Are we animals, or something else?
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Monday, June 3, 2024 14:47
VIEWED: 10390
PAGE 9 of 12
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But when you claim only humans have 'souls'...
I never said that, Lord help me, I said the human 'soul' is more *complex* than animal 'souls'. Simply, our thoughts and emotions are more complex and advanced.
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you are doing so without any understanding of the thoughts and emotions experienced by other species.
Except from that 'higher species' perception you went on to talk about... Seriously though, if an animal had thoughts and emotions that were incomprehensible to me, it would evidence them in actions that were incomprehensible to me. Just like my cats are mystified (or would be if they had any intellectual curiosity) by my use of language to communicate with other humans, my enjoyment of watching firefly, my wearing of different clothes, my general use of tools and machinery etc. The cats will never understand me, but I understand the cats - their behaviour holds no incomprehensible mystery for me.
Heads should roll
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Some think we are above animals- that we are unique due to our superiour intelligence, opposable thumbs, souls or whatnot.
Homo sapiens are animals who think they are not.
But their collective memories are filled with examples demonstrating many of them are actually worse.
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Quote:So now it's "mystery" that defines the soul...
Originally posted by kpo:
their behaviour holds no great mystery for me.
Complexity, mystery, how about levity?
The laughing Chrisisall
"I only do it to to remind you that I'm right and that deep down, you know I'm right, you want me to be right, you need me to be right." - The Imperial Hero Strikes Back, 2010
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Somebody earlier referenced the quite 'mysterious' action of dolphins carrying their dead family members bodies on their backs...
This suggests some emotional depth to me. It is a strange action, but I believe I can comprehend the thought process, as we humans care about our families members as well. I'm saying if some animals are above us in any thoughts/emotions then they must exhibit this in strange actions - like all the human actions I talked about earlier that would be mysterious to the mind of a cat.
Heads should roll
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k-ules
This is what you posted: ""Recent discoveries in anthropology may show that we are not great apes at all as has been to most logical assumption in the past."
Genetically and biochemically humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than humans are to gorillas, or chimpanzees are to gorillas. The orangutan is even further removed from the grouping humans/ chimps/ / / gorillas. If humans are not great apes, then neither are chimps, and probably gorillas as well - to say nothing of the orangutans - in which case the definition becomes moot.
Current genetic and biochemical similarities are often a good guide to evolutionary history. When incomplete bone fragments were the only source of information many false comparisons and conclusions were drawn. Genetic research has caused much reclassifying throughout all the plant, animal, protista, fungal, archaebacterial, and eubacterial kingdoms. And that in turn has caused a reevaluation of evolutionary theories. Since there is no reason to doubt the genetic data over bone data, I suspect those bones will be found to belong to a long extinct branch in the evolutionary tree. And speaking of which, there were many proto-apes over the course of evolution whose lines died out and have no current representation – Neanderthals come to mind.
There is also good reason to think humans evolved on the horn of Africa, which was detached from and attached to the main continent many times by rising and falling ocean levels. It has been suggested that b/c of that, there is scant direct fossil records of human evolution on the main body of the continent.
Anyway, I have to go. Ponder this and consider you may be wrong.
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"... if an animal had thoughts and emotions that were incomprehensible to me ..."
Then you claim to understand everything every animal does ? They never do anything outside of your comprehension ?
So, just briefly getting around to 'thoughts' and 'emotions' (b/c I really have to get going) ...
Animals can and do have abstract representations of things in their heads. How do I know this ? B/c a cat recognizes water whether it's in a puddle, a blue ceramic bowl that it's been drinking out of for years or a new stainless steel one, a pool, pouring out of a tap, or sloshing in a bathtub. These abstract representations I would consider 'thoughts' and they are every bit as complex as ours. After all, they have to eat, drink, shelter, mate, care for their young, and hunt or avoid being hunted in a complex environment, and often, they form societies.
They have dreams, so they have memory and imagination.
And they plainly have emotions.
Many animals recognize individuals either of their own or other species. SignyM's orphaned sparrow who is the epitome of a bird brain recognizes each of us separately.
Some even have a sense of self, and, as far as we can tell, language. They understand the 'theory of mind'. They can lie by misdirection. And chimpanzees, gorillas and elephants have been seen to mourn their dead.
And then, as I mentioned before, there are animals who are complex but so alien we may never understand exactly what their intelligence is - parrots and octopuses come to mind.
Given all of this, I can't say that their souls are smaller than ours. They do all that we do and deal with all that we deal with.
But the debate about the actual existence of souls is another direction which I won't be able to address now.
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"... if an animal had thoughts and emotions that were incomprehensible to me ..."
Then you claim to understand everything every animal does ?
'Incomprehensible' suggests that it is an action and a thought process that I could never possibly understand. The mysterious action and thought process has to be completely beyond human comprehension - science will never be able to answer it. Like my cats would *never* understand a lot of my human actions/thought processes.
To your other points, sure, animals have similar or more primitive versions of a lot of our thought processes. That doesn't surprise me - we're animals too.
Heads should roll
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So you claim that you COULD be omniscient in regards to animals if only you tried ? I have to say, that's quite a claim.
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Originally posted by rue:
k-ules
This is what you posted: ""Recent discoveries in anthropology may show that we are not great apes at all as has been to most logical assumption in the past."
Genetically and biochemically humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than humans are to gorillas, or chimpanzees are to gorillas. The orangutan is even further removed from the grouping humans/ chimps/ / / gorillas. If humans are not great apes, then neither are chimps, and probably gorillas as well - to say nothing of the orangutans - in which case the definition becomes moot.
Current genetic and biochemical similarities are often a good guide to evolutionary history. When incomplete bone fragments were the only source of information many false comparisons and conclusions were drawn. Genetic research has caused much reclassifying throughout all the plant, animal, protista, fungal, archaebacterial, and eubacterial kingdoms. And that in turn has caused a reevaluation of evolutionary theories. Since there is no reason to doubt the genetic data over bone data, I suspect those bones will be found to belong to a long extinct branch in the evolutionary tree. And speaking of which, there were many proto-apes over the course of evolution whose lines died out and have no current representation – Neanderthals come to mind.
There is also good reason to think humans evolved on the horn of Africa, which was detached from and attached to the main continent many times by rising and falling ocean levels. It has been suggested that b/c of that, there is scant direct fossil records of human evolution on the main body of the continent.
Anyway, I have to go. Ponder this and consider you may be wrong.
I agree that it’s irrelevant whether we choose to call ourselves great apes or otherwise because we are so genetically similar to apes. What I was suggesting is that we did not evolve from any of the great ape species still in existence and that the split might have happened up to 12 million years ago long before any species similar to those we recognize today existed.
Here’s a link to info about a study that might explain why we have not varied much genetically since our split from the chimp or a common ancestor. It might be that we have not evolved much genetically because of the traits that make us human. Our ancestors and dead ends like Neanderthal did not vary much genetically over time because they were bipedal hominids.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2009/01/08-02.html?etoc
“Hublin and Premo propose that if human ancestors selected mates from similar backgrounds, there would have been a lot of inbreeding within different populations, restricting the flow of new mutations to other groups. "If these guys on the other side of the river spoke a different language and had different weapons, you would not try to mate with them or they might kill you," says Hublin. Over time, most populations went extinct, allowing the genes of only a few groups to proliferate, further erasing genetic diversity.”
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Originally posted by Kirkules:
I agree that it’s irrelevant whether we choose to call ourselves great apes or otherwise because we are so genetically similar to apes. What I was suggesting is that we did not evolve from any of the great ape species still in existence and that the split might have happened up to 12 million years ago long before any species similar to those we recognize today existed.
1) Humans are a member of the Great Apes.
2) I've never heard the suggestion that we're descended from a living species of Great Ape, outside of creationist strawmen.
Humans are a member of the Great Ape family because we share a close common ancestor.
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