never get past their primal needs.

Neither do we.

In a way, people can be compared to dogs--certain superficial traits have evolved (in people, naturally, in response to environment; in dogs, by selective breeding as Gnome said), but they are still the same species. I don't think dogs vary much genetically, altho they can look very different from each other--just a few genes make the difference.

Dogs can breed with wolves (and coyotes, which aren't much different); I'm not sure about any other wild canines. What I don't know is if dogs came from just one ancestor that was domesticated, or several species, which were related enough to interbreed. (They didn't necessarily come from "wolves" as most people believe; there may have been an extinct dog ancestor).

When domestic animals are allowed to breed at will, they usually go back to a "wild-type"; for dogs it is a medium-sized, dull-colored, short-haired dog with a curly tail--much like a dingo. That may be what the dog ancestor looked like.

I guess people are still "wild-type". But like dogs they are not genetically very different--the differences are all superficial, and much less dramatic than comparing a chihuahua to a pit bull.

I just saw what you asked about people being "mentally different". What do you mean?

I think you guys are missing the point of the thread a bit

I think we should let Howie decide that.

Oh, Gnome I see we posted at the same time; maybe you weren't talking to me.

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

I think we should let Howie decide that.

Oh, Gnome I see we posted at the same time; maybe you weren't talking to me.

Yeah, sorry, I was referring to the sub-discussion I saw looming about primal instincts and whether or not we overcome them

I myself misinterpreted the thread at first as being about what makes humans different from other animals, but I don't think that's what Howie meant. That's what I was trying to tell them.

Originally Posted by thegnome54

Yeah, sorry, I was referring to the sub-discussion I saw looming about primal instincts and whether or not we overcome them

I myself misinterpreted the thread at first as being about what makes humans different from other animals, but I don't think that's what Howie meant. That's what I was trying to tell them.

I'm going back and trying to decipher it.

Originally Posted by Howie

By using a vague approach, I had hoped it would force people who post to think.

Oh, I see the problem.

Originally Posted by Howie

Our society has no problem saying there are different breeds of animals, but they can yet fall under a same category. i.e. dogs, cats, horses. Similarly, we categorizes humans as different ethnic groups derived from their physical qualities. We have Chinese, Japenise, African american etc. Yet do we dare say that we are mentally different? Breeds of animals are deemed to be different in that manner. We are both animals, so what makes us different? <>

I think definitions are part of the problem. "Breed" can mean anything people want it to, I guess--a certain color of animal is a "breed".

To answer the second part--"breeds" of animals came from a common ancestor (I think--not for sure--as I said there may have been more than one dog ancestor. The same for cats; I think there are both African and European wild cats which are potential ancestors, and maybe both are). Humans come from a common ancestor, but environment has changed some of their characteristics, resulting in what we know as the "races", which are really just arbitrary lines drawn across spectrums of difference.

I think I am repeating myself. Howie, maybe you should explain what you mean.

I saw this program on feral children who grew up around abandoned dogs and stuff... anyway, they posed a question worded something like: when does a human stop being human? These feral kids couldn't speak, their brains had literally deteriorated over the years...

They came to the conclusion that what makes someone human is his/her ability to relate to another being. Here's what happened: a woman who was taking care of a "feral" kid had him set up the table for dinner. He put out 4 plates or something, and when she saw that, she got a tear in her eye because her husband recently died and they only needed 3 plates now instead of 4... the kid saw that and silently removed the 4th plate. That's how she knew he was still human.

I don't know if this is making any sense, I'm just describing what I saw in that program. It was a good one, in any case.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

I saw this program on feral children who grew up around abandoned dogs and stuff... anyway, they posed a question worded something like: when does a human stop being human?

Isn't a human defined by genetics? I don't think you can make someone 'stop being human' by doing anything to them...

Short of a complete genetic overhaul, I guess.

Originally Posted by thegnome54

Isn't a human defined by genetics? I don't think you can make someone 'stop being human' by doing anything to them...

Short of a complete genetic overhaul, I guess.

Possibly. I actually have no idea how one defines "human." Perhaps I should websters.com it.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

I think this is a kind of stupid idea.


Yes we are animals.

We are very different to most animals, but we fall into the category, ok.


so what?

with those deep thoughts

Originally Posted by Howie

with those deep thoughts

It's true!

Nothing I've said is false. Just the simplistic idea. Needs saying at least, before everyone leaps in with their diffferent plains of conciousness talk.

We are just animals, we just have a higher intellegence and awareness and we think that makes us better than everything else. When we blow each other up though, we won't have been any more succesful than cockroaches.

Originally Posted by Idolfan

We are just animals, we just have a higher intellegence and awareness and we think that makes us better than everything else. When we blow each other up though, we won't have been any more succesful than cockroaches.

Successful at what, exactly?

Procreating? All sorts of bacteria have already beat us at that by a long shot.

Being the top of the food chain? We weren't even a part of the food chain when the dinosaurs were around, and they were around longer than we've been.

Changing the Earth? Early cyanobacteria might be given that distinction, or perhaps early algae.

It just so happens that I'm reading a book by Fromm atm and he claims that basically these are properties that could be considered part of the human essence throughout all cultures and centuries (although many of them repressed by the particular culture). He refers all kinds of dudes from Aristotle to Kant, Spinoza, Marx, Kierkegaard, de Chardin among others.

Man is
- capable of using rationality
- a social being, to a great extent defining itself through the contact with others
- a creative being (manipulating and controling its environment on a sophisticated level)
- a being that creates and uses symbols to interact with experience
- a being that can develop freedom and the ability to determine himself to a certain degree by self-discovery and other such things
- constantly confronted with dichotomies
- capable of transcending himself (plus self-consciousness)

So yeah, I just wanted to throw this in. Especially since we're in the philosophical area here. If you want to know the difference between humans and dogs, just look for canis things and homo sapiens sapiens things in your local biology library.

It's pretty much what I would agree on.