What Makes Humans Human?

@littlek,

littlek wrote:

What sets apart from other mammals? What was the factor that let us advance so far beyond other animals? We considered tool-making, play, communication, etc to be THE factor for long stretches of time. All of those factors have been debunked - other animals do all of the above.

I'm thinking about this because of an NPR series called How Evolution Gave Us the Human Edge. I haven't heard every episode, but what I've heard has been interesting.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128245649

What makes us human is abstraction without which no notion of "human " would be possible... Forms, concepts, ideas, notions, abstractions; all in essence the same quality are that which has set us apart and made us different in degree from other animals...

For animals, life is all immediate, and because we can conceive of a past or a future it is there we mostly reside...We have lost the immediacy of life and only with great difficulty can we regain it, and then only for a moment... Let me suggest, that if we can make love to a beauty, bountiful and charming, sweet to taste and soft and smooth to touch, that at moments we can become lost in the moment thinking nothing, feeling everything, satisfied... But if for a moment you say: what is this wonder I am feeling, or what soft sand is touching against my senses, then the moment is lost, because as we judge we judge with ready words that can never ever convey to splender of the moment that in truth needs no words and could suckle on like an infant, immune to every care, opiated against a threatening reality, if we would only let it...

If you want to be once real, and to know always what is real then find a moment you can live in, where you can feel and feel freely, never needing to name your feelings or give them thought.. The past and future wait for those who hesitate in the moment... Find the now, and you have become real, alive, animal... Then, forget building a world everyone cannot wait to escape with drugs or drudgery.. Forget the world we wish away and die to escape... Forget the world where only past and future exist and the now is too terrible to bear.. Make the world safe to live in, full of moment to moment, dynamic, like water against skin, where nothing is saved and nothing is squandered, and people do not need to mortgage their future to own the now....

1 Reply

@Fido,

speech came first

1 Reply

@Caroline,

Caroline wrote:

We have conscience, that's what sets us apart from animals.

Have you ever had a dog? Have you ever caught it eating poop? I have, and the expression of guilt in their faces is so obvious and intense that seeing it makes me feel sad for them every time. And it's not fear of punishment causing this guilty face in a dog. My family never punished our dogs for eating ****. I'm confident that this face reflects a genuinely troubled conscience.

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@littlek,

What I ask of anyone in such debate, is valid arguments, nothing more, nothing less.
When one can't provide valid arguments, I will point that out.

2 Replies

@HexHammer,

You can be assured that no thread of mine is ever meant to be so much of a debate as a discussion.

1 Reply

@HexHammer,

HexHammer wrote:

What I ask of anyone in such debate, is valid arguments, nothing more, nothing less.
When one can't provide valid arguments, I will point that out.

That's your prerogative. Conversely, it's our prerogative to ignore you.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

HexHammer wrote:
What I ask of anyone in such debate, is valid arguments, nothing more, nothing less.
When one can't provide valid arguments, I will point that out.

That's your prerogative. Conversely, it's our prerogative to ignore you.

Interesting, so one will ignore me because I ask the person to provide valid arguments? Interesting reason and logic.

2 Replies

According to just the stories on NPR that I linked to previously, here are some events in the history of our evolution that advanced us to what we are today.

6-7 million years ago (mya) -- human ancestors left trees and became bipedal (freed hands, height advantage)
2.5 mya -- homo habilis is using tools, but his hand is still ape-like and imprecise (tool making)
2.3 mya -- our ancestors began eating meat, liked scavenged (fire came sometime later)
1.5 mya -- modern feet left tracks in the mud of Mid-Africa, showed ability to be agile and possibly run)
400,000 -- (maybe as old as 1.4 mya) controlled fire (cooking food, protection, hardening weapons)
500,000 ya -- our shoulder joint changing allowing for a broader range of motion (hunting advanced)
100,000 ya -- mouth changing, smaller and less protruding (indicates increased ability to produce speech)
75,000 ya -- shell beads (indicating symbolic thought)
50,000 ya -- longer necks (indicating longer tongues needed to produce full range of human speech)

4 Replies

really digging this podcast

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@littlek,

I recall that the big "line in time" was the development of the facial and basal skull attachments at the differentiating hyoid bone. Im not sure that the hyoid and its place in speech and assumed abstract thought and such are any better than the recent stuff about the eating 0f meat nade us have a really high voltage brain.
We supposedly started out by scavanging marrow from kills and then , as the next advances like tools and fire came about we grew our brains by the diet. Im skeptical about all this.
The hyoid gave us a nice line in the sand because anthropologists could make actual measurements and calcultions of vocal ranges.

I think it had to do withbeer.

1 Reply

@HexHammer,

Hi Hex!

I won't ignore you! I think you're funny. Besides, if I ignore you too, I'll have no posts or replies to read...ever.

LOL
Mark...

0 Replies

@Caroline,

Caroline wrote:

Okay, I'll try. Good idea.

If you need help with the ignore function, give a holler.

0 Replies

@littlek,

littlek wrote:

According to just the stories on NPR that I linked to previously,

Somehow I managed to overlook the web page for the series, even though they were right smack in the middle of your initial post. It's interesting, well-researched, and delightfully compact. I'm surprised how much insight NPR managed to pack into 5--10 minute chunks without rushing their stories. Thanks for that link!

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@littlek,

Hi Littlek!

If living things fail to adapt to their circumstances, they become extinct very quickly.

There are many theories as to why apes left the trees. Mine being overpopulation (an inherited trait?). Having no place to dwell, it was a case of 'adapt or die' - Those that did adapt and evolve accordingly faced many new challenges, and the process cycled on and on until we sit here today.

All life has to adapt, move on or die, and in each instance it becomes something other than what it once was. This is the nature of evolution.

The fact is; humans are simply a collective of atomic particles behaving in a way that is suitable.
Whether this is random or planned is open to interpretation.

So the answer to your threaded question is - Molecular variations acted upon by fate or circumstance in relation to linear evolutionary processes governed by the physical laws of the universe and that which is formed due to said processes is what makes humans human.

Have a lovely day!
mark...

1 Reply

@littlek,

Unlike animals, man ponders his own origin.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

speech came first

Nonsense... One must conceive of a thing to speak of it...And the first thing people conceived of was tomorrow, and they did that in order to recreate their day, which was then to live in the past, as they had in the past, and it is so today, that all social forms are an attempt to recreate the past in the future... We sacrifice our days to have a tomorrow, and do we??? Is it not all futility, unkept promises, and are we not all robbed of our presents to give others their futures which we are denied??? That is why people change their social forms, because the forms which should give them future lives for the lives they put into them only steal their lives and give them nothing...

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Caroline wrote:
We have conscience, that's what sets us apart from animals.

Have you ever had a dog? Have you ever caught it eating poop? I have, and the expression of guilt in their faces is so obvious and intense that seeing it makes me feel sad for them every time. And it's not fear of punishment causing this guilty face in a dog. My family never punished our dogs for eating ****. I'm confident that this face reflects a genuinely troubled conscience.

You are clearly projecting... Maybe you have tried the crap sampler plater at Chez Butthole???

1 Reply

@littlek,

littlek wrote:

You can be assured that no thread of mine is ever meant to be so much of a debate as a discussion.

What is a discussion but a debate??? As questions go, this is one where a well founded opinion is a good as a gun at settling things... Who is in a position to actually prove what they say???

0 Replies

@HexHammer,

HexHammer wrote:

Thomas wrote:

HexHammer wrote:
What I ask of anyone in such debate, is valid arguments, nothing more, nothing less.
When one can't provide valid arguments, I will point that out.

That's your prerogative. Conversely, it's our prerogative to ignore you.

Interesting, so one will ignore me because I ask the person to provide valid arguments? Interesting reason and logic.

Reason and logic has a very narrow field of usefulness, essentially in the tangible world of sense and sensation... If we can sense it we can measure it, and the laws we formulate for it hold true... Where, and in what sense does reason apply to the moral world???... Can you balance a handful of justice against a handful of liberty, or even show me a handful of either... If it is immaterial it is an infinite moral form, and no logic can be applied to it except one: In what sense is a virtue good is the sense in which a good is a virtue...It is only the logic of identity, good is as good does.... Moral forms are infinites and every single case is different, and like the English jurist said: There are no imaginary cases... There is no hypothetical good, but good in fact to a minimum of two, as a form of relationship... So spare the world the reason and logic... In the moral world it does not apply...

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

I recall that the big "line in time" was the development of the facial and basal skull attachments at the differentiating hyoid bone. Im not sure that the hyoid and its place in speech and assumed abstract thought and such are any better than the recent stuff about the eating 0f meat nade us have a really high voltage brain.
We supposedly started out by scavanging marrow from kills and then , as the next advances like tools and fire came about we grew our brains by the diet. Im skeptical about all this.
The hyoid gave us a nice line in the sand because anthropologists could make actual measurements and calcultions of vocal ranges.

I think it had to do withbeer.

We were always monkey eaters, and the proof is easily found since cannabalism was nearly universal... Only one thing prevents a man from becoming a meal... So long as we cannot objectify him in our thoughts we cannot make him an object of our actions...The moment your neighbor becomes a thing, his days are numbered and he is doomed... You will take his life and displace him and call all his property your own... So what if such is done by action of law or by force of arms... If the result is that You have what was formerly his, then he is done...

1 Reply

What Makes Humans Human?

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