What makes humans special

[Vanguard1917]

The main difference between monkeys and human beings is that human beings are able to consciously change the environment in which they exist to suit their own interests. We have brought about such changes to the earth that it is now almost unrecognisable to its pre-human state. That's what makes human beings so special.

[ichneumon]

The main difference between monkeys and human beings is that human beings are able to consciously change the environment in which they exist to suit their own interests. We have brought about such changes to the earth that it is now almost unrecognisable to its pre-human state. That's what makes human beings so special.

BEAVERS do this. geez. there's a whole ecosystem based on beaver dams, they completely and utterly alter the hydrology of entire biozones. and you should note that the largest artificial structure on earth is still the Great Barrier Reef.

[Vargha Poralli]

Originally posted by [email protected] 03, 2007 10:55 pm
The main difference between monkeys and human beings
Err this discussion is about Chimpanzees. And chimps are not monkeys they are apes.

[Vanguard1917]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 12:48 am

The main difference between monkeys and human beings is that human beings are able to consciously change the environment in which they exist to suit their own interests. We have brought about such changes to the earth that it is now almost unrecognisable to its pre-human state. That's what makes human beings so special.

BEAVERS do this. geez. there's a whole ecosystem based on beaver dams, they completely and utterly alter the hydrology of entire biozones. and you should note that the largest artificial structure on earth is still the Great Barrier Reef.
I said consciously. We consciously alter our environment, and no other animal does this. As Marx explains in Capital:

'A spider constructs operations which resemble those of the weaver and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived... Man not only affects a change in form in the materials of nature; he also realises his own purpose in those materials.'

[Sentinel]

Well I can't but agree with Vanguard1917, who here demonstrates how 'anthropocentrism' and 'speciesm' are rooted in and a fundamental part of Marxism. :)

This is the secret behind marxists, both autonomist and leninist, generally being more progressive in issues dealing with the environment than other leftists of various 'green' branches of thought; there exists a non-tolerance for misanthropic attempts to lower the human species to the level of inferior species, based on marxist theory.

I feel this is something that deserves highlighting so I split it from the 'chimpanzees using spears' thread (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=63109).

[ichneumon]

the feb 22nd issue of nature, vol 445, issue 7130:


"there is much debate as to whether animals can travel mentally in time, to plan for the future in anticipation of an expected need."


is that what you're talking about? i suggest you read the article. "Planning for the future by western scrub-jays". and how do you know the mind of beavers?

thus, science proves marxist theory wrong by experimental, repeatable evidence. now what?

[TC]

Thats silly vanguard1917

you are making a metaphysical claim about intrinsic 'specialness', materialists recognize no such metaphysical claims, that there could be such a thing as natural specialness of anything of that sort.

What makes changing the environment to an unrecognizable state 'special'? As much as humans have altered the atmosphere and physical environment, trees have altered the atmosphere and environment far more. This is not to say that trees are just as 'special' or any such b.s. but that your notion of 'specialness' is totally artificial and even if accepted on a paradigmatic level is empirically incorrect.

Nothing makes humans special, there is no purpose in life, there is no natural essence or uniqueness or spark or whatever to provide artifical meaning. We do not do things to benefit humans collectively because humans are special or out of some notion of 'morality', these are concepts that Marx demonstrated to be part of the ideology suited to consolidating the mode of production, rather we do it simply because its in our collective best interest, because humans of the same socioeconomic class have the ability for collective action to improve their material conditions and it benefits them materially to do so. There is no need to impose a human centred mysticism on it, the reason why we care about people more than anything else is practical not metaphysical, its in our interests to do.

[coda]

<<is that what you&#39;re talking about? i suggest you read the article. "Planning for the future by western scrub-jays". and how do you know the mind of beavers?>>>


Ich, I guess what Vanguard *really* means is that humans can get together in a room, plot and tweek blueprints to design tanks, bombs and nuclear warheads all for the purpose of killing other human beings equal to themselves.

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 08:35 pm
What makes changing the environment to an unrecognizable state &#39;special&#39;? As much as humans have altered the atmosphere and physical environment, trees have altered the atmosphere and environment far more. This is not to say that trees are just as &#39;special&#39; or any such b.s. but that your notion of &#39;specialness&#39; is totally artificial and even if accepted on a paradigmatic level is empirically incorrect.
We&#39;ve been through this. Trees are not conscious beings, they&#39;re not even sentient. Most animals operate only a semi-sentient level and even the sentient ones do not have the same depth of thought or planning that humans are capable of. We are the only sapient creatures on this planet and that is what makes us unique.


Nothing makes humans special, there is no purpose in life, there is no natural essence or uniqueness or spark or whatever to provide artifical meaning. Life having no purpose does not lead to their being no uniqueness to us, as I pointed out above we have a uniqueness in our level of consciousnesses which puts us above all other creatures which are incapable of our level of rational thought.
We do not do things to benefit humans collectively because humans are special or out of some notion of &#39;morality&#39;, these are concepts that Marx demonstrated to be part of the ideology suited to consolidating the mode of production, rather we do it simply because its in our collective best interest, because humans of the same socioeconomic class have the ability for collective action to improve their material conditions and it benefits them materially to do so. So you suggest that once we have succeeded in destroying class divisions we will still be incapable of acting for our species? You assume that your misanthropic thought pattern is what will dominate our actions? Humans have only managed to come this far because a significant number of them are able to act in the interest of their species and bring our advances in science and technology.
There is no need to impose a human centred mysticism on it, No one is doing that, but your doing all kinds of mental acrobatics to impose your reactionary misanthropies.
the reason why we care about people more than anything else is practical not metaphysical, its in our interests to do. Interest of the species. You cannot deny the anthropocentrism at the centre of all leftist thought.

[ichneumon]

Ich, I guess what Vanguard *really* means is that humans can get together in a room, plot and tweek blueprints to design tanks, bombs and nuclear warheads all for the purpose of killing other human beings equal to themselves.

no, he is arguing an absolute qualitative difference between humans and others. it&#39;s not like that, and that article proves it. animals do all the things that humans do, to a lesser degree and not all at the same time.

i find much of the anthropocentrism of the left mindless justification for environmental crimes. quality of human life is directly dependent on steady functioning of the local and global biospheres.

analogy: we, as socialist fish, believe that it&#39;s a-okay to pollute and destroy the oceans, because it is somewhat possible for us to build aquariums, and, in theory at least, fish can live in aquariums. nevermind that there are billions of fish and nowhere near enough resources to build billions of aquariums, or that fish don&#39;t actually live well in aquariums, or, for that matter, that polluted water kills fish, period.

why can&#39;t you understand that there is NO DIFFERENCE between preserving the biosphere and improving human quality of life? futhermore, the best way to accomplish both is by limiting population growth. if allowed, the human population will grow until starvation and disease limit it. that&#39;s how exponential growth WORKS. if we destroy the biosphere to make room for the billions, it only lowers the maximum number of people who can actually survive and live decent lives on earth.

[Pawn Power]

Opposable thumbs...ohh and complex language with a specialized vocabulary with the ability to communicate past, present, and future actions, along with feelings emotions, and concepts all presuposed in Universal Grammer.

[ichneumon]

Opposable thumbs...ohh and complex language with a specialized vocabulary with the ability to communicate past, present, and future actions, along with feelings emotions, and concepts all presuposed in Universal Grammer.

honestly, you could at least spell it right. that is a theory, by no means proven. consider:

weird south american language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language)

a language without *numbers*, colors and basically no kinship terms.

basically, animals do all those things to a degree. why is this so important to people? isn&#39;t it to be expected that human intelligence is rooted in pre-evolved behaviors that have other uses in other species?

[RevMARKSman]

honestly, you could at least spell it right. that is a theory, by no means proven. consider:

weird south american language

a language without *numbers*, colors and basically no kinship terms.

Saying that a tiny sample of us have not accomplished this does not negate the accomplishment. Humans have created society, technology, and the ability to DRAMATICALLY alter our environment with the intent to make life easier for ourselves.


basically, animals do all those things to a degree. why is this so important to people? isn&#39;t it to be expected that human intelligence is rooted in pre-evolved behaviors that have other uses in other species?

Animals may do these things "to a lesser degree", but we are the only sapient creatures. They may have a blueprint, but we have created much, much more than they have. This is what makes us different--we do more, and intend to do more until we have eliminated almost all chance from our survival (not all chance period, because a lot of people like to have a few things out of their control).

[Pawn Power]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 09:00 pm

Opposable thumbs...ohh and complex language with a specialized vocabulary with the ability to communicate past, present, and future actions, along with feelings emotions, and concepts all presuposed in Universal Grammer.

honestly, you could at least spell it right. that is a theory, by no means proven. consider:



Ohh, I&#39;m terribly sorry about the spelling&#33; Luckily you where able to interpret it...probably because your a human.


WIKI=Pirah%C3%A3_language]weird south american language[/WIKI]

a language without *numbers*, colors and basically no kinship terms.

None of which place it outside of UG.


basically, animals do all those things to a degree. why is this so important to people? isn&#39;t it to be expected that human intelligence is rooted in pre-evolved behaviors that have other uses in other species?
Okay, language evolved. The complexity of human language still represents and functions as a great separator from other animal species.

[tambourine_man]

(jazzrat)


We&#39;ve been through this. Trees are not conscious beings, they&#39;re not even sentient. Most animals operate only a semi-sentient level and even the sentient ones do not have the same depth of thought or planning that humans are capable of. We are the only sapient creatures on this planet and that is what makes us unique.

i don&#39;t see how that actually addresses tragicclown&#39;s point...?

(jazzrat)

Life having no purpose does not lead to their being no uniqueness to us, as I pointed out above we have a uniqueness in our level of consciousnesses which puts us above all other creatures which are incapable of our level of rational thought.

you are making an assertion that because humans have a "uniqueness" of thought, they are somehow "above" - absolutely superior - "all other creatures." you are therefore arbitrarily attributing some transcendental and absolute standard of value to the ability to meet some (again arbitrary) criteria of "rational thought." that is, you&#39;re making a moral jugement about some essence of man. humanism is thoroughly idealist, anti-materialist, and anti-marxist. on the other hand, it goes hand-in-hand with liberalism and bourgeois democracy as the study of any history shows.

(jazzrat)

So you suggest that once we have succeeded in destroying class divisions we will still be incapable of acting for our species? You assume that your misanthropic thought pattern is what will dominate our actions? Humans have only managed to come this far because a significant number of them are able to act in the interest of their species and bring our advances in science and technology.

you make some bizarre assumptions. anti-humanism and misanthropy are not the same. if anything, "misanthropy" is just the flip side of the strange idealism you are maintaining.

edit: misread something...

[Eleutherios]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 02:00 am

Opposable thumbs...ohh and complex language with a specialized vocabulary with the ability to communicate past, present, and future actions, along with feelings emotions, and concepts all presuposed in Universal Grammer.

honestly, you could at least spell it right. that is a theory, by no means proven. consider:

weird south american language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language)

a language without *numbers*, colors and basically no kinship terms.
I have to jump in here, since languages are my specialty.

Linguists have known for a long time that there exist languages without numbers. These languages are spoken by hunter-gatherers living in some part of the world far away from the influence of industrial civilization. If you don&#39;t practice agriculture, have money/property to worry about, or post on Internet message boards, you don&#39;t really need numbers a whole lot. "One", "a few" and "many" are really all you need to communicate what you need to communicate, and if you really need to specify a quantity, you can always use your fingers. There is nothing weird about not using numbers if you don&#39;t need them.

As for colors, all languages do have color terms, even Pirahã, although it only has two. There was a cross-linguistic study done by the linguists Berlin and Kay who found that all the languages they studied had between two and eleven basic color terms. English is an example of a language with eleven: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white, gray, brown, pink. Languages vary not only in how many color terms they have, but also in where the "boundaries" between certain colors lie on the color spectrum. However, the focal points of these colors are pretty consistent across languages, and the number of color terms in the language correlates with the focal points of the color terms in an interesting way:

If the language has two color terms, they are "black" and "white", with black usually encompassing dark shades as well as the "cool" colors (green, blue, purple), while white encompasses light shades as well as the "warm" colors (red, orange, yellow). If the language has three color terms, they are "black", "white", and "red". If it has four color terms, they are "black", "white", "red" and either "green" or "yellow". If it has five color terms, they are "black", "white", "red", "green" and "yellow". If it has six color terms, they are "black", "white", "red", "green", "yellow" and "blue". If it has seven color terms, they are "black", "white", "red", "green", "yellow", "blue", and "brown". Above eight terms though it becomes less predictable. So Pirahã is not particularly weird in the color department either.

As for kinship, concepts of kinship vary dramatically from culture to culture, and some cultures don&#39;t even have a concept of "kinship" comparable to ours. This has been well-known among anthropologists for quite a while. You don&#39;t really need to know that somebody is your half-aunt-in-law, or even your cousin, in a tribe where everybody treats everybody like brothers and sisters.

That said, none of these vocabulary issues have any relevance to Universal Grammar.

[ichneumon]

oh, and about the leftist anthropocentric mess:

scientists do not choose their beliefs based on ideology. period. you don&#39;t get to choose at all. if the experiments support it, there it is.

the article on scrub-jays directly contradicts marx. you may 1) find a hole in their research, and write to Nature about it 2)find conflicting articles and do your own research 3)eat crow (haha, jays are corvids) 4)be a raving delusional lunatic like the jihadists and whatnot.

if you can&#39;t find and post journal articles to support your opinions, they will remain just opinions. science is currently leaning towards the "humans are not so special" side. it comes up over and over again in modern research.

[Eleutherios]

Right, we&#39;re often surprised that we&#39;re not quite as special as we&#39;d like to think. But clearly we do have one incredible unique feature which makes us unique among the beasts: our huge brains capable of extremely complex cognitive and intellectual tasks. We can process and use information in quantities and qualities that no other animal can. This unique ability has allowed us to inhabit every climate on earth without changing our bodies to suit the environment, rather changing the environment everywhere to suit our bodies. No other organism has done that.

[ComradeRed]

Two words: pattern recognition.

I mean, the most obvious thing that sets us apart is that we have language. But language is nothing more than a contextual pattern.

Perhaps math is something? No, math is just the study of patterns.

Production of commodities? You mean cave men were industriously working in their factories since the time of Adam and Eve? No I think not.

Can you point to any other species with pattern recognition? Chimps and Dolphins? Yes, they have a far lesser degree of "pattern-recognizing-ability" than we do, but it&#39;s there because they have the cerebrum (if I remember my neuroscience correctly, or else it&#39;s cerebellum).

But humans have a far more developped cerebrum, we have the ability to use language and invent math. Monkeys don&#39;t.

It&#39;s as simple as that.

[colorlessman]

Humans are not special. However, ignorance makes humans think they are special.

Most humans look at other species from a human perspective, which clouds reason and judgment.

Humans know very little about other species that share the earth with them to form objective conclusions.


Check this film:
http://www.jonhs.net/freemovies/earthlings.htm

[apathy maybe]

"What makes humans special, compared to other lifeforms"? Nothing. Fuck all. We are all (the same as every other form of life) a coincidence. Quantum and chemical events move us, and make it appear that we think.

Any talk of a materialist claim to humans being special, is not materialist. Marxism is flawed in this regard. Time to update Marxism (again)?


How do you (being the generic) know that other animals are not consciously changing the environment to suit themselves? How do you know that they can&#39;t think? The average dolphin is smarter then the average baby.

I basically agree with Tragic Clown here.


(And on a slightly different note, when I wrote something about being a "humanist" I got shit, yet Jazzratt isn&#39;t going to get shit, do I detect another double standard? This is not relevant, and I am not mocking or disparaging Jazzratt in anyway, and if you reply to this, that would be off topic.)

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by ichneumon+March 06, 2007 12:48 am--> (ichneumon &#064; March 06, 2007 12:48 am) BEAVERS do this. [/b]

No mate, beavers do this;
http://www.wildernessclassroom.com/www/bca/images/photos/beaver_dam.jpg

We got a bit better at it;
http://www.swaviator.com/images/issues/photosJA03/damn.jpg


Apathy
Nothing. Fuck all. We are all (the same as every other form of life) a coincidence. Quantum and chemical events move us, and make it appear that we think.

So you are unable to identify the clear superiority of our species? You can&#39;t tell the difference between an ant hill and London? I don&#39;t think anyone is claiming that we are somehow universally or spirituall &#39;more&#39; than other life. We are the same in that sence, we are simply superior.

That&#39;s why we&#39;re having an intelligent debate about this issue on the internet, and beavers are still making damns, as they have been for several thousand years.

Which reminds me of Bakunins famous quote "The difference between humans and animals, is that animals have been doing the same thing for 3000 years"

:rolleyes:

[apathy maybe]

"superior". This is making a non-materialist judgement. Why is the ability to make London or huge dams &#39;better&#39; then making an anthill or a smaller dam?

It might well be &#39;better&#39; for humans as a species, or it might not be (not having an eco-system is not good).

Humans are not special or superior, they are simply different in that they can make huge structures. But ants can lift many times their own weight, thus they must be superior&#33; In fact, I have read that there are more ants (by mass) then humans&#33; They are better then us&#33;

Humans are made to move by the same sort of quantum and chemical events as other animals. They are not special.

[RebelDog]

Humans can exploit their environment to far a greater degree than any other animal. I suppose in darwinian terms this doesn&#39;t make us special, just the best at it. I think we would find that the same is true of all intelligent lifeforms in the universe, who, like us, have developed culture, art, science etc. They too will have developed greater and greater ways of exploiting nature and making the material conditions possible for culture etc.

[Sentinel]

science is currently leaning towards the "humans are not so special" side.

Well, the original differences were obviously very small -- an upright position freeing our hands, a throat and a brain capable of developing language. But they triggered a development which has now gone on to a degree that our lives, behavior, thinking would now be unrecognisable to our ancestors.

Very soon, everything about us will be, both physically and &#39;mentally&#39;. There is nothing metaphysical about recognising that we are capable of imagining far more than any other species; as well as making reality of our desires. And of course animals do some of the things we do, but &#39;to a lesser degree&#39; -- in a very rudimentary way of course -- they are related to us, we share a lot of genes, and are from the same planet for fuck sake.

But we were the ones that developed, and that development has made us &#39;special&#39;, as in superior compared to the animals -- because what is our technology if not an extension of our minds? While we have mastered problems, new and more complicated ones have arosen to solve. And this has constantly made us smarter, today by far superior to other species.

Anyone who disagrees should see a shrink, frankly. Or maybe a veterinary if they feel that would be more &#39;PC&#39;. :lol:

[RevMARKSman]

No mate, beavers do this;
user posted image

We got a bit better at it;
user posted image



"We got a bit better at it" :lol:


"superior". This is making a non-materialist judgement. Why is the ability to make London or huge dams &#39;better&#39; then making an anthill or a smaller dam?

It&#39;s not "Better", because that word can&#39;t be defined. But what LU is trying to say is that we&#39;ve done MORE than other animals, and we will continue our EXPONENTIAL GROWTH of technology, while animals stay pretty much the same.

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 03:59 am
(jazzrat)

Life having no purpose does not lead to their being no uniqueness to us, as I pointed out above we have a uniqueness in our level of consciousnesses which puts us above all other creatures which are incapable of our level of rational thought.

you are making an assertion that because humans have a "uniqueness" of thought, they are somehow "above" - absolutely superior - "all other creatures." you are therefore arbitrarily attributing some transcendental and absolute standard of value to the ability to meet some (again arbitrary) criteria of "rational thought."
No. I am merely pointing out that humans are the only creatures capable of reasoning what is in their self interest and thus the only creatures able to act most effectively in it - not just in the short term like all instinctual creatures but in the medium and long as well. This is what makes them &#39;special&#39; and completely apart from other animals.


that is, you&#39;re making a moral jugement about some essence of man. humanism is thoroughly idealist, anti-materialist, and anti-marxist. on the other hand, it goes hand-in-hand with liberalism and bourgeois democracy as the study of any history shows. You&#39;re falling back on the same argument that gets heard on here ad nauseum - paint the target of your ire as a "bourgeois" "liberal" and back it up not with any rational argument but with a throwaway sentence like "As the study of any history shows".



So you suggest that once we have succeeded in destroying class divisions we will still be incapable of acting for our species? You assume that your misanthropic thought pattern is what will dominate our actions? Humans have only managed to come this far because a significant number of them are able to act in the interest of their species and bring our advances in science and technology.

you make some bizarre assumptions. anti-humanism and misanthropy are not the same. if anything, "misanthropy" is just the flip side of the strange idealism you are maintaining.
Misanthropy

noun
1. hatred of mankind
2. a disposition to dislike and mistrust other people

I would identify being anti-human pretty fucking indicative of a hatred of mankind? Wouldn&#39;t you?

This thread is doing exactly what I thought it would do, i.e drawing out all the reactionary ****s that have developed a hatred for their own species and choose to abandon any logical thought of acting in the interest of that species in favour of trying to raise animals to become an equal concern for us.

Any of you misanthropic psuedoleft arse candles who sit in the comfort of your heated houses, reaping the benefits of all that mankind has produced whilst *****ing about it on the internet should fuck off back up the trees you damned hypocrites. You that deny humanity is unique amongst all other creatures despite the fact you are living surrounded by evidence to the contrary are delusional.

[Vanguard1917]

http://www.i-cs.cz/img/reference/23_1.jpg

http://www.aia.gr/EN/business/media/photo_gallery/images/airport_today/127_0084.jpg

http://www.bronsonpianostudio.com/reviews/String%20Quartet%20-%20Sunset%20-%2007-24-04.JPG

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/153/817576~Leonardo-da-Vinci-Anatomy-Posters.jpg

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/b/b6/250px-Proton_Zvezda.jpg

http://www.theparticle.com/files/library/images/wallpaper/old_manhattan_skyline_under_brooklynbridge_1024x76 8.jpg

http://www.artquotes.net/masters/vangogh/vangogh_sunflowers1888.jpg

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/tcv-lab/images/surgery1.jpg

http://museum.gov.ns.ca/infos/micro/scopef.gif

http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0887-1/%7B97ABE6CD-7D83-475B-8278-210FB71B35DC%7DImg100.jpg

http://www.auto.co.yu/img/download/Hummer-H2.jpg

http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/Images/StarChild/space_level2/aldrin_big.gif

http://classes.bnf.fr/dossiecr/jpeg/gc179-5.jpg

http://www.wnfm.com/Hoover%20Dam%20pics/2a.jpg







&#39;...all the planned action of all animals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp of their will upon the earth. That was left for man.

&#39;In short, the animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals...&#39;
- Frederick Engels

&#39;...a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.&#39;
- Karl Marx







http://www.mountsafaris.com/images/Chimp%20Picking%20Nose.JPG

[ichneumon]

quothe jazzrat:


No. I am merely pointing out that humans are the only creatures capable of reasoning what is in their self interest and thus the only creatures able to act most effectively in it - not just in the short term like all instinctual creatures but in the medium and long as well. This is what makes them &#39;special&#39; and completely apart from other animals.

this is also not true, see Nature, a few weeks ago. (link to news article about the article) (http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/january31/fishsr-013007.html) a species of african cichlid judges their social position based on watching other fish compete. it&#39;s very odd.



The researchers say their discovery provides the first direct evidence that fish, like people, can use logical reasoning to figure out their place in the pecking order.

if fish can do this, what can dolphins do?


...all the planned action of all animals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp of their will upon the earth. That was left for man.

&#39;In short, the animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals...&#39;
- Frederick Engels


this has been conclusively scientifically disproven. there are references. if you disagree, provide yours OR accept that you consider ideology more important than science.

to jazzrat, whose rationality i respect:

still - please explain to my why anthropocentrism is important? how, as a human, can i not be anthropocentric? how does rejecting the idea that humans are special and unique is some qualitative way (that is important) make me a misanthropist, and how does this relate to your visceral hatred of green ideology?

[Vanguard1917]

how does rejecting the idea that humans are special and unique is some qualitative way (that is important) make me a misanthropist

Because by denying that human beings are unique in vital ways, you bring human beings down to the level of animals - you degrade them. When you&#39;re not doing that, you elavate animals and liken them to humanity where they are so dissimilar. Your elavation of animals in such a way necessarily implies a degraded and misanthropic view of people.

Your misanthropy also reveals itself in other, more practical ways: in another thread where you talked regretfully about medical and agricultural progress, saying that it gave way to &#39;overpopulation&#39;.

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 04:46 pm
quothe jazzrat:


No. I am merely pointing out that humans are the only creatures capable of reasoning what is in their self interest and thus the only creatures able to act most effectively in it - not just in the short term like all instinctual creatures but in the medium and long as well. This is what makes them &#39;special&#39; and completely apart from other animals.

this is also not true, see Nature, a few weeks ago. (link to news article about the article) (http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/january31/fishsr-013007.html) a species of african cichlid judges their social position based on watching other fish compete. it&#39;s very odd.



The researchers say their discovery provides the first direct evidence that fish, like people, can use logical reasoning to figure out their place in the pecking order.

if fish can do this, what can dolphins do?
Well, that about blows that particular argument of mine out of the water :lol:
However (naturally there is an however) are there any examples of animals with a society that work in a way analogous to ours ( Class or nation analogues for example) so that we can judge if they can act in the interest of larger units, or even in the interest of themselves through this larger group, in the same way that humans can behave in a class conscious fashion?


to jazzrat, whose rationality i respect:

still - please explain to my why anthropocentrism is important? how, as a human, can i not be anthropocentric? how does rejecting the idea that humans are special and unique is some qualitative way (that is important) make me a misanthropist, and how does this relate to your visceral hatred of green ideology?
Cheers for the opener by the way, the respect is returned - definatley.

I find anthropocenterism important because I think we act in our self interest and the interest of our species is the best way of going about this, it is in the interest of humanity to dissolve the class system - for example. It is also in our interest to make sure we still have an inhabitable biosphere. It is possible for a human to be non-anthropocentric; the primitivist movement is a good example of this.
On Misanthropia and refusing to recognise the uniqueness of humanity. I find it misanthropic as it requires that certain achievements of humanity (language, the internet, buildings, agriculture, etc...) are downplayed or understated to make humanity appear to have achieved less, this may not be full blown misanthropia but it certianly shows an attitude that is hostile to humanity and its achievements. I would not say I have a visceral hatred for the green ideology just some groups (the biocenterists and bioconservatives especially) that follow it and some methods used by people to help further these sections of the green ideological spectrum.

[tambourine_man]

(jazzrat)


you are making an assertion that because humans have a "uniqueness" of thought, they are somehow "above" - absolutely superior - "all other creatures." you are therefore arbitrarily attributing some transcendental and absolute standard of value to the ability to meet some (again arbitrary) criteria of "rational thought."

No.

what do you mean? i quoted you there...? you said that human beings have a "uniqueness in our level of consciousness which puts us above all other creatures which are incapable of our level of rational thought." (emphasis added)

(jazzrat)


I am merely pointing out that humans are the only creatures capable of reasoning what is in their self interest and thus the only creatures able to act most effectively in it - not just in the short term like all instinctual creatures but in the medium and long as well.


even if it was true (i havent disputed it), there is still nothing "special" about it in the evaluative sense, and that is the point. deep-sea angler fish have a bioluminescent lure with bait that hangs out of their faces; that&#39;s pretty unique and special. it still doesn&#39;t lend any generalized superiority, or inherent meaning, to the existence of the deep-sea anglerfish.
that is, you can&#39;t arbitrarily assign an absolute value to a particular category of existence - in this case, the ability to act rationally. there&#39;s nothing evaluatively different about it than the anglerfish&#39;s ability to hunt using a glowing fishing line sticking out of its head. unless you impart it with a metaphysical significance, which would be idealist.

(jazzrat)

Misanthropy

noun
1. hatred of mankind
2. a disposition to dislike and mistrust other people

I would identify being anti-human pretty fucking indicative of a hatred of mankind? Wouldn&#39;t you?

This thread is doing exactly what I thought it would do, i.e drawing out all the reactionary ****s that have developed a hatred for their own species and choose to abandon any logical thought of acting in the interest of that species in favour of trying to raise animals to become an equal concern for us.

Any of you misanthropic psuedoleft arse candles who sit in the comfort of your heated houses, reaping the benefits of all that mankind has produced whilst *****ing about it on the internet should fuck off back up the trees you damned hypocrites. You that deny humanity is unique amongst all other creatures despite the fact you are living surrounded by evidence to the contrary are delusional.

:huh: have you lost it?

misanthropy implies a moral judgment. it happens to be the opposite moral judgment as your humanism. anti-humanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihumanism), on the other hand, is a materialist concept developed by the structural marxist louis althusser. though discussing it in depth here would deviate from the original topic. that said, i havent, and im pretty sure nobody here has claimed to hate humans or distrust humanity (ourselves included) which is a random accusation to make.

[ichneumon]

Because by denying that human beings are unique in vital ways, you bring human beings down to the level of animals - you degrade them. When you&#39;re not doing that, you elavate animals and liken them to humanity where they are so dissimilar. Your elavation of animals in such a way necessarily implies a degraded and misanthropic view of people.

you see, to me, you sound like some idiot christian nutcase telling why humans are special and how god created the animals to serve human needs. humans are animals, period. humans are apes and primates. that is not debateable. humans OFTEN act like monkeys. wtf?


Your misanthropy also reveals itself in other, more practical ways: in another thread where you talked regretfully about medical and agricultural progress, saying that it gave way to &#39;overpopulation&#39;.

the overpopulation is unfortunate, i&#39;m not sure it was avoidable. technology must continue, however. there is no other option. we do not currently have the technology to create a sustainable society on this planet. without technological advances, human civilization will crash. however, letting capitalism run mad with whatever science comes up with is a phenomenally bad idea. primitivism is insane - even if 99.99% of humanity disappeared, and the rest agreed to be hunter gathers, it would all just happen again, with huge amounts of human suffering in the process.


I find anthropocenterism important because I think we act in our self interest and the interest of our species is the best way of going about this, it is in the interest of humanity to dissolve the class system - for example. It is also in our interest to make sure we still have an inhabitable biosphere. It is possible for a human to be non-anthropocentric; the primitivist movement is a good example of this.
On Misanthropia and refusing to recognise the uniqueness of humanity. I find it misanthropic as it requires that certain achievements of humanity (language, the internet, buildings, agriculture, etc...) are downplayed or understated to make humanity appear to have achieved less, this may not be full blown misanthropia but it certianly shows an attitude that is hostile to humanity and its achievements. I would not say I have a visceral hatred for the green ideology just some groups (the biocenterists and bioconservatives especially) that follow it and some methods used by people to help further these sections of the green ideological spectrum.

my anthropocentrism is based on me being human. if i were a dolphin, i&#39;d be delphinocentric. duh. honestly, i suspect that the "humans are not special" is part of postmodernism, which is innate to me and despised by most leftists. it&#39;s just not that important - the research supports non-specialness, so fine. personally, i find many conservationists irritating, and chose not to work in that area of ecology. i preserve the biosphere to benefit humanity. the people who revere "untouched nature" and want it kept that way are silly. such doesn&#39;t exist, and if it did, it&#39;d still be purifying our air and water.

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 08:13 pm

I find anthropocenterism important because I think we act in our self interest and the interest of our species is the best way of going about this, it is in the interest of humanity to dissolve the class system - for example. It is also in our interest to make sure we still have an inhabitable biosphere. It is possible for a human to be non-anthropocentric; the primitivist movement is a good example of this.
On Misanthropia and refusing to recognise the uniqueness of humanity. I find it misanthropic as it requires that certain achievements of humanity (language, the internet, buildings, agriculture, etc...) are downplayed or understated to make humanity appear to have achieved less, this may not be full blown misanthropia but it certianly shows an attitude that is hostile to humanity and its achievements. I would not say I have a visceral hatred for the green ideology just some groups (the biocenterists and bioconservatives especially) that follow it and some methods used by people to help further these sections of the green ideological spectrum.

my anthropocentrism is based on me being human. if i were a dolphin, i&#39;d be delphinocentric. duh. honestly, i suspect that the "humans are not special" is part of postmodernism, which is innate to me and despised by most leftists.
Without turning this into a raging debate about postmodernism, why is it that you choose to follow it?


it&#39;s just not that important - the research supports non-specialness, so fine. personally, i find many conservationists irritating, and chose not to work in that area of ecology. i preserve the biosphere to benefit humanity. the people who revere "untouched nature" and want it kept that way are silly. such doesn&#39;t exist, and if it did, it&#39;d still be purifying our air and water. That sounds astoundingly sensible. I suspect we think fairly similarly but have come to quite different conclusions.

[ichneumon]

Without turning this into a raging debate about postmodernism, why is it that you choose to follow it?

my first degree was in asian lit. i wrote classical japanese poems in english. it&#39;s just innate to me, it&#39;s how i think. everything and nothing is new, so what? for me, it&#39;s an artistic concept - "moulin rouge" was a postmodern movie (which i hated). but so is ethnotechno, which is my favorite genre of music. i like "new weird" books - china mieville&#39;s "iron council" (pure trotskyism with mescaline-trip fantasy). what are the other options? deconstructionism, which is anti-marxist and existentialism, which is nihilist. bluck.

i think the word means something radically different in politics. shrug.

okay, here&#39;s my critic, purely on logical grounds, of the humans are superior therefore anthropocentrism. so, you like humans because they are special and unique and *better* than animals. what are you going to do when the aliens come that are quantifiably better than humans? maybe they have real psychic powers, maybe they have an innate understanding of the theory of everything, maybe they can live in a vacuum, whatever. are you then alienocentric? is it okay for them to use us as cattle? why not?

i&#39;m anthropocentric because i&#39;m HUMAN. duh. i don&#39;t give a shit who&#39;s better at what, it doesn&#39;t challenge my worldview at all. if dolphin are better 3D thinkers than humans, so what? humans rock. i like dolphins, too, and i&#39;m not going to let you exterminate them, but humans come first.

[Sentinel]

okay, here&#39;s my critic, purely on logical grounds, of the humans are superior therefore anthropocentrism. so, you like humans because they are special and unique and *better* than animals. what are you going to do when the aliens come that are quantifiably better than humans? maybe they have real psychic powers, maybe they have an innate understanding of the theory of everything, maybe they can live in a vacuum, whatever. are you then alienocentric? is it okay for them to use us as cattle? why not?

i&#39;m anthropocentric because i&#39;m HUMAN. duh. i don&#39;t give a shit who&#39;s better at what, it doesn&#39;t challenge my worldview at all. if dolphin are better 3D thinkers than humans, so what? humans rock. i like dolphins, too, and i&#39;m not going to let you exterminate them, but humans come first.

Interesting twist. I would certainly remain anthropocentric should this happen, in the sense that I wouldn&#39;t let a species of superior aliens use us as ashtrays or something similar. Mankinds well is obviously in my interest because I&#39;m a human.

But I reckon that as long as they weren&#39;t genocidal maniacs or intergalactic slavetraders I&#39;d also be one of the most vocal supporters of giving up our old ways, &#39;culture&#39; and obsolete tech in favor of anything better we could learn from this species -- no doubt would I be consider a species traitor by some reactionary, conservative jackasses then&#33; :o

Because I&#39;m a communist first and foremost, and have a materialist worldview which includes the rejection of concepts such as patriotism and idiotic nostalgy in favor of common material benefit. For my species.

But this scenario is about the confrontation of two sentient and intelligent species, not really comparable with say human - beaver relations (I should add here that I do think we should respect dolphins, primates and other more intelligent animals to a higher degree than some of the braindead ugly fucks out there -- certainly a mile behind humans, but still more).

But should the alien species in fact be past us in development to a degree they wouldn&#39;t consider us an intelligent species in comparison, I would understand them treating us like shit. But I wouldn&#39;t accept it.

[Vanguard1917]

the overpopulation is unfortunate

There is no &#39;overpopulation&#39;. Six billion+ people are living longer, healthier and safer lives on earth than ever before. Humanity today is far better off than it was in, say, 1960 - when the world population was less than half what it is in 2007. All empirical facts point to this. This suggests that a growth in the number of people is not the problem.

The real question is: why are Greens and other primitivists helping to fabricate an artificial climate of anxiety over something that poses no threat to humanity? Why are they encouraging us to see population growth as a problem? Why do they see a growth in the number of human beings as a cause for concern? Why do they equate more people with more problems?

The answer: because Greens are misanthropic reactionaries who regret the fact that human beings are beginning to learn how to properly master their environment, to subject their environment to their will.

The fact that more than 6 billion people are living longer, healthier and safer lives than ever before is cause for celebration, not despair.


you see, to me, you sound like some idiot christian nutcase telling why humans are special and how god created the animals to serve human needs. humans are animals, period. humans are apes and primates. that is not debateable. humans OFTEN act like monkeys. wtf?

YOU might often act like a monkey, but where i&#39;m from, people who act like monkeys are normally looked down upon by their human peers.

The pictures i posted above illustrate how we are so very, very fundamentally different from other animals, including monkeys. We are unique and special. And this is not a claim based on &#39;moralism&#39;; it&#39;s a fact based on a materialist conception - i.e. humanity has proved through its material achievements that it stands head and shoulders above any other living thing on this planet.

[ichneumon]

There is no &#39;overpopulation&#39;. Six billion+ people are living longer, healthier and safer lives on earth than ever before. Humanity today is far better off than it was in, say, 1960 - when the world population was less than half what it is in 2007. All empirical facts point to this. This suggests that a growth in the number of people is not the problem.

The real question is: why are Greens and other primitivists helping to fabricate an artificial climate of anxiety over something that poses no threat to humanity? Why are they encouraging us to see population growth as a problem? Why do they see a growth in the number of human beings as a cause for concern? Why do they equate more people with more problems?

The answer: because Greens are misanthropic reactionaries who regret the fact that human beings are beginning to learn how to properly master their environment, to subject their environment to their will.

The fact that more than 6 billion people are living longer, healthier and safer lives than ever before is cause for celebration, not despair.

in a word, K. K=carrying capacity. dN/dt=rN * ((K-N)/K).

you are completely ignoring the reality of a closed system. there are not infinite resources, nor room. beyond that, density depend transmission of disease.


how to properly master their environment, to subject their environment to their will.

global warming. extreme drug resistant tuberculosis. fishery declines. acid rain. HIV. monkey pox. wave your cell phone at it, shoot with a laser, luck with that.



YOU might often act like a monkey, but where i&#39;m from, people who act like monkeys are normally looked down upon by their human peers.

people act like monkeys all the time. probably because people are monkeys. you are currently acting like a monkey. you identify with this bit of ideology, i threaten it, you shriek and talk shit. welcome to Planet Ape.

seriously, this is off-topic. if you have references or scientific evidence, please show it. i&#39;m very rational. i&#39;ve never once seen a scientific article to support your point of view - though, i&#39;ll give you, your facts are superficially correct. the fact that people live longer and better does NOT imply that everything is a-okay. they consume more resources in doing so, and resources are limited. would you rather have 6million people like we have now, or 3 million at twice the standard of living? why is a stable population a bad goal? make sense, and show references.

[LSD]

This is a pointless thread.

Humans are not "superior" to animals in some sort of universalist externalistic sense. But we are more important to animals relative to human society.

There is no "morality" or "value" outside of human society; we invented such thing. Wolves do not feel "regret" or "empathy" after they slaughter an animal, nor do they view the animal as "inferior" to them, they just eat it&#33;

Animals simply do not exist within a moral or rational social framework and the idea of some sort of "commonality of species" is just pure postmodern liberal superstition, no matter whether you characterize humans as being "better than" or "equal to" other species.

Now, on the practical stuff, most of the "humans are better crowd" has it right. "Rights" for animals are pure nonsense. Human society has an obligation to benefit its members and nothing more. That means minimizing animal suffering as much as possible, since it&#39;s distressing to most people and wholly unnescessary, but not to the degree that it would significantly harm human beings.

If someday we perfect artificial meat growing, then we&#39;ll do that. It&#39;d probably be less resource intensive anyways. But don&#39;t delude yourself into imagining that that would somehow lead to a "harmony" of "animals".

The day that people stop eating natural meat is the day that you will see the biggest mass slaughter of animals in history. If PETA ever had its way, it would lead to more animal deaths than has occured in every seal hunt, fur factory, and farm since the animal rights movement began.

The world is not disney fantasy-land and we are never going to live in "harmony" with "nature". Anti-humanist "vegetarianism" is simply reactionary superanturalism and is practically no better than primativism.

But so is metaphysical nonsense about human "superiority".

Such a paradism implies that humans and animals are part of some holistic "continuum" and as such it, intentionarly or not, gives credence to the animal rights argument.

It is much better, not to mention far more rational, to simply recognize that there is nothing nescessarily "special" about humanity in the abstract; it&#39;s just that, relative to our society, we&#39;re all that counts.

[ichneumon]

my next point, which, imho, LSD has completely made irrelevant, is this: if humans are superior to animals, then, several million years ago, an animal gave birth to a human. nature doesn&#39;t do fine line distinctions.


The day that people stop eating natural meat is the day that you will see the biggest mass slaughter of animals in history. If PETA ever had its way, it would lead to more animal deaths than has occured in every seal hunt, fur factory, and farm since the animal rights movement began.

The world is not disney fantasy-land and we are never going to live in "harmony" with "nature". Anti-humanist "vegetarianism" is simply reactionary superanturalism and is practically no better than primativism.

why can&#39;t you accept that for some of us, animal rights is not the driving issue behind vegetarianism, and that pro-animal doesn&#39;t equal anti-human? Not A, therefore B. NO.

eating meat is a luxury. it has no place in a modern society. it&#39;s just as mindless, barbaric and pointless as cannibalism and human sacrifice. it&#39;s inefficient, causes massive harm to the environment, and is a perfect proving ground for new diseases. there is no difference between eating a steak and wearing a diamond. it&#39;s stupid and pointless ands reeks of bourgeois privilege.


According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.

Says Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch and senior author of the report: “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

(here we go again)

[Vanguard1917]

Humans are not "superior" to animals in some sort of universalist externalistic sense. But we are more important to animals relative to human society.

We are superior to animals in the sense that only we can consciously change our environment to suit our interests. Animals also live in our natural environment; yet they do not consciously change anything and never have done.

There is nothing metaphysical about this. Our superiority on earth is a material reality. Human beings are the only beings that have &#39;succeeded in impressing the stamp of their will upon the earth&#39;, as Engels pointed out. We only have to look around ourselves to see this.

The point of understanding our superiority is, for me, to understand why we are superior to other animals. That is the key here. Human beings are superior because only human beings are able to master their natural environment. In fact, that&#39;s what makes us human. That is the essence of what differentiates us from other animals. That&#39;s what makes us special and unique. And that&#39;s what the primitivists (marginal and mainstream) - who want humanity to be humble and to practice restraint in its relations with nature - need to understand.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 07, 2007 10:22 am
"superior". This is making a non-materialist judgement. Why is the ability to make London or huge dams &#39;better&#39; then making an anthill or a smaller dam?
Materialism, how many idealist absurds are spelt in your name...&#33;


Humans are made to move by the same sort of quantum and chemical events as other animals. They are not special.

A copy of Das Kapital is made of the same sort of quantum and chemical events as a copy of the Bible (in fact, chemically, a copy of the Bible, printed in the same kind of paper than a copy of Das Kapital, is closer to it than to another copy of the Bible, printed in a different kind of paper.

But I hope you don&#39;t hold the idea that the Bible and Das Kapital are the same thing - and much less that you consider such idea a "materialistic" approach to this kind of literature...

By the way, what is this idealistic nonsense about animals? What do animals have that we should consider them more important than plants, or, heck, stones?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 10:05 pm
eating meat is a luxury. it has no place in a modern society. it&#39;s just as mindless, barbaric and pointless as cannibalism and human sacrifice. it&#39;s inefficient, causes massive harm to the environment, and is a perfect proving ground for new diseases. there is no difference between eating a steak and wearing a diamond. it&#39;s stupid and pointless ands reeks of bourgeois privilege.
Don&#39;t be ridiculous.

Luís Henrique

[LSD]

There is nothing metaphysical about this. Our superiority on earth is a material reality.

Except "superiority" is a subjective determination. What is "superior"" to you is not nescessarily "superior" to me; it certainly isn&#39;t "superior" to primitivists&#33;

So unless you want to base your entire political approach on personal valuations, you have to look somewhere other than "superiority" as it exists in your mind.

Look, vanguard, I&#39;m not disagreeing with you on either the futility nor the political reaction of animal-rights activists in particular and much of the green movement in general. But you&#39;re not making your case by indulging in the same kind of postmodern nonsense that they&#39;re so famous for.

It doesn&#39;t matter if humans are "superior" to animals for the same reason that it doesn&#39;t matter that wolves are "superior" to fish. &#39;Cause if the former is true, so naturally is the second.

No, wolves can&#39;t "impress the stamp of their will upon the earth" in the same way that humans can, but then you&#39;re the only one bandying about that definition. And no where have I seen you explain how it is at all releven to the issue of practical politics.

Rather, in your own words, you seem to be going about this all backwards, starting with the premise that humans are "superior" and then searching about for a justification.

But you never proved the former, not in terms of fact and, more importantly, not in terms of relevence.

By properly maniplating the critera, we could make just about anything appear to be "superior" or "inferior" to just about anything else. So while humans are undoubtably superior to birds interms of "impressing wills", we are undeniably inferior in unaided flight.

So if someone&#39;s standard for special importance is capacity for unaided flight, birds would come out on top. And while I doubt very much that such a person exists, I trust the example demonstrates how useless it is to predicate a rights paradigm on subjective estimations of "supriority".

Human beings have rights because they are a part of a social framework capable of issuing them. Animals are not because they are not. Period.

Everything else is metaphysical masturbation.


eating meat is a luxury. it has no place in a modern society.

On the contrary it has a prominent place in modern society, just like all other luxuries. That&#39;s the whole point of modernity, being able to enjoy things.

And one of those things is eating meat. Indeed one of the major indicators of the wealth of a society is how much meat they consume. Almost universally, when people can eat meat, they will.

The reason for that isn&#39;t hard to explain, it&#39;s generally the same reason they dance and have sex: it&#39;s fun.

drink, do drugs, or have sex.

You&#39;ll forgive me if I am somewhat "put off" by such an idea&#33; :D

But I suppose that that kind of neopuritanistic moralism fits just fine into your antihumanist "vegan power" superstition. Your apocalypse is slightly more concrete than the typical "rapture"-peddler&#39;s, but it&#39;s no less a matter of "faith".

By your nonsensical reckoning, in order to "save the planet", we all need to become perfectly efficient little drones, going to work every morning and coming home at night to our nice little pile of "mixed greens".

Well, let me tell you, the bosses would love such a world&#33; After all, "efficiency" is their watchword as well&#33;

That&#39;s why modern bourgeois governments have suddenly gotten so interested in the "health of their citizens". You know, "fat taxes", smoking bans, drug prohibition, etc... There&#39;s a lot of profit to me made off of "fit" and "efficient" workers; the type who "care about their jobs" and "work for the greater good" (the "earth" or the "economy", it&#39;s all the same idealist crap).

The only really revolutionary worker is the sovereign worker. The one who stands up for himself and rejects all "masters", whether they wear a white collar or a fucking greenpeace shirt.

The revolution is not going to be for "vegan power", it&#39;s going to be for proletarian power and the society that it will create will be a 100% humanistic one.

That means no "right" for animals and no green-brown coercive restrictions on what kinds of foods we choose to eat.


it&#39;s just as mindless, barbaric and pointless as cannibalism and human sacrifice

Except cannibalism and human sacrifice violate the rights of other humans and eating meat doesn&#39;t, so ...no.


it&#39;s stupid and pointless

So&#39;s fermenting grain to make alchohol.

Oops, there goes beer.

You know, I just can&#39;t wait to live in your neopuritanistic "vegan power" utopia. Sounds like it&#39;s going to be real fun... <_<

[Vanguard1917]

Except "superiority" is a subjective determination. What is "superior"" to you is not nescessarily "superior" to me; it certainly isn&#39;t "superior" to primitivists&#33;

Be careful here; what you&#39;re saying comes across like postmodernist logic. The superiority of human beings is not subjective. It is not based on &#39;interpretation&#39;. It is not based on a particular &#39;metanarrative&#39;, &#39;grand narrative&#39;, or whatever narrative. Instead, the superiority of humanity is a material fact, proven materially. It&#39;s objectively true. Human beings have proved their superiority to other animals.

What is superior to me may not be superior to you - of course. Likewise, i may not agree with what you think is superior. But reality exists outside of what we think.

For example, i may think that crushed tea leaves are the best treatment for HIV. You may disagree and say that dandelion leaves are superior. In fact, none of our subjective interpretations are right. The superior treatment for HIV is neither tea leaves nor dandelion leaves, but anti-retroviral drugs. Why? Because it has proved itself to be superior in reality - materially. The superiority of something is decided in the real world - not in my, yours or anyone else&#39;s head.

In the real world human beings are superior to any animal because we are the only beings capable of mastering the real world, and subjecting it to our will.

[Vanguard1917]

Look, vanguard, I&#39;m not disagreeing with you on either the futility nor the political reaction of animal-rights activists in particular and much of the green movement in general.

Good to hear it, by the way.

[LSD]

Be careful here; what you&#39;re saying comes across like postmodernist logic.

There is nothing postmodern about recognizing that sutbjectivity exists. Indeed, what&#39;s postmodern is to ignore that there&#39;s a difference between the objective and subjective and treat everything as if it were equally valid.

The reality however is that many aspects of human judgment are fundamentally subjective and, for the most part, that includes our tendency to "rate" things.

Humans are more complex than any other animal on earth, we are also more capable of advanced thought, and much much better at, as you put it, "impressing our will". But none of that is the same thing as "better".

&#39;Cause "better" (or "superior") is not measured by efficiency or development or anything else quantifiable, it&#39;s measured by value, and entirely qualitative and subjective measurement.

So while, when it comes to building nuclear power plants, nothing compares to humanity, when it comes to making silk, we&#39;re undeniably "inferior" to silk worms. Which is why when people make silk, they don&#39;t relly on humans, they relly on silk worms.

Accordingly, labeling humans "superior" to worms isn&#39;t entirely accurate; it also, of course, isn&#39;t accurate to state the reverse. Which is why this kind of blind blanket categorizing has no place in serious social analysis.


For example, i may think that crushed tea leaves are the best treatment for HIV. You may disagree and say that dandelion leaves are superior. In fact, none of our subjective interpretations are right. The superior treatment for HIV is neither tea leaves nor dandelion leaves, but anti-retroviral drugs. Why? Because it has proved itself to be superior in reality - materially.

Anti-retrovirals are not "superior" to herbal tea, they are more effective. Now if your criteria for "superiority" is effectivity, then yes, modern medicine is "superior" to tea. But if it isn&#39;t, it isn&#39;t.

Likewise, if you clearly define what you mean by "superior" and that definition is materialistic then, yes, "superior" becomes an obejctive fact. But that&#39;s just semantics. And, incidently, I note again that you have not defined "superior" in this case.

Look, the reality is that, as the word is commonly used, "superior" is a subjective valuation and one which most certainly does not universal criteria.

So, again, while humans are "superior" by some standards, they are equally "inferior" by others.

Not that value is at all relevent to politics. Again, rights are not dependent on holding some metaphysical status of "superiority", they are based on societal membership, nothing more, nothing less.


In the real world human beings are superior to any animal because we are the only beings capable of mastering the real world, and subjecting it to our will.

And spiders are the only beings capable of living their lives on the top of mount Everest. So what?

[Vanguard1917]

The reality however is that many aspects of human judgment are fundamentally subjective and, for the most part, that includes our tendency to "rate" things.

Of course, human judgement is subjective. But one subjective judgement is closer to the objective truth than another subjective judgement. Using the same example as before, the subjective judgement that tea leaves are a superior treatment for HIV is further from objective reality than a subjective judgement that espouses scientifically tested medicine.

I may &#39;rate&#39; crushed tea leaves higher for HIV treatment than i rate anti-retroviral drugs, but that doesn&#39;t make it objectively higher. Anti-retroviral drugs rate objectively higher than tea leaves for treating HIV patients.

And that is the definition of &#39;superiority&#39;: anti-retroviral drugs are a higher form of medication than tea leaves. Human beings are a higher form of being than monkeys.


So while, when it comes to building nuclear power plants, nothing compares to humanity, when it comes to making silk, we&#39;re undeniably "inferior" to silk worms. Which is why when people make silk, they don&#39;t relly on humans, they relly on silk worms.

But the insect makes the silk unconsciously. It is testimony to human superiority that we consciously make use of it. That&#39;s what distinguishes us from the insect, like Marx writes:

&#39;A spider constructs operations which resemble those of the weaver and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived... Man not only affects a change in form in the materials of nature; he also realises his own purpose in those materials.&#39;


Accordingly, labeling humans "superior" to worms isn&#39;t entirely accurate

Why not? We&#39;re superior to worms in fundamental ways.


Anti-retrovirals are not "superior" to herbal tea, they are more effective. Now if your criteria for "superiority" is effectivity, then yes, modern medicine is "superior" to tea. But if it isn&#39;t, it isn&#39;t.

For treating HIV, anti-retroviral drugs are superior than herbal tea. It is proven by science, materially, in reality.


Look, the reality is that, as the word is commonly used, "superior" is a subjective valuation and one which most certainly does not universal criteria.

Then everything is &#39;subjective valuation&#39;. There is no objective reality or truth, just subjective interpretations that are each as valid as one another. That&#39;s the position you&#39;re taking.

Let&#39;s leave &#39;superiority&#39; aside for a moment. Can we say that something is objectively more advanced than another? Can we say that this has more value than that? Can we say that x is more important than y?

If we can&#39;t say that anti-retroviral drugs aren&#39;t superior to tea leaves for HIV treatment, can we really say that socialist society is superior to (i.e. higher than) capitalist society for human wellbeing? Of course, the latter assertion is more of a &#39;subjective&#39; assertion than the former: i.e. the superiority of anti-retroviral drugs to tea leaves in treating HIV has actually been proven materially. The superiority of socialism to capitalism is yet to be proven in the real world. The real world is where we see what is superior and what is inferior.


And spiders are the only beings capable of living their lives on the top of mount Everest. So what?

I hope you&#39;re not being serious. Human capacity to master the natural environment - the same natural environment in which we coexist with other beings, yet being the only being to take charge of our circumstances - is what makes human beings superior to insects, monkeys, etc.

[ichneumon]

i like product B. it makes my happy. it&#39;s fun. making it involves assloads of mercury, which is then dumped into the ocean. i decide not to use product B. moronic marxasaurus, who sits and drinks beer and waits for the revolution, shrieks "anti-human, primitivist, lifestylist"

fuck off. make sense.


The reason for that isn&#39;t hard to explain, it&#39;s generally the same reason they dance and have sex: it&#39;s fun.

no, it&#39;s not at all hard to explain. it&#39;s a physical addiction and you are a junkie. duh.


By your nonsensical reckoning, in order to "save the planet", we all need to become perfectly efficient little drones, going to work every morning and coming home at night to our nice little pile of "mixed greens"

is my life less fun than yours? every day, i sit in the sun and breathe and feel pure ecstasy. it&#39;s better than drugs, and it happens because i respect my body. and it&#39;s NOT addictive - it&#39;s serotonin, pure and simple. it&#39;s good, but it&#39;s just a side effect of DOING THE RIGHT THING.

where does joy come from? from having crap? from dominating people? from fucking? taking drugs? does a coke head have a better life than you? a whore? a billionaire? why not? for all your intellect and immense rationality, you&#39;re a fool when it comes to understanding the nature of happiness.

[LSD]

I may &#39;rate&#39; crushed tea leaves higher for HIV treatment than i rate anti-retroviral drugs, but that doesn&#39;t make it objectively higher.

You&#39;re missing the point. There is no such thing as objective "superiority". As valuation it only exists in the human mind.

Retrovirals are more effective than tea leaves, meaning that they will cure more people more of the time, but "superior" isn&#39;t a measure of efficacy or medical validity, it&#39;s a measure of value.

And value can only be deteremined by the valuer using whatever standard they choose to judge by. Meaning that for some people, tea leaves may indeed be "superior" to retrovirals.

Which is why medical decisions are not made based on "superiority", they are based on what works. Similarly, basing human rights on the supposed "superiority" of humanity opens you up to all sorts of paradigmatic fallicies since no one can really say what "superiority" means in this context, certainly not in an objective or univeral way.


Why not? We&#39;re superior to worms in fundamental ways.

Again that depends on what you mean by "superior".

Look, vanguard, I&#39;m not disputing that humans are better at doing a great many things nor that we are the most advanced being on earth. I am just challenging this notion that there is such a thing as objective "superiority".

More importantly, I am pointing out how because of its inherent subjectivity, basing a rights paradigm on "superiority" is incredibly dangerous. Not only does it require building upon an intrinsically unstable foundation, but it actually serves to damage the humanist scale by buying into the environmentalist myth of a natural continuum.

If humans are "superior" to animals than it implies a chain of hierarchy. Ostensibly, there should be one animal immediately "below" us and another one below that and all the way to the bottom where there would be the "more inferior" creature of all.

The problem with that, though, is that it leave the door open to a shifting of the line. To saying, why don&#39;t we include the top two most "superior" animals instead of just the one and before you know it, "great apes" have social rights.

That&#39;s why so many animal rights types focus on chimpanzees. They&#39;re so close to us that, if we accept "superiority" as a standard, a whole lot of people would include chimps in that group.

I know that you woudln&#39;t be one of them and I probably wouldn&#39;t be either, but that&#39;s the point.

What matters is that "superiority" is not the basis for rights and pretending that it is only weakens the humanist and rationalist cause.


Then everything is &#39;subjective valuation&#39;. There is no objective reality or truth, just subjective interpretations that are each as valid as one another. That&#39;s the position you&#39;re taking.

No, the position I&#39;m taking is that "superiority" is a human invention, one with no objective manifestation.

If you declare that cyanide will not kill you, you&#39;d be wrong. No matter what you may "feel" on the subject, if you consume it you will die. Bu that does not mean that I would be objectively correct if I declared that cyanide was "inferior" to water because of that.

Nor would you incorrect if you asserted the reverse. Because "superior" and "inferior" are both subjective concepts, neither our positions can objectively falsified.

The same is equally true with regards to humanity. Humanity may be very good at many things that other animals are not, but capacity isn&#39;t "superiority". Humans may have "impressed our will" on the planet, but "will impressment" isn&#39;t "superiotiy".

Nothing objectively measurable is "superiority", which is why, again, this argument ultimately comes down to personal values. And so while for you, humans are "superior" to mice, that may well not be the case for icheumon.

And nothing you can say can, or should, convince him otherwise.


Let&#39;s leave &#39;superiority&#39; aside for a moment. Can we say that something is objectively more advanced than another? Can we say that this has more value than that?

Yes to the first one, no to the second one, not in this context at least.

There is no objective standard for what makes one species more valuable than another and so no objective way of coming to an answer on such questions.


i like product B. it makes my happy. it&#39;s fun. making it involves assloads of mercury, which is then dumped into the ocean. i decide not to use product B. moronic marxasaurus, who sits and drinks beer and waits for the revolution, shrieks "anti-human, primitivist, lifestylist"

And how did the aforementioned moron figure out your personal eating habbits? Did you, perhaps, proclaim them on a website as superior to every other diet? Maybe even calling anything else "barbaric and pointless"?

No one gives a fuck if you want to not eat meat, seriously, that&#39;s your business and no one else&#39;s. But when you start trying to enforce your personal habbits on other people, when you spread bullshit lies about the "evil" and "danger" of chosing to eat meat, then it becomes our concern.

Because the next step is try and force us to abandon meat, and before you say that&#39;s farfetched, I would remind you that the ALF is doing that today and groups like PETA are certainly treading the line.

If you genuinely believe that, as you say, meat is just as immoral as "human sacrifice" and "cannibalism", then I don&#39;t see why you wouldn&#39;t support government repression to stop it.

And if that&#39;s the case, then I have every right to refute your position.


no, it&#39;s not at all hard to explain. it&#39;s a physical addiction and you are a junkie. duh.

:rolleyes:

No one is "physically addicted" to meat. Not me, not you, not anyone.

But please, prove me wrong; show me one instance of someone going into clinical withdrawal due to lack of meat. Show me one credible study which states that the contents of meat (is it the proteien? :lol:) are "physically addictive".

Human beings have been eating food since before we were human, is it therefore your contention that every human being in history has been a "meat addict". And if so, then isn&#39;t it just a natural part of being human?

I mean I suppose if you twisted your terms enough, you could claim that all humans are "addicted" to water. Doesn&#39;t seem like a good reason to stop drinking it though.


it&#39;s serotonin, pure and simple. it&#39;s good, but it&#39;s just a side effect of DOING THE RIGHT THING.

It&#39;s also a side effect of taking drugs which, again, is a whole lot easier and a whole lot more effective than following your puritanical prescriptivist "right thing".


where does joy come from? from having crap? ... from fucking? taking drugs?

All of the above, although certainly not exclusively.


does a coke head have a better life than you? a whore? a billionaire?

Depends on the coke head, whore, or billionaire in question, but in the absract, I would imagine that a great many of all three are living better lives than me.

I don&#39;t know any billionaries personally, but I do know a couple of coke users and one of them actually happens to be a whore, and while I wouldn&#39;t nescessarily say that she has a "better" life (see above for how difficult it is to determine "superiority"), I&#39;d say it&#39;s at least as good as mine.

What, did you assume that all drug users and sex workers are miserable wrecks of humans? Maybe waiting for some vegan hero to swoop in and save them from their "sin?

Sorry, but the real world doesn&#39;t work like that.

Not that I have any idea what any of this has to do with animal rights...

[Vanguard1917]

You&#39;re missing the point. There is no such thing as objective "superiority". As valuation it only exists in the human mind.

And one &#39;valuation&#39; isn&#39;t more valid than the other? Is my &#39;valuation&#39; of tea leaves for treating HIV as valid as the &#39;valuation&#39; that anti-retroviral medication is better? Of course not: my valuation would be an incorrect one. Scientific reality says so.


Nothing objectively measurable is "superiority", which is why, again, this argument ultimately comes down to personal values. And so while for you, humans are "superior" to mice, that may well not be the case for icheumon.

And nothing you can say can, or should, convince him otherwise.

Again, the judgement that mice are superior to humans is objectively incorrect. What me or &#39;icheumon&#39; think is irrelevant; in the real world, human beings are superior to mice. We are higher beings, objectively speaking.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 11:14 pm
Again, the judgement that mice are superior to humans is objectively incorrect. What me or &#39;icheumon&#39; think is irrelevant; in the real world, human beings are superior to mice. We are higher beings, objectively speaking.
No, that depends on what criterion you use for "superiority" or "higher." If one assumes smartness or environmental modification is the greatest good, humans are superior. But if one assumes furriness or high-volume reproduction is the greatest good, then mice are superior.

LSD&#39;s right that superiority is subjective, and a human creation..

Of course, all moral judgements are subjective. No "should" or "better" statement can ever be objectively proved from facts - you have to start from some axiom or assumption. And morality is a human creation.

Which is, IMO, a better basis for explaining why moral obligations apply primarily to humans: morality is a human invention for living in society with other humans. And yeah, I prefer my own species - don&#39;t mice, too?

At least I prefer that basis. Subjectively.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 11:56 am
Well, that about blows that particular argument of mine out of the water :lol:
However (naturally there is an however) are there any examples of animals with a society that work in a way analogous to ours ( Class or nation analogues for example) so that we can judge if they can act in the interest of larger units, or even in the interest of themselves through this larger group, in the same way that humans can behave in a class conscious fashion?
No, there aren&#39;t. No other species have societies anywhere near as complex.

Nations and classes involve cooperation between millions of unrelated individuals, something you don&#39;t see in any other species.

Even ants and bees cooperate only within groups of closely related individuals - children of a single queen. Beyond that group, they fight viciously on contact.

Human social and cultural flexibility is also without parallel. Other species have a larger component of instinctive behavior, and their learning is simpler.

I thought the fish dominance article was interesting, but all the fish had to do there was decide which of five other male fish to challenge. Impressive for a fish, indicative of the large role of group interaction and sexual selection in shaping behavior, but compared to human thought and social behavior...


you are currently acting like a monkey. you identify with this bit of ideology, i threaten it, you shriek and talk shit.

Monkeys have ideologies? They talk?

Nope, only humans have that complex or abstract a mental construct, or express their conflicts verbally. Language probably has a lot to do with another unusual feature of human society: its relative nonviolence.

Plenty of humans haven&#39;t been in a physical fight since adolescence. Try to find another group-living species where that&#39;s common.

Even war depends on that capacity for group nonviolence: millions couldn&#39;t cooperate in that complex social activity if they were constantly fighting within the same side.

[apathy maybe]

I support LSD&#39;s basic position here (and his point about metaphyics was the point I was trying to make). Though, I do come to a different conclusion. But&#33; That isn&#39;t relevant to the thread.

There is no objective truth, claims of superiority are based on subjectivity, and are thus non-materialistic. Simply really.

So simple, I&#39;m amazed that there are still some people stupid enough not to understand that simple point.


(Where LSD takes this objectivity and runs one way (towards only caring about human society), I take it and run the other way (belief that animals and the ecosystem and so on have an intrinsic worth, beyond there benefit to humans). This is partly because I think that if we run to far with the idea of only caring about human society, we could end up in the situation of only caring about a specific part of that society (which might be based on some absurd concept of race or some other aspect of difference), and partly because I don&#39;t believe that humans are in anyway special and have a claim to special treatment. I try and keep in mind the possibility of aliens (superior ones of course), and how I would like them to treat humans. One other aspect is the special treatment given to those humans who are not "superior" to animals, both the young (babies) and the mentally and/or physically incapable. I think they should be looked after, I just think that doing so simply because they are human is stupid.)

[ichneumon]

the theory of food addiction:


UPTON, NY — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have found that the mere display of food — where food-deprived subjects are allowed to smell and taste their favorite foods without actually eating them — causes a significant elevation in brain dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of pleasure and reward. This activation of the brain’s dopamine motivation circuits is distinct from the role the brain chemical plays when people actually eat, and may be similar to what addicts experience when craving drugs.

“Eating is a highly reinforcing behavior, just like taking illicit drugs,” said psychiatrist Nora Volkow, the study’s lead investigator. “But this is the first time anyone has shown that the dopamine system can be triggered by food when there is no pleasure associated with it since the subjects don’t eat the food. This provides us with new clues about the mechanisms that lead people to eat other than just for the pleasure of eating, and in this respect may help us understand why some people overeat.” The study will appear in the June 1, 2002 issue of Synapse (now available online ).

the thing is, human preferentially crave red meat and junk food. this is the origin of the addictive mechanism: to get mammals to eat more than they need, and to eat specific kinds of things. we don&#39;t eat because we need to, we eat for the dopamine kick. basically, any food with a nutritional profile similar to milk, is junk.

BUT you can not be addicted to food. you eat what you need, avoid concentrated meat and junk food. it&#39;s liberation, not compulsion based on morality.


Because the next step is try and force us to abandon meat, and before you say that&#39;s farfetched, I would remind you that the ALF is doing that today and groups like PETA are certainly treading the line.

If you genuinely believe that, as you say, meat is just as immoral as "human sacrifice" and "cannibalism", then I don&#39;t see why you wouldn&#39;t support government repression to stop it.

morality for me has to do with what is good for society as a whole, vs what i want or crave at any given moment. prohibition doesn&#39;t work. i would suggest 1)no gov&#39;t subsidies to the livestock industry 2)flat out ban prophylactic antibiotics in same industry. that&#39;s all.


What, did you assume that all drug users and sex workers are miserable wrecks of humans? Maybe waiting for some vegan hero to swoop in and save them from their "sin?

actually, i was assuming they were happy and asking you why you don&#39;t join them.


It&#39;s also a side effect of taking drugs which, again, is a whole lot easier and a whole lot more effective than following your puritanical prescriptivist "right thing".

what happens to people who snort coke all day? eat junk food? is it sustainable? are they happy?


Not that I have any idea what any of this has to do with animal rights...

i don&#39;t give a shit about animal rights. it&#39;s about making a sustainable society that works. period.


----------------------

Monkeys have ideologies? They talk?

Nope, only humans have that complex or abstract a mental construct, or express their conflicts verbally. Language probably has a lot to do with another unusual feature of human society: its relative nonviolence.

Plenty of humans haven&#39;t been in a physical fight since adolescence. Try to find another group-living species where that&#39;s common.

Even war depends on that capacity for group nonviolence: millions couldn&#39;t cooperate in that complex social activity if they were constantly fighting within the same side.

newsflash: you are a monkey. apparently you have an ideology. you cannot "transcend" you evolutionary history. at best, you can be a monkey acting like a monkey&#39;s idea of a non-monkey. we call that "aping".

humans are nonviolent? what? pan paniscus. hello.

[molecular transmutation]

Monkey&#39;s are able to consciously change their enviroment to suit their needs as well. wheather for shelter or food, monkeys can willingly change their surroundings. even monkey youths do this through play and interaction

[RevMARKSman]

newsflash: you are a monkey

He was referring to the other species of monkeys, not us. One would think you&#39;d understand that by now :huh:

[ComradeRed]

Well wait, "special" in what way? As in what physically seperates us from inferior monkeys?

Or...what?

I assumed that&#39;s what was meant, and physically humans have a more developped cerebrum/cerebellum region. This allows for pattern recognition (well more advanced pattern recognition) as opposed to "built-in" mechanisms like "fight-or-flight" (true humans still have these mechanisms, they just don&#39;t play a signficant role when talking about say language).

But this question (now that I think about it) isn&#39;t really clear to begin with.

Perhaps "What makes humans different than other monkeys?" would be a better question to ask.

"What makes humans special?" Special? In what way? :huh:

[Vanguard1917]

No, that depends on what criterion you use for "superiority" or "higher." If one assumes smartness or environmental modification is the greatest good, humans are superior. But if one assumes furriness or high-volume reproduction is the greatest good, then mice are superior.


The criterion is itself ranked. The criterion of mastery over nature is superior to the criterion of &#39;furriness&#39;. For example, pigeons might be superior to us using the criterion of unaided flight (to use LSD&#39;s example) but unaided flight is inferior to human mastery of nature. Why? Because birds might be able to flap their wings and fly, but that ability has still not enabled them to master their natural environment. Men and women have abilities that enable them to master their natural environment, and those abilities are thus superior, making men and women superior, higher beings.


LSD&#39;s right that superiority is subjective, and a human creation..

There is an objective superiority. See my example about anti-retroviral drugs being superior to crushed tea leaves for treating HIV. Irrespective of anyone&#39;s subjective interpretation, one is objectively superior to the other.


Of course, all moral judgements are subjective. No "should" or "better" statement can ever be objectively proved from facts - you have to start from some axiom or assumption. And morality is a human creation.

There are superior judgements. The judgement that i should jump out of a ninth-floor window to exit the building is inferior to the judgement that i should use the stairs or the lift. There are also superior morals. For example, feudal morality is inferior to bourgeois morality (i.e. it is a lower form of morality). One historical epoch can have a lower set of morals than another historical epoch, based on material conditions.


And yeah, I prefer my own species - don&#39;t mice, too?

No, mice don&#39;t. Mice are not conscious of their existence as a species or of their role in nature. Only human beings are. Honestly i&#39;m suprised that you would come out with such a thing.

We are the sovereigns of nature. We have an authority over nature that no other being has. We master nature and subject it to our will. By their very defitions, sovereignty (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sovereign) and mastery (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mastery) imply superiority.


Perhaps "What makes humans different than other monkeys?" would be a better question to ask.

"What makes humans special?" Special? In what way?

We are special because we are the sovereigns of nature - the only beings capable of mastering nature and exercising our authority over it. That&#39;s what makes us unique, and what makes us above and higher than other animals.

[ichneumon]

We are special because we are the sovereigns of nature - the only beings capable of mastering nature and exercising our authority over it. That&#39;s what makes us unique, and what makes us above and higher than other animals.

this is the most ludicrously arrogant statement. it&#39;s hubris even. tell that to the common cold virus. or a hurricane. *and* that kind of thinking is absolutely no-go. it&#39;s pure judeo-christian crap straight from genesis.


"..God said unto them....have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. "(Genesis 1: 28,29)

forgive me if i have a bad reaction to that. but, still, religion is WRONG and everything in it is WRONG. so this must be wrong, too.

humans cannot 1)predict the weather 3 days in advance 2)build our own selfsustaining biospheres 3)prevent any number of plagues, etc, etc

example: exotic plant species A is invading southern florida. humans are highly allergic to it&#39;s pollen, not to mention that it&#39;s ugly and poisons livestock. fix it.

we cant&#39;. not even close. nature is a CHAOS SYSTEM. it can&#39;t be "mastered", only nudged, and we don&#39;t even know where to push, not to mention having no lever.



He was referring to the other species of monkeys, not us. One would think you&#39;d understand that by now

he doesn&#39;t UNDERSTAND that or he wouldn&#39;t have said it. i literally fell out of my chair laughing when i read the reply "Monkeys don&#39;t talk". say that to any bioscientist and you&#39;ll get the same.

POINT: if humans are different from animals in some way, at some time in the past, an animal gave birth to a man. point at that time. show me the difference. otherwise, your theory is crap.

[Vanguard1917]

"..God said unto them....have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. "(Genesis 1: 28,29)

Yes, religion was an expression of the application of human reasoning on nature (since human&#39;s have the ability to reason), just not in a very reasonable form, since religion itself degrades humanity. It calls for a God-centred perspective rather than an human-centred one. Religion is thus anti-humanist. We need a human-centred perspective.

[LSD]

Vanguard, I feel like we&#39;re going in circles here. Please read over my previous posts &#39;cause I think I&#39;ve explained myself as well as I reasonbly can here.

I am not denying that human beings have greatery "mastery" over nature nor that we can do a great many things that other animals can not, I am just contending that declarations of "superiority" are nescessarily subjective and cannot be empiraclly verififed.

Whether or not something is "superior" is entirely dependent on what one believes to be of value. But there is no objective measure of value.

To you, "master of nature" may indicate superiority, but that is not nescessarily the case for anyone else. Nor are you able to objectively prove your valuation since value is in inherently nonobjevtive phenomenon.

That is, outside of the human brain, there is no such thing as value.


Is my &#39;valuation&#39; of tea leaves for treating HIV as valid as the &#39;valuation&#39; that anti-retroviral medication is better?

Yes&#33;

Again, retrovirals are more effective than tea leaves, meaning that they will cure more people more of the time, but "superior" isn&#39;t a measure of efficacy or medical validity, it&#39;s a measure of value.

And value can only be deteremined by the valuer using whatever standard they choose to judge by. Meaning that for some people, tea leaves may indeed be "superior" to retrovirals.

You&#39;re assuming here that efficacy is the only possible measure of value, but that&#39;s your own subjective bias getting in the way of an objective analysis. The reality is that value, in and of itself, has absolutely nothing to do with efficacy.

Which is why, of course, medical decisions should not made based on value or "superiority", but on what works. Similarly, basing human rights on the supposed "superiority" of humanity opens you up to all sorts of paradigmatic fallicies since no one can really say what "superiority" means in this context, certainly not in an objective or univeral way.


The criterion is itself ranked. The criterion of mastery over nature is superior to the criterion of &#39;furriness&#39;. For example, pigeons might be superior to us using the criterion of unaided flight (to use LSD&#39;s example) but unaided flight is inferior to human mastery of nature. Why? Because birds might be able to flap their wings and fly, but that ability has still not enabled them to master their natural environment. Men and women have abilities that enable them to master their natural environment, and those abilities are thus superior, making men and women superior, higher beings.

Again you&#39;re assuming that "mastery [of the] natural environment" has greater value than unaided flight, an unsupportable assertion.

The ability to "master" is only "superior" to the ability to fly if you say it is, there&#39;s nothing inherently "better" about it. And, indeed, to a flight enthusiast, the ability to fly might well be of greater value than the aforementioned human abilities.

Again, value only exists in the human mind, it has no objective existance. And so any attempt to identify universal "values" is nescessarily flawed. All you can do is assert your own personal subjective beliefs, and no matter how you try and justify them, that is all they will ever be.


The judgement that i should jump out of a ninth-floor window to exit the building is inferior to the judgement that i should use the stairs or the lift.

Depdends on your aim. If you&#39;re trying to kill yourself, then the former is undeniably "superior".


We are the sovereigns of nature. We have an authority over nature that no other being has. We master nature and subject it to our will. By their very defitions, sovereignty and mastery imply superiority.

No, actually "sovereignty" and "mastery" imply authority. "Superiority" is a measure of value, it has absolutely nothing to do with power relations.

And, by the way, let me say again that trying to base a rights paradigm on "superiority" is an incredibly dangerous idea. Not only does it require building upon an intrinsically unstable foundation, but it actually serves to damage the humanist scale by buying into the environmentalist myth of a natural continuum.

If humans are "superior" to animals than it implies a chain of hierarchy. Ostensibly, there should be one animal immediately "below" us and another one below that and and another one beloew that all the way to the bottom where there would be the "most inferior" creature of all.

The problem with that, though, is that it leave the door open to a shifting of the line. To saying why don&#39;t we include the top two most "superior" animals instead of just the one, and before you know it, "great apes" have social rights.

That&#39;s why so many animal rights types focus on chimpanzees. They&#39;re so close to us that if we accept "superiority" as a standard, a whole lot of people would include chimps in that group.

I know that you wouldn&#39;t be one of them and I probably wouldn&#39;t be either, but that&#39;s not the point. Enough people probably would.

And so since "superiority" is not the basis for rights and, why pretend that it is when to do so only serves to weaken the humanist and rationalist cause?


Originally posted by icheumon+--> (icheumon)BUT you can not be addicted to food. you eat what you need, avoid concentrated meat and junk food. it&#39;s liberation, not compulsion based on morality.[/b]

You&#39;re making the patently false and wholly bizarre assumption that anything which triggers a dopamine release is automatically "bad" and anything which doesn&#39;t is "liberation".

Tell me, do you really think that by comparing "bad" foods with drugs you&#39;re going to convince me away from them? You&#39;re talking to someone who&#39;s username is that of an "illicit drugs". I have absolutely no problem with releasing dopamine, whether by pharmaceutical or digestive means.

And, by the way, that "good feeling" you get when you "save the planet" by resisting that Big Mac? That&#39;s an endorphin release too. Same for that high you get when you excersize.

Studies show that when people look at sexually arousing images, they&#39;re brains release all sorts of pleasure inducing chemicals. Obviously the same&#39;s even more true when they climax.

So unless you&#39;re proposing that sexual abstinence is "liberation" too, you&#39;re going to have to move past this mindnumbingly juvenile anti-dopamine paradigm of yours.

There is nothing wrong with feeling good; it doesn&#39;t make you an "addict"; it just makes you psychologically normal.


Originally posted by icheumon+--> (icheumon)what happens to people who snort coke all day? eat junk food? is it sustainable? are they happy?[/b]

Of course it&#39;s sustainable, assuming you don&#39;t run out of money of course. But then that&#39;s true for any lifestyle under capitalism.

And as to whether they&#39;re happy, you yourself stated that they&#39;re happy. Remember?

[email protected]
actually, i was assuming they were happy and asking you why you don&#39;t join them.

So I have absolutely no idea what your problem is.


icheumon
he doesn&#39;t UNDERSTAND that or he wouldn&#39;t have said it. i literally fell out of my chair laughing when i read the reply "Monkeys don&#39;t talk". say that to any bioscientist and you&#39;ll get the same.

Any "bioscientist" you claim that humans are monkeys should be immediately fired.

[ichneumon]

Any "bioscientist" you claim that humans are monkeys should be immediately fired.

monkey=primate, humans are primates, humans are monkeys. what do you think we are? felines? fowl? what is your damage?


Tell me, do you really think that by comparing "bad" foods with drugs you&#39;re going to convince me away from them? You&#39;re talking to someone who&#39;s username is that of an "illicit drugs". I have absolutely no problem with releasing dopamine, whether by pharmaceutical or digestive means.

LSD is a serotonergic tryptamine. it is not addictive. anyway, seriously, the food/addict is off topic - you just had to go on the anti-vegetarian rampage. let&#39;s just assume we all have our bigred buttons and save it for a more apropos topic.

[LSD]

monkey=primate, humans are primates, humans are monkeys. what do you think we are? felines? fowl? what is your damage?

Actually monkey = simian primate, something which humans are definitely not. And my "damage" is your misstating facts and then making fun of people who challenge your ludicrous assertions.

Nobody here is denying that humans are in the kingdom animalia or in the order prima, but then you know that. &#39;Cause if you really thought that the rest of us were so stupid that we didn&#39;t know humans were animals, you wouldn&#39;t even be talking with us.

Rather, you just want an opportunity to call people names and pretend that you actually made a point.

Well here&#39;s a point for you, humans are animals but that&#39;s about as relevent to this thread as my hair colour. Sharing a kingdom or even an order doesn&#39;t make us "family" in some juvenile Disney fantasy-land way, it just makes us biologically similar.

Rights are still a human invention and they still don&#39;t include non-human animals.


LSD is a serotonergic tryptamine. it is not addictive.

Neither is food, "junk" or otherwise. Not, again, that there is anything implicitly "wrong" with things that are.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

What&#39;s special about humans is irrelevant. What matters is the fact that we are all humans and our struggle concerns itself with human society, not animals.

[RedCeltic]

Two things that give humans an advantage over other animals. We have thumbs and we walk upright. These two things enabled us to pick up tools and to look far away and see prey or foe. When we began to walk upright, we began to eat better food.

Better food, ment that we developed better brains over time. Able to organize in packs, communicate for oganized hunting. By the time of the Homo Erectus we had harnessed the use of fire. All other animals ran away from fire.

This again, gave us larger brains.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 07:33 pm
Two things that give humans an advantage over other animals. We have thumbs and we walk upright.
Apes have this too. Why then are we different?

(Even then that question is a poor one...different in what aspect? As I&#39;ve stated we&#39;re physically different by having a slightly more developped brain which allows for better pattern recognition, which in turn allows things like language, math, etc. to be in existence.)


This again, gave us larger brains. Which thumbs, fire, or walking upright? And how does any of those affect the size of a human&#39;s brain?

[Vanguard1917]

Again, retrovirals are more effective than tea leaves, meaning that they will cure more people more of the time, but "superior" isn&#39;t a measure of efficacy or medical validity, it&#39;s a measure of value.

Number one definition of &#39;value&#39; by dictionary.com: relative worth, merit, or importance: the value of a college education; the value of a queen in chess.link (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/value)

A queen is usually more valuable than a pawn in a chess game. This is an objective fact, irrespective of what the chess player thinks subjectively. If she decides to exchange her queen for her opponent&#39;s pawn for no good strategic reason, she is likely to lose the game, due to the dynamics which govern that game.

Anti-retroviral drugs are more valuable for treating HIV than tea leaves - objectively, regardless of what the &#39;valuer&#39; thinks. This is an objective fact proven by science, in the real world, through real means, materially. It has nothing to do with anyone&#39;s own interpretation or personal subjective valuation. If truth is superior to falsehood, then anti-retroviral drugs are more valuable than tea leaves for treating HIV patients.

If an AIDS patient for whatever reason chooses tea leaves over anti-retroviral drugs, he is likely to lose his life - just like the chess player who lost the game because she decided to choose a less valuable piece over a more valuable one.


If humans are "superior" to animals than it implies a chain of hierarchy. Ostensibly, there should be one animal immediately "below" us and another one below that and and another one beloew that all the way to the bottom where there would be the "most inferior" creature of all.

The problem with that, though, is that it leave the door open to a shifting of the line. To saying why don&#39;t we include the top two most "superior" animals instead of just the one, and before you know it, "great apes" have social rights.

That&#39;s why so many animal rights types focus on chimpanzees. They&#39;re so close to us that if we accept "superiority" as a standard, a whole lot of people would include chimps in that group.

That&#39;s a very good point. What we have to do therefore is to point out that the thing that makes human beings superior to all animals is our ability to master our circumstances. We share our natural environment with countless other species. But not one other being has the capacity to master that natural environment. By that criteria, a chimp is no more &#39;closer&#39; to us than any other animal. Men and women are unique and special.

And my key point is: what makes us special and unique is our capacity to master our natural environment. That&#39;s what makes us human.

[ichneumon]

That&#39;s a very good point. What we have to do therefore is to point out that the thing that makes human beings superior to all animals is our ability to master our circumstances. We share our natural environment with countless other species. But not one other being has the capacity to master that natural environment. By that criteria, a chimp is no more &#39;closer&#39; to us than any other animal. Men and women are unique and special.

And my key point is: what makes us special and unique is our capacity to master our natural environment. That&#39;s what makes us human.

honestly, do you have some kind of hangup about this? what do you CARE so much?

1)if this is true, at some point, a stupid, dumb monkey gave birth to a masterful human. point at that time. why is the baby different from his mother? is it a gene? which one?

2)master of what? you can no more stop a tornado than a rabbit could. what are you TALKING about? once again: an exotic plant is invading florida and poisoning livestock. it grows everywhere, and it gives rich tourists hives. fix this.

3)how is a human making a mud hut different from a beaver making a pond? are people who live in mudhuts has human as those who build skyscrapers? pretechnological man couldn&#39;t master shit, literally.

i&#39;ve given you two very good articles in NATURE that explain the depths of animal cognition. and these were BIRDS and FISH. not even monkeys. find some kind of scientific basis for this ideological prattle, please.