8 ms·

Primatologist Frans de Waal takes exception with human exceptionalism

32 points by dnetesn 8y ago

Grustaf 8y ago
I don’t think most people care about what parts of the human brain are present in monkeys. Even if the difference is just quantitative, it still remains a fact that humans talk, make music, feel remorse and have civilisations. So clearly we are fuyndamentally different from all other animals, even if we have the same components. The thing is really that when it comes to the mind, physical components are not really the interesting thing, holisitic, virtual components are what matter. Mice probably can’t feel remorse, but that is probably not because they lack a remorse center, it\s because their brains are too small or have too few connections to provide that functionality.
- elcomet 8y ago
  We might not be fundamentally different. Even a slight difference in the brain could result in hugely different abilities. The outcome is fundamentally different, but not necessarily the brain.
  - Grustaf 8y ago
    That’s my point. Most people are not impressed hearing that mouse brains are similar to our brains, clearly the end result is fundamentally different.
- 2muchcoffeeman 8y ago
  > it still remains a fact that humans talk, make music, feel remorse and have civilisations We are very clearly not the only species that can have complex communication. Other mammals do so without even counting primates. Bird songs and whale songs are not music? I partially agree about feelings. My gut says that animals have emotions. But we should not be assigning human emotions to whatever is going on with them. Though perhaps primates mirror our emotions since we are after all closely related. They certainly don't have civilisations or culture on the level that we do. That's clear. But some other species of primate could have survived instead of us. At the end of the day, we're just an accident of evolution. Our ultimate goals is still to mature and try and reproduce just like everything else.
  - Grustaf 8y ago
    What could have happened is not relevant, this is not a discussion about fate. Animal language is very limited, it is fair to call it fundamentally different. Same with bird songs. As to your last statement, that’s just that, a statement without basis.
- circlefavshape 8y ago
  We had no civilisations for most of our time on earth.
  - Grustaf 8y ago
    We do now. Ants never will.
    - apocalypstyx 8y ago
      However, they managed to master animal husbandry, agriculture, and slavery before homo-sapiens. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants-and-their-masters-are-locked-deadly-relationship/ https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants-and... https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers-ants/ https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers-... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus-farmers-evolution.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus-farmer...
      - Grustaf 8y ago
        All work and no play
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    ...and we changed, in the last 50,000 years. More change than in millions before then. And it was probably civilization that did it. Adapting to live in larger communities has had a profound effect on us genetically.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > So clearly we are [fundamentally] different from all other animals, even if we have the same components. This is not even remotely clear. More and more we are finding that the properties we told ourselves separated our minds from those of animals are not unique to us.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I don't see poems written by mice, movies directed by monkeys, or starships built and crewed by dolphins. There's no lion embassy anywhere on the planet. Maybe only the cats plot to conquer the world. Point is, "the properties we told ourselves separated our minds from those of animals [that] are not unique to us" result in a qualitatively different outcomes in us vs. all the other animals. For instance, human socializing is about as similar to raven socializing as a computer is similar to a bunch of bowls and pebbles.
    - dsabanin 8y ago
      50,000 years ago humans did none of that either, yet we were genetically the same species as we are now. There's also something to be said about using your own ruler when measuring someone else's worth.
      - Grustaf 8y ago
        Unlesa you can imagine mice writing symphonies given enough time, how is that an argument?
        Zigurd 8y ago
        I can imagine multiple conscious, tool-using, dextrous homo species who bear mostly helpless babies and who cook their food. That happened. I can also imagine conscious species evolving from primates. I can foresee someone being stupid enough to genetically engineer a very smart chimp. That's enough to think differently about some animals.
dalbasal 8y ago
When I was about 17 I read a Peter singer book on his ethical philosophy. It was all about grounding ethics rationally in principles. It made me enroll in a philosophy degree. He flirted with all sorts of wierd conclusions. Babies are less conscious/intelligent/etc than ravens or apes. Does that mean they have the same moral standing as apes and birds? However you try to rationalize human exceptionalism (or ethics in general), you can usually find examples where they don't apply to all people, or some other rational conclusion that doesn't feel right. Anyway... I don't think our morals are or can be grounded in morality. Ultimately, "Man is the measure of all things." Morality applies where we decide it applies. There is no higher truth, no underlying rules we can unvover. There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it.
- bjoli 8y ago
  I dont think we can just say morality applies where we want it to apply because you it will always be a part of the equation whether you want it or not. I would rather say that no moral system is perfect, and that there are many decision where you just have to pick the lesser of several wrongs. Just because we in certain situation chose not to look at them through a moral lens doesn't mean they a void of moral consequence .
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it. I feel that the very realization of that fact is the first step in becoming a more moral person. Now that the previous model of morality has been shown to be fundamentally flawed, one can begin building the next.
  - simonh 8y ago
    Quite. Recognising that animals have many of the same experiences as us should inform but not necessarily dictate our moral position concerning them. I believe humans evolved form a common ancestor with apes, so for me it is completely unsurprising and to be expected that we share many of the same behaviours, sensations, experiences and feelings because I believe we inherited those from our pre-human ancestors. So when I see a human exhibit emotional responses and an ape displaying similar responses, that seems natural to me and I believe they have a common root in our evolutionary biology. That doesn’t mean I have to assign apes moral equivalence to humans. Rights also imply responsibilities and apes are not capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of a human being. But then you hit the argument that some human beings aren’t capable of fulfilling those responsibilities either. Well, we are communal and social beings. We have a tendency to treat members of our community differently from outsiders, and generally better. For example we treat citizens differently from non-citizens. Family differently from non-family. I think it’s reasonable to treat humans differently from non-humans and grant them enhanced rights. However I do still accept our common biology and experiential and emotional lives with some animals. I can accept that when an ape or a human sit watching a sunset, relaxing and not actively thinking about anything, that they have fundamentally the same kind of experience. I think that reasonably extends to a bias against causing unnecessary suffering for example. How we treat others and how we treat animals says something about our character.
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
This seems a silly article, where the primatologist says 'we're not different' then proceeds to list all the ways we are different.
- Grustaf 8y ago
  It’s clickbait for reductionists
biztos 8y ago
I recently discovered that de Waal is a rather controversial figure in primatology circles. I’m probably getting this wrong since IANA(P|Z|B)[0] but I believe the gist was that he’d studied Bonobos in captivity and made all kinds of sweeping generalizations and questionable extrapolations based on his observations, and it turned out that the same animals studied in the wild behaved quite differently and a lot of people think his conclusions are not only wrong but dangerous, in that a lot of lay people use his work to give scientific legitimacy to popular but distinctly unscientific ideas. FWIW I too dislike human exceptionalism, I just happen to have run across the “de Waal controversy” recently and thought I’d mention it. [0]: Primatologist? Zoologist? Biologist? But at least I’m a primate!
lordnacho 8y ago
Maybe the expression he's looking for is that humans are part of a continuum. So we're not off the animal chart entirely, to be described by a whole other set of ideas, but we are at least somewhat special in where we've gone with things. About religion, I don't think his argument holds. Sure it's human nature to believe in it, but it's also human nature to be quite violent. And we've come a long way in reducing violence, so why not also remove a way of thinking that no longer serves a purpose?

32 points by dnetesn 8y ago

I don’t think most people care about what parts of the human brain are present in monkeys. Even if the difference is just quantitative, it still remains a fact that humans talk, make music, feel remorse and have civilisations. So clearly we are fuyndamentally different from all other animals, even if we have the same components. The thing is really that when it comes to the mind, physical components are not really the interesting thing, holisitic, virtual components are what matter. Mice probably can’t feel remorse, but that is probably not because they lack a remorse center, it\s because their brains are too small or have too few connections to provide that functionality.

elcomet 8y ago
We might not be fundamentally different. Even a slight difference in the brain could result in hugely different abilities. The outcome is fundamentally different, but not necessarily the brain.
- Grustaf 8y ago
  That’s my point. Most people are not impressed hearing that mouse brains are similar to our brains, clearly the end result is fundamentally different.
2muchcoffeeman 8y ago
> it still remains a fact that humans talk, make music, feel remorse and have civilisations We are very clearly not the only species that can have complex communication. Other mammals do so without even counting primates. Bird songs and whale songs are not music? I partially agree about feelings. My gut says that animals have emotions. But we should not be assigning human emotions to whatever is going on with them. Though perhaps primates mirror our emotions since we are after all closely related. They certainly don't have civilisations or culture on the level that we do. That's clear. But some other species of primate could have survived instead of us. At the end of the day, we're just an accident of evolution. Our ultimate goals is still to mature and try and reproduce just like everything else.
- Grustaf 8y ago
  What could have happened is not relevant, this is not a discussion about fate. Animal language is very limited, it is fair to call it fundamentally different. Same with bird songs. As to your last statement, that’s just that, a statement without basis.
circlefavshape 8y ago
We had no civilisations for most of our time on earth.
- Grustaf 8y ago
  We do now. Ants never will.
  - apocalypstyx 8y ago
    However, they managed to master animal husbandry, agriculture, and slavery before homo-sapiens. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants-and-their-masters-are-locked-deadly-relationship/ https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants-and... https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers-ants/ https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers-... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus-farmers-evolution.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus-farmer...
    - Grustaf 8y ago
      All work and no play
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  ...and we changed, in the last 50,000 years. More change than in millions before then. And it was probably civilization that did it. Adapting to live in larger communities has had a profound effect on us genetically.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
> So clearly we are [fundamentally] different from all other animals, even if we have the same components. This is not even remotely clear. More and more we are finding that the properties we told ourselves separated our minds from those of animals are not unique to us.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I don't see poems written by mice, movies directed by monkeys, or starships built and crewed by dolphins. There's no lion embassy anywhere on the planet. Maybe only the cats plot to conquer the world. Point is, "the properties we told ourselves separated our minds from those of animals [that] are not unique to us" result in a qualitatively different outcomes in us vs. all the other animals. For instance, human socializing is about as similar to raven socializing as a computer is similar to a bunch of bowls and pebbles.
  - dsabanin 8y ago
    50,000 years ago humans did none of that either, yet we were genetically the same species as we are now. There's also something to be said about using your own ruler when measuring someone else's worth.
    - Grustaf 8y ago
      Unlesa you can imagine mice writing symphonies given enough time, how is that an argument?
      - Zigurd 8y ago
        I can imagine multiple conscious, tool-using, dextrous homo species who bear mostly helpless babies and who cook their food. That happened. I can also imagine conscious species evolving from primates. I can foresee someone being stupid enough to genetically engineer a very smart chimp. That's enough to think differently about some animals.

dalbasal 8y ago

When I was about 17 I read a Peter singer book on his ethical philosophy. It was all about grounding ethics rationally in principles. It made me enroll in a philosophy degree. He flirted with all sorts of wierd conclusions. Babies are less conscious/intelligent/etc than ravens or apes. Does that mean they have the same moral standing as apes and birds? However you try to rationalize human exceptionalism (or ethics in general), you can usually find examples where they don't apply to all people, or some other rational conclusion that doesn't feel right. Anyway... I don't think our morals are or can be grounded in morality. Ultimately, "Man is the measure of all things." Morality applies where we decide it applies. There is no higher truth, no underlying rules we can unvover. There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it.

bjoli 8y ago
I dont think we can just say morality applies where we want it to apply because you it will always be a part of the equation whether you want it or not. I would rather say that no moral system is perfect, and that there are many decision where you just have to pick the lesser of several wrongs. Just because we in certain situation chose not to look at them through a moral lens doesn't mean they a void of moral consequence .
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
> There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it. I feel that the very realization of that fact is the first step in becoming a more moral person. Now that the previous model of morality has been shown to be fundamentally flawed, one can begin building the next.
- simonh 8y ago
  Quite. Recognising that animals have many of the same experiences as us should inform but not necessarily dictate our moral position concerning them. I believe humans evolved form a common ancestor with apes, so for me it is completely unsurprising and to be expected that we share many of the same behaviours, sensations, experiences and feelings because I believe we inherited those from our pre-human ancestors. So when I see a human exhibit emotional responses and an ape displaying similar responses, that seems natural to me and I believe they have a common root in our evolutionary biology. That doesn’t mean I have to assign apes moral equivalence to humans. Rights also imply responsibilities and apes are not capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of a human being. But then you hit the argument that some human beings aren’t capable of fulfilling those responsibilities either. Well, we are communal and social beings. We have a tendency to treat members of our community differently from outsiders, and generally better. For example we treat citizens differently from non-citizens. Family differently from non-family. I think it’s reasonable to treat humans differently from non-humans and grant them enhanced rights. However I do still accept our common biology and experiential and emotional lives with some animals. I can accept that when an ape or a human sit watching a sunset, relaxing and not actively thinking about anything, that they have fundamentally the same kind of experience. I think that reasonably extends to a bias against causing unnecessary suffering for example. How we treat others and how we treat animals says something about our character.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

This seems a silly article, where the primatologist says 'we're not different' then proceeds to list all the ways we are different.

Grustaf 8y ago
It’s clickbait for reductionists

biztos 8y ago

I recently discovered that de Waal is a rather controversial figure in primatology circles. I’m probably getting this wrong since IANA(P|Z|B)[0] but I believe the gist was that he’d studied Bonobos in captivity and made all kinds of sweeping generalizations and questionable extrapolations based on his observations, and it turned out that the same animals studied in the wild behaved quite differently and a lot of people think his conclusions are not only wrong but dangerous, in that a lot of lay people use his work to give scientific legitimacy to popular but distinctly unscientific ideas. FWIW I too dislike human exceptionalism, I just happen to have run across the “de Waal controversy” recently and thought I’d mention it. [0]: Primatologist? Zoologist? Biologist? But at least I’m a primate!

lordnacho 8y ago

Maybe the expression he's looking for is that humans are part of a continuum. So we're not off the animal chart entirely, to be described by a whole other set of ideas, but we are at least somewhat special in where we've gone with things. About religion, I don't think his argument holds. Sure it's human nature to believe in it, but it's also human nature to be quite violent. And we've come a long way in reducing violence, so why not also remove a way of thinking that no longer serves a purpose?