"Is Man Just Another Animal?" Professor Steve Jones says...

[gorski]

No, thanx. I said I have no idea WTF you are talking about. So, you first...

And if you are unwilling to - I am done with you...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Nah. I'm willing. i'm just unwilling to give to philosophy, without persuasion, anything beyond the obvious 'existence is'.

Over to you.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Kinda, I guess... Maybe "apprehension" is a wrong word here -

apprehension noun [ U ] (UNDERSTANDING)

formal the act of understanding something

 

[littlebabyjesus]

ffs gorksi here is your opportunity. You have an empty analytical type like me to rail against. Surely you would have plenty to say.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Sortta...

In that case, as discussed, your attempted explanation is deficient.

 

[Knotted]

It is always highly problematic to give short-hand answers, contextless and "hanging" in the air, especially to some here who seem highly opinionated, regardless of how much they have actually studied a subject or if they feel rather inert in terms of considering other tradition's attempt at answering a question... But - against my better judgement - I shall try, since I said I will do (something)... So, here goes "something"...



Heh, we have no time machine to check, in a scientific sense, a series of measurable characteristics and then - bang, we have the moment, the quantitative changes that turned into a qualitative, essential difference... Bah, it immediately sounds kinda eugenicist, Nazi, doesn't it? Measuring the lobes, noses, foreheads, posture... Oych... (Btw, monkeys and apes can throw their faeces at their enemies with some accuracy... And no, there is no "morality" in Animal Kingdom, if you understand what "morality" is at all!)

Glad to see you say this, but what was it with all the stuff about trying to define culture and claiming only humans have it and the like? What was the purpose of that (regardless of whether it is true)? (I know what the purpose is for Steve Jones - he is illustrating the differences not systemitising the differences - see my first post). And since you admit that there is no temporal line between humans and (other) animals, you have to admit that any systematic attempt at dividing one from the other must fail at some point in the past. What is the point of a systematic approach that you know and admit has to fail if you wind the clock back?

 

[Knotted]

Even Hegel at his most vulgar in his philosophy of history does not attempt to define his social/philosophical categories in biological terms.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

Analytic philosophy is NOT philosophy as such. A small, obscure branch with nothing to say, really, extremely boring and pointless.

Plus, his head seems empty of any kind of interesting ideas, so I believe him...

He really is not worth the time...

Looks like he's doing pretty well in the world of philosophy..

Unger, Peter | Philosophy | New York University

And you seemed to diss Wittgenstein too...even though his theories on language and animals do separate them in some way from humand...and therefore supports your view.

I'm heading into hospital in half an hour and I'm not concerned about this circular debate any longer.
"It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him".(Wittgenstein...)
I'm much more concerned about coming out of hospital ....alive...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Nothing wrong with dissing professors although gorski's a bit inconsistent on that one. Wittgenstein's later stuff about language is well worthy of criticism.

 

[TruXta]

Analytical philosophy is a small obscure branch? Wtaf.

 

[danny la rouge]

Thanks for taking the time to reply, gorski. You don’t seem to have understood the questions I posed, but then I think it’s fair to say that I don’t understand all of your answer. I don’t suppose we’re ever going to fully understand each other. But maybe in trying, we can create an interesting dialogue.

Heh, we have no time machine to check, in a scientific sense, a series of measurable characteristics and then - bang, we have the moment, the quantitative changes that turned into a qualitative, essential difference... Bah, it immediately sounds kinda eugenicist, Nazi, doesn't it? Measuring the lobes, noses, foreheads, posture... Oych...

(Btw, monkeys and apes can throw their faeces at their enemies with some accuracy...

And no, there is no "morality" in Animal Kingdom, if you understand what "morality" is at all!)

You seem here to have taken from what I wrote exactly the opposite meaning to the one intended. I had thought my discussion of ring species had shown that I was illustrating that species change was a continuum. I don’t expect to find a “bang” moment. That was my point.

We, thankfully, don’t have in the fossil record examples from every generation of our lineage right back to deuterostomia. Deuterostome - Wikipedia But each generation would see its children and grandchildren as being essentially the same as themselves. If we could lay out that lineage and walk beside it, whiteboard pointer in hand, it would be similar to following the gulls round the loop. As I said when discussing that example, it would not be either sensible or even possible to point to when one species ends and another starts. It’s a continuum.

And so, zooming in to our genus, Homo, I don’t expect you to be able to pinpoint where our extraordinary mental agility begins. As Jones pointed, we have evidence some of our pre-H. sapiens ancestors also cooked. They must have done: the decrease in jaw muscles did not happen overnight. The evolving brain that he suggests these changes supported did not arrive fully formed at a “bang” moment. He knows this. You appear to be missing an important point he alludes to. And since you’re keen on his cooking/jaw strength/brain growth dialectic (trialectic? ), I think you should review what he actually said, and look into the implications of it. That was what I was driving at.

I did ask you to name a point at which the quality of “humanity” you say other animals don’t have begins, but that was rhetorical mischief. For which I apologize. But I assume that’s what you’re referring to here:

Your demands are misplaced. You would need to go to some kind of church for that kind of "clarity"... SJ is too clever to try something like that. He is not religious, you know...

“You would need to go to some kind of church for that kind of "clarity"”, you say. This was a point I was making against you. I had thought that fairly plain from my lead in to it. It was perhaps rude of me, but I was suggesting that the miasmic quality of “humanity” you promote sounds more mystical than I’d be interested in.

And since you say I misunderstood your use of the word “historic” (which you still haven’t defined for me in your sense), at what point does this philosophical historicity enter the picture? Outside of our species? Or after our species has begun? Perhaps when farming begins?

Outside of our species? Ahem... I really have no clue what you may mean there... And there is no historicity without us, indeed!

By “outside of our species”, I meant before H. sapiens proper, but somewhere along the generational continuum of weak-jawed cookers. I didn’t expect you to pick a point, I was attempting to demonstrate that our emergence into “humanity” would have been gradual.

And there is no historicity without us, indeed!

This is an assertion, not an explanation. It furthermore seems circular to me. You seem to be denying that it might be something that began gradually as our brains developed by saying that it is by definition only something H. sapiens do. Like saying only humans human-swim: other animals may move in water, but they don’t human-swim.

One of your links provides this: “Hegel regards history as an intelligible process moving towards a specific condition—the realization of human freedom”. That was all that was required, really. Cheers.

I did try reading Hegel many years ago, when I mistakenly thought it’d be good deep background for my reading of Marx. I didn’t find anything to interest me, and I can remember little if anything of it. It may be that I was looking for the wrong thing.

However, this quote suggests history in this sense is a process, the event is the realization of human freedom. Processes are ongoing, not events. Why does this process only start with the dawn of H. sapiens? If it isn’t just analogous with human-swimming, why are you so keen to rule out its possible beginnings in our increasingly weak-jawed ancestors?

For Hegel, this is "progress of the idea of Freedom", which Absolute (God/Spirit/Reason) must realise itself at some point in History.

I don’t understand what this means. Are you translating “Absolute” in parenthesis as God/Spirit/Reason? Are you saying “reason” is a synonym for God or Spirit? If so, then this is probably why I can’t follow you: I think it’s more like an antonym.

This next paragraph I literally can’t follow. It reads to me like something from the Cloud of Unknowing. (I’m not trying to be rude, just descriptive of how I perceive it).

In this context, historical Man is the subject here, not in one's biological but one's creative/productive characterisation, one who creates oneself, one's world, one's relations (with one's body, other Humans and Nature), (eventually) through conscious actions. Imagination and creativity is our "essence", i.e. speculatively speaking, together with Hegel, when it comes to us, we can say, "At the beginning there was - future!" (unlike animals). We are free to actively, consciously create our world, something animals can not. Not just in this generation but cross-generationally. Not just here but in the rest of the word, as well. And we are not necessarily determined (without residue) by our class, gender, race etc. albeit we are influenced by it, in various ways. We can, indeed, as we have already done, revolutionise ourselves and change our nature, the nature of our relations, our society, how we interact, how we see ourselves, the other, Nature etc. Now, this is the dominion of Man, Empire of Freedom - the potential one can not find in Animal Kingdom, try as hard as one might. Animals, in this sense, are ahistorical beings.

I suspect there’s a lot of human-swimming type definitions going on there. Maybe I’ll try to pick through it later, but I’m already running very late on the rest of my day!

Hope all goes well at the hospital.

 

[gorski]

Good luck, Bubble! Health is the zero factor to everything else we do... One really doesn't want to mess up that one...

Johnny, this went through my head at the time (I was trying to deal with my son at the time...):

apprehension noun [ U ] (WORRY)

worry about the future, or a fear that something unpleasant is going to happen:

It's normal to feel a little apprehension before starting a new job.
There is some apprehension in the office about who the new director will be.

LBJ, sorry, not interested, I must say...

Trux - as in "irrelevant"... Really irrelevant.

K, blah-blah, hehheee...

Thanx, Danny! It went well but this recovery of mine will not be OK for another 6 weeks or so, it's all sore and... you know, they dug inside me and all that...

OKI, just a few points, I had a long day today, must rest...

Thanks for taking the time to reply, gorski. You don’t seem to have understood the questions I posed, but then I think it’s fair to say that I don’t understand all of your answer. I don’t suppose we’re ever going to fully understand each other. But maybe in trying, we can create an interesting dialogue.

Yes, differences in schools of thought, traditions, languages, experiences and so on, sure.... it all makes it more difficult. But not impossible, with some good will...

In this case, as can be seen in your answers later on, and before all that in my first paragraph, the huge primarily philosophical context - which is not very well known to you, as you say - is a real problem. What I consider simple and without jargon, many here seem to consider dense, heavily laden with jargon, incomprehensible and whatnot... Acccchhh...

And it's not like I didn't see it coming... but hey...

You seem here to have taken from what I wrote exactly the opposite meaning to the one intended. I had thought my discussion of ring species had shown that I was illustrating that species change was a continuum. I don’t expect to find a “bang” moment. That was my point.

We, thankfully, don’t have in the fossil record examples from every generation of our lineage right back to deuterostomia. Deuterostome - Wikipedia But each generation would see its children and grandchildren as being essentially the same as themselves. If we could lay out that lineage and walk beside it, whiteboard pointer in hand, it would be similar to following the gulls round the loop. As I said when discussing that example, it would not be either sensible or even possible to point to when one species ends and another starts. It’s a continuum.

Not sure about that. When it comes to specific characteristics, nowadays we can point, at least in some cases, to a person who brings a genetic mutation into the world (see that Italian village without heart-attacks, an African prostitute immune to AIDS virus and whatnot...). But when it comes to a bigger picture - I don't think it is Science that can speak of discontinuity and qualitative change/difference, only physiologically and there is its limit... On the other hand, philosophy does have its own terminology and so on. Not easy to go round it, I'm afraid.

One of your links provides this: “Hegel regards history as an intelligible process moving towards a specific condition—the realization of human freedom”. That was all that was required, really. Cheers.

I did try reading Hegel many years ago, when I mistakenly thought it’d be good deep background for my reading of Marx. I didn’t find anything to interest me, and I can remember little if anything of it. It may be that I was looking for the wrong thing.

Or a wrong book, perhaps - at least without the necessary political and philosophical context? So, start with Philosophy of History and maybe...

But your approach is the right one! Without French (and American) Revolution(s) and Kant to Hegel developments one can not understand Marx and Marx's development!

However, this quote suggests history in this sense is a process, the event is the realization of human freedom. Processes are ongoing, not events. Why does this process only start with the dawn of H. sapiens? If it isn’t just analogous with human-swimming, why are you so keen to rule out its possible beginnings in our increasingly weak-jawed ancestors?

Heh, here you go again, you just can't help yourself. We can't know this, we are limited in a variety of ways.

The question itself is wrong.

I don’t understand what this means. Are you translating “Absolute” in parenthesis as God/Spirit/Reason? Are you saying “reason” is a synonym for God or Spirit? If so, then this is probably why I can’t follow you: I think it’s more like an antonym.

Look, this is just Hegel's jargon, these things one simply must learn. All of these are his way of saying "that (general) which connects us, Humans (individual)" is Spirit/Absolute/Absolute Spirit/Reason/(Absolute [his] Philosophy/God etc. 'Everyday language' does not enter into it. One simply must familiarise oneself with a specific thinker, sorry... Just like Science has its vocabulary, method etc. Only much harder! As can easily be seen from all of the above...

The rest has to be taken in relation to all of what I had written there. It isn't that difficult to follow - unless one is up to his eyeballs in analytic tradition, positivism and all that rubbish that has been comprehensively debunked long ago, which sadly flourishes madly in the Anglo-Saxon world...

The book I photographed and posted the cover of starts with Adorno's text "Philosophy still - whatever for?" (or words to that effect).

P.S. I really abhor a debater who comes with a single, dismissive line after a considered lengthy response, hence you effort is appreciated!

 

[danny la rouge]

Not sure about that. When it comes to specific characteristics, nowadays we can point, at least in some cases, to a person who brings a genetic mutation into the world

We cannot point to any living human individual who marks the beginning of a new species. There is no such person.

Heh, here you go again, you just can't help yourself. We can't know this, we are limited in a variety of ways.

The question itself is wrong.

Can't know what? I'm not suggesting a certainty, I'm suggesting a possibility - We can't know there's no possibility either, which is what you claim.

We know jaw weakening, cooking and brain growth all predate H. sapiens. Why not anything else? That's the question. Why are you so sure it's the wrong question?

 

[gorski]

We cannot point to any living human individual who marks the beginning of a new species. There is no such person

You forgot: "But when it comes to a bigger picture - I don't think it is Science that can speak of discontinuity and qualitative change/difference, only physiologically and there is its limit..."

So, "your" claim is my claim, amigo...

Why are you so sure it's the wrong question?

Because it's a religious kinda question. I don't dwell upon those.

 

[Orang Utan]

It's not a religious question though, it's merely a taxonomic question and you're wrong

 

[danny la rouge]

Because it's a religious kinda question. I don't dwell upon those.

No it isn't. It's a scientific question and one actually raised by what Jones said in the video you posted.

 

[danny la rouge]

I think you're completely misunderstanding my question, gorski. I did think I'd put it pretty clearly. I had two goes at it, and I think the second is clearest.

"Is Man Just Another Animal?" Professor Steve Jones says...

"Is Man Just Another Animal?" Professor Steve Jones says...

 

[gorski]

Somebody wake me when they answer that Q in a "definitive" way, please...

 

[danny la rouge]

Somebody wake me when they answer that Q in a "definitive" way, please...

What question are you referring to now? Just so we know where we're at.

 

[Orang Utan]

Somebody wake me when they answer that Q in a "definitive" way, please...

It already has been answered in a very definitive way - humans are animals because they are multicellular eukaryotic organisms. there's no getting around that, no matter how much you huff and puff.

 

[gorski]

The only one struggling with elementary thinking is you.

 

[gorski]

What question are you referring to now? Just so we know where we're at.

Weren't you the one to have started it?

 

[Orang Utan]

The only one struggling with elementary thinking is you.

no, you really are. it's a very simple question, and it's been answered
either we are multicellular eukoryotic organisms or we're not.
are you saying we're not?

 

[danny la rouge]

Weren't you the one to have started it?

Just checking that we're still talking about the same thing, because it seemed like you were talking about something else. (Maybe back to the thread question).

My question is this:

Given that you're impressed by Jones' talk of cooking and jaw strength and brain growth, and that he (correctly) says these were all in train before H. sapiens emerged, why are you convinced nothing else was in train before H. sapiens?

Please note, I'm not asserting it was (although I think it's a possibility), I'm asking why you're certain it wasn't.

 

[gorski]

OU, give it up, you'll never understand anything philosophical, period. The most bizarre thing is, you are 'proud' to be narrow minded and not wanting to make any effort further than "natural sciences"...

Danny, these questions are irrelevant for the topic. Are we just another animal?!?

 

[Orang Utan]

It's not a philosophical question.

 

[danny la rouge]

Danny, these questions are irrelevant for the topic. Are we just another animal?!?

Why do you think that? Because you don't like where they lead you?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Just checking that we're still talking about the same thing, because it seemed like you were talking about something else. (Maybe back to the thread question).

My question is this:

Given that you're impressed by Jones' talk of cooking and jaw strength and brain growth, and that he (correctly) says these were all in train before H. sapiens emerged, why are you convinced nothing else was in train before H. sapiens?

Please note, I'm not asserting it was (although I think it's a possibility), I'm asking why you're certain it wasn't.

An important point for me that was mostly missing from the Jones talk is also to ask the question 'what have other lines of evolution produced?' The talk's line of reasoning for me betrayed a 'man is the measure of all things' assumption: following that assumption, what we need to do is to see what's special about us compared to our nearest living relative. While that's not a bad place to start, it is only a start.

Humans certainly appear to be the cleverest apes by many measures of 'clever', and I agree to a point with gorski about the idea of humans being 'historical' creatures. But where does the justification for saying that we are the only historical creatures come from? Along an entirely different line of thinking, Antonio Damasio came up with the similar concept of an extended consciousness. But he felt obliged to state that this extended consciousness may very well be present to some extent in other animals - his example was elephants; killer whales and other dolphins would also certainly come into the equation; you'd be foolish to rule out scrub jays and other clever birds. In other words, this kind of extended consciousness, with its ability to consider the past and future, with its ability to hold an idea in its mind and mull it over, may very well have evolved independently several times. It is what Dennett would call a 'good trick', so why wouldn't it have evolved several times? Other 'good tricks', such as eyes, are thought to have evolved independently perhaps dozens of times (like Jupiter's moons, every time you look this up, the number goes up).

 

[Chilli.s]

An important point for me that was mostly missing from the Jones talk is also to ask the question 'what have other lines of evolution produced?'

That's what I wondered too, found it didn't seem to acknowledge the complex sounds that cetaceans produce that we humans cant even hear.

Also not much is known about neanderthals, but do we regard them as human or animal? they seem very sophisticated compared to apes.

 

[gorski]

Oh, c'mon, LBJ: which animal is concerned by its own actions which can potentially extinguishing other species (communicating globally and intergenerationally is essential here, when it comes to understanding what we do and then planning to avoid destructive outcomes)? Which animal is concerned with potential consequences of our actions today for umpteen generations to come? Which animal is capable of radically changing its social relations? Where in the Animal Kingdom did you see Revolution happen? Which animal has morals in the Modern sense of the word? Which animal creates legal constructs based on equaliberty? Which animal does what we do, when we are at our best, creative, imaginative, freedom loving, emancipatory leaning, reflective, not acting out of necessity and even against our immediate interest (self-active, I guess is a good word for this) etc. etc.?!?!?!?!?!?

And where in our "genome" is the clear and unambiguous, scientific answer for this?