Poll: How big is the difference between humans and (other) animals?

[Pure]

On the key variables, is there a vast gap? Are humans several steps 'higher' than the nearest primate? Or are we 'next door' to the smarter and more social animals?

Here is some material. The first talks of relative brain size (EQ).

http://www.aquaticape.org/eq.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1590/is_6_58/ai_80748082

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/animalmind/intelligence.html

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/...e_ani.html?category=earth&guid=20060630160030

 

[Stella_Omega]

Add this to your reading list as well;
Kluge; The Haphazard Construction Of The Human Mind

 

[sr71plt]

I think it's pretty huge. I don't see any competition around on the buidling of infrastructure as humans have done.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

I prefer animals to humans in all social interactions (except sexual ones).

 

[NoJo]

Language is what makes us special. Not the fact that we use it, because you can argue that even some kinds of signalling system used by insects can be thought of as language. But the amazing sophistication of human language -- for example our ability to speak hypotheticallly.


Minnows are not a taxonomic category of fish -- they didn't evelove from a single ancestor, the way true taxonomic clades did -- like the animals of the order Cetacea, the whales.
SO that "Whales/minnows" thing is meaningless. I guess Pure meant "big" vs "small", as though we were somehow "bigger" than other species. Of course humans are big, comparatively speaking to the average mammal.

One thing that's particularly strange about humans is that we live much longer than other apes of comparable size -- much longer than we "should".

Also, we have these big brains for our size -- nobody knows whether our amazing gift for language evolved before, or after, our brains grew.

 

[Liar]

We can communicate and think in abstractions.
We can find analogies and communicate and think in metaphor.
We can share each others' experiences by codifying and de-codifying them - a.k.a telling and listening to stories.
We can, as Sub Joe pointed out, think and talk hypothetically.

These are the reasons that we have built cities, constructed ideologies, formed religions, written symhonies, flown kites, committed genocide and invented porn.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

(sighs) And, sometimes I think, these are the reasons we will never again rediscover our innocence, the beauty of desire without explanation or guilt, the freedom of nakedness at all times, the joy of unselfconsciousness.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

So, having completely lost all our innocense, there is nothing left but to have a really great time with our guilt.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

While Darwinian man, though well behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved. ~ W.S. Gilbert

 

[al_Ussa]

There isn't a difference. Not by the strictest definition. Humans are primates in the kingdom of Animalia, just like our close cousins chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orang utans, and more distant kin like monkeys, aye-ayes, macaques, baboons, lemurs, tarsiers, galagos, slow lorises, and such. Most languages even acknowledge this ('orang' in Malay means man, and many other languages call apes human or human-like).

The only ones who don't want to acknowledge this are creationists, who feel they need to come up with some sort of moralist dividing line seperating man from beast. But its all false, just another lie made to make someone feel better about themselves...

At the end of the day, we fuck, we eat, we sleep... we age, we die. Show me how that is any different from any other animal. Our own life, and mortality, is so frightening to some that they feel the need to artificially seperate themselves from that which they fear. The only real difference is that most beasts of the forest and field don't have the guilt or stupitiy to try concealing their true inner nature.

But, some of you may say, what of language? What of sky scrapers? What o the fact that I am speaking to you right now from across the world via computer? What of it, I say? No matter how clever we are, we are still just another animal, and no doubt eventually something will come along that will make us, or more aptly our descendants, obsolete one day. Even now, we are seeing increasing genetic diversity within humanity. One sees far more new genes coming into places like Europe and North America, and increasing less new blood coming into Africa south of the Sahara.

It is likely that millennia from now, if the trends continue, that we might see the emergence of new species of Homo.

 

[Stella_Omega]

This sentience racket wasn't the best idea...

 

[popcorn2721]

(sighs) And, sometimes I think, these are the reasons we will never again rediscover our innocence, the beauty of desire without explanation or guilt, the freedom of nakedness at all times, the joy of unselfconsciousness.

Wow, what a great illustration of what childhood would be like without public schools. Each person left to discover themselves, much like a sculpture that only after having many outer layers removed by the master...could only near the end understand what its meaning is.

Blissful

 

[Stella_Omega]

Wow, what a great illustration of what childhood would be like without public schools. Each person left to discover themselves, much like a sculpture that only after having many outer layers removed by the master...could only near the end understand what its meaning is.

Blissful

I started to type out a scathing denunciation about how ignorance is bliss indeed, before it occurred to me that you might be talking about home schooling.

...You are, aren't you?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I listened to a lecture series from the Teaching Company recently, "The roots of human behavior," which was by an anthropologist who studies apes and monkeys. She has a lot of understandable sympathy for her subjects and tried to suggest that the bright-line distinction between us and them is less than it appears, but she was nevertheless honest in her reporting. So for example she pointed out that chimps do not "speak ASL" - which is a full-blown human language with all the nuances, conditionals, subjectives and various nuances of any other - but can learn a lot of signs, and sometimes combine them creatively to communicate new things (an ape that was given a ring and had never seen one signed "finger-bracelet;" one that saw a duck land in a fountain signed "water-bird."

I came away unconvinced that there isn't a bright line. My interpretation is that the creatures are not too far off genetically from passing a certain threshold at which a "switch is thrown" and they acquire the self-consciousness that defines humans, but until then the gulf between those on either side of that threshold is truly an ocean.

(IOW, I'm not expecting any news report that a chimp has sung "Swanee River" in my lifetime.)

 

[popcorn2721]

I started to type out a scathing denunciation about how ignorance is bliss indeed, before it occurred to me that you might be talking about home schooling.

...You are, aren't you?

I was not saying that kids do not need education...Ive always thought parental units should guide the children's education and religion (an be armed to do so, not just winging it_)... Course we do have alot of nut jobs here too. Im keeping it short cause I hurt my right hand on Sunday sooo Im not good for much for conversation right now. No jokes about typing w/ one hand, either)

 

[Stella_Omega]

Nooo, I'm dying to make one-handed typing jokes!

The reason the public system came into being is because of the nut jobs who felt their version of (history, grammar, biology, geology) was the right one; and, also, felt that girls didn't need to learn (math, law, history, geography) Not to mention science.
If the public schools hadn't made the decision, generations of children would be ignorant of the mechanisms of evolution-- more ignorant than they are, for sure.

A child can only self-teach if there is an already well-educated adult there from whom he can get what he needs. Since it's incontrovertible that very few Parental Units are going to be experts on all facets of life... Each child ends up being screwed, in one direction or another. Or many.

The public schools are not doing the best job. But it's better than leaving education in the hands of parents in general.

 

[shereads]

We have 40 percent of our DNA in common with lettuce.

 

[shereads]

I'll bet one of the biggest differences between human beings and other animals is that we wonder whether we're substantially different from other animals.

 

[Stella_Omega]

We have 40 percent of our DNA in common with lettuce.

That explains my laziness at least...

 

[shereads]

That explains my laziness at least...

And my desire to be tossed in Thousand Island Dressing.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I dodn't vote, because the question is too broad. There is a vast difference between humans and earthworms, for instance, but relatively little between humans and chimps or gorillas.

 

[popcorn2721]

We have 40 percent of our DNA in common with lettuce.

Gotta be why I love to ave my salad tossed

The public schools are not doing the best job. But it's better than leaving education in the hands of parents in general.

I agree, but was thinking along the lines of Roman society...where familial leadership had an understanding of "their" position in life.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

We can communicate and think in abstractions.
We can find analogies and communicate and think in metaphor.
We can share each others' experiences by codifying and de-codifying them - a.k.a telling and listening to stories.
We can, as Sub Joe pointed out, think and talk hypothetically.

These are the reasons that we have built cities, constructed ideologies, formed religions, written symhonies, flown kites, committed genocide and invented porn.

That's pretty good (although you need to qualify "communicate," but I think we know what you mean.

For our accomplishments you forgot innerspring mattresses, shoes, toothbrushes, convenient means of transportation over medium- and long-distances, Frodo and Sam, popcorn, Windows and windows, and infinitely more.

 

[3113]

We can communicate and think in abstractions.
We can find analogies and communicate and think in metaphor.
We can share each others' experiences by codifying and de-codifying them - a.k.a telling and listening to stories.
We can, as Sub Joe pointed out, think and talk hypothetically.

Actually, we don't know that other animals can't do these things. We don't speak their language and they don't speak ours. Cuddlefish may be having some very important philosophical discussions for all we know. And I'll bet Dolphins think and talk hypothetically.

 

[elsol]

I listened to a lecture series from the Teaching Company recently, "The roots of human behavior," which was by an anthropologist who studies apes and monkeys. She has a lot of understandable sympathy for her subjects and tried to suggest that the bright-line distinction between us and them is less than it appears, but she was nevertheless honest in her reporting. So for example she pointed out that chimps do not "speak ASL" - which is a full-blown human language with all the nuances, conditionals, subjectives and various nuances of any other - but can learn a lot of signs, and sometimes combine them creatively to communicate new things (an ape that was given a ring and had never seen one signed "finger-bracelet;" one that saw a duck land in a fountain signed "water-bird."

I came away unconvinced that there isn't a bright line. My interpretation is that the creatures are not too far off genetically from passing a certain threshold at which a "switch is thrown" and they acquire the self-consciousness that defines humans, but until then the gulf between those on either side of that threshold is truly an ocean.

(IOW, I'm not expecting any news report that a chimp has sung "Swanee River" in my lifetime.)

Can one monkey teach another monkey ASL... no, then I would call the difference between me and a monkey pretty fucking BIG!