5 ms·
> I think most animals are conscious but a qualitative distinction between humans and animals is very reasonable. Animals didn't land on the moon or discover qu
by ysavir 2y ago
> I think most animals are conscious but a qualitative distinction between humans and animals is very reasonable. Animals didn't land on the moon or discover quantum mechanics. Whatever it is that allowed humans to accomplish things like that is a worthy basis of a distinction.
Is this not a very self-serving assertion, though? Pointing at things that we humans have accomplished and are proud of, and saying that sets us apart, or are in a sense categorically higher than other animals?
Other animals may well look at this and look down at us for having to do all these things in order to feel accomplished. Octopuses may draw a qualitative distinction between them and us because we lack the means to alter our appearance--surely they're more physically manifest than other animals due to their color shifting abilities! Plants must belittle us for our inability to passively absorb energy from the sun.
We could definitely say that our ability to get to the moon sets us apart. But in doing so, we also have to acknowledge each and every other trait that would set an animal species apart from the rest, and there's no shortage of those unique elements.
- Vegenoid 2y ago"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." - Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
- gadflyinyoureye 2y agoI’m at a lost as to why I should care? Everything comes down to force. Those animals can opine all they want, but humans have the means, motive and opportunity to make them into tasty food. Their conscious or lack there of has no impact.
- ysavir 2y agoI'm not sure what this is responding to. Can you explain how this relates to the parent and grandparent messages?
- HelloMcFly 2y ago> I’m at a lost as to why I should care? Then I'm at a loss as to why you read the article and are participating in this conversation. > Those animals can opine all they want, but humans have the means, motive and opportunity to make them into tasty food. Their conscious or lack there of has no impact. So might makes right, all the time? One can quite reasonable hear some like King Leopold II of Belgium uttering this as he committed atrocities throughout the Congo. Many European settlers and American slaveowners held the exact same view of African humans.