Humans - Are we really unique?

[Napoléon]

I came across a two-part feature on BBC's website that was pretty fascinating and thought some of you guys/gals would like it. If you have a spare 10-15 mins it's well worth the read and does a good job at compiling an awful lot of interesting information.

Essentially, it's two articles that give opposing sides of an argument about whether humans are really 'unique'.

The first article shows just how similar we are to other primates, and how a lot of the things that we assume makes us special, actually, aren't so special at all:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150706-...or-special

There's no doubt that human abilities are more developed than those of chimps, particularly when it comes to spoken language. The point is that the differences are not stark and absolute, but rather a matter of degree – and they get subtler the more we investigate them.

I really like this article because it absolutely destroys the notion that we get our morality from religion. But that's just a bonus, what the article also says, and pretty undeniably in my opinion, is that morality isn't unique to us.

Here's some quotes I liked from the article, maybe those who don't want to read through the entire thing can just skim read the following:

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A species, by definition, is unique. In that trivial sense humans are unique, just as house mice are unique.
But when we say humans are unique, we mean something more than that. Throughout history humans have created a seemingly impenetrable barrier between us and other animals.
As the philosopher Rene Descartes wrote in the late 1600s: "animals are mere machines but man stands alone".
Charles Darwin was one of the first to speak out against this idea. In The Descent of Man, he wrote: "There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties and that all the differences are differences of degree, not of kind."
He later extensively documented the similarities between human facial expressions and those of animals.

In 2003 de Waal published research looking into how capuchin monkeys reacted to an unfair payment.
After two monkeys had completed the same task, both would happily accept a cucumber as a reward. But when one was randomly given a more delicious grape instead, the other was not happy and began to refuse the cucumber.
Chimpanzees behave in a similar way. But what if a chimpanzee controlled the reward instead of a human experimenter?
We know that for the most part, they act selfishly when it comes to food. They are known to steal or hide it from rivals.
However, a 2013 study found that they also know the value of cooperation. They will share food even if there is nothing obviously in it for them. The study found that they will split a reward equally, just as humans do.

These insights all suggest that chimpanzees are socially aware and understand each other's behaviour.

Chimpanzees even have culture. They aren't composing symphonies but culture can be defined as passing on knowledge, habits and transmission from one generation to the next.
You won't see a chimp cooking a gourmet meal for his best friends but that misses the point. De Waal argues that chimps completely depend on cultural and social learning.

Morality, consciousness and culture were all once considered to be uniquely human, but chimps have them all. So what is left?
Language, clearly. We can write whole books on the topic, chimps do not. We cannot look into their eyes and ask them how they are and expect a verbal response.
Nevertheless, it's clear that they have a complex system of communication.
Chimpanzees lack the vocal structures to make the sounds we do. But language is more than spoken words: gestures and facial expressions also play an important role. When you take that into account, chimps suddenly don't look so bad at language.

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So I think you get the idea with part 1. We're not as unique as we like to think we are.

Or are we?

Article 2 gives a bit of a different conclusion:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150706...ans-unique

Charles Darwin, in his book The Descent of Man, wrote that humans and animals only differ in degree, not kind. This still stands true but Suddendorf says that it is precisely these gradual changes that make us extraordinary and has led to "radically different possibilities of thinking".

...

as far as we know, we are the only creatures trying to understand where we came from. We also peer further back in time, and further into the future, than any other animal. What other species would think to ponder the age of the universe, or how it will end?"

This article acknowledges the points made in the first, but argues that the differences between humans and other animals, however miniscule they are on the face of it, actually add up to incredibly significant things.

Some quotes:

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Ever since we learned to write, we have documented how special we are. The philosopher Aristotle marked out our differences over 2,000 years ago. We are "rational animals" pursuing knowledge for its own sake. We live by art and reasoning, he wrote.
Much of what he said stills stands. Yes, we see the roots of many behaviours once considered uniquely human in our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. But we are the only ones who peer into their world and write books about it.

Evidence in the form of stone tools suggests that for about 100,000 years our technology was very similar to the Neanderthals. But 80,000 years ago something changed.
"The Neanderthals had an impressive but basically routine material record for a hominid. Once H. sapiens started behaving in a strange, [more sophisticated] way, all hell broke loose and change became the norm," Tattersall says.
We started to produce superior cultural and technological artefacts. Our stone tools became more intricate. One study proposes that our technological innovation was key for our migration out of Africa. We started to assign symbolic values to objects such as geometrical designs on plaques and cave art. By contrast, there is little evidence that any other hominins made any kind of art.

Comparative studies between humans and chimps show that while both will cooperate, humans will always help more. Children seem to be innate helpers. They act selflessly before social norms set in. Studies have shown that they will spontaneously open doors for adults and pick up "accidentally" dropped items. They will even stop playing to help. Their sense of fairness begins young.

We know that chimpanzees also work together and share food in apparently unselfish ways. However, Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, says they will only cooperate if there is something in it for them*.

*I feel I need to point out here somewhat of a contradiction. The other article states the exact opposite. Which one is right?

Something must have happened in our evolution, Tomasello says, to make humans increasingly reliant on each other. Our brains needed fuel to get bigger and so collaborative hunting may have played a key role in that. Our advanced teamwork may simply reflect our long history of working together to get food.

Chimps can knowingly deceive others, so they understand the world view of others to some extent. However, they cannot understand others' false beliefs. In a chimpanzee version of the Sally-Anne task, researchers found that they understand when a competitor is ignorant of the location of food, but not when they have been misinformed. Tomasello puts it like this: chimpanzees know what others know and what others can see, but not what others believe.  

This tells us something profound about ourselves. While we are not the only creatures who understand that others have intentions and goals, "we are certainly unique in the level of abstractness with which we can reason about others' mental states", says Katja Karg, also of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

There's more to it, Thomas Suddendorf, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Queensland in Australia is keen to point out. We have a fundamental urge to link our minds together. "This allows us to take advantage of others' experiences, reflections and imaginings to prudently guide our own behaviour.
"We link our scenario-building minds into larger networks of knowledge." This in turn helps us to accumulate information through many generations.

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Again, an interesting read if you have the time.


So after all that, I will ask the question: Are we really unique? Or are we just another animal, albeit one with slightly higher brain functions than anything else on this planet?

Guess I'll turn that into a poll, seems to be the trend lately!

*edit if a mod could change the word "how" to "what" in the poll, that'd be great.

[ignoramus]

Excellent dude!
More importantly, Naps, tell us what you feel is your own defining "unique" quality! (and we'll tell you ours)

[Napoléon]

More importantly, Naps, tell us what you feel is your own defining "unique" quality! (and we'll tell you ours)

Wait are you talking about me as a person? The thread's about humans as a species being unique... I thought that was obvs?

Unless you're just asking for the sake of it, in which case, it's blatantly the fact I have a pink username...

[rado84]

Sadly, we're animals. The things a human being can do to another human being no lower animal can do to another lower animal. For instance, no lower animal has ever killed or tortured another lower animal over religious bullshit.
May be the only difference between us and them is that we can speak.

[Napoléon]

May be the only difference between us and them is that we can speak.

I think this is the biggest thing, certainly. Language, as the second article points out is what allows us to essentially pass information from generation to generation. It's this passing down of information that allows humans to snowball their collective knowledge, leading to more and more advancements every generation.

[abaris]

Sadly, we're animals. The things a human being can do to another human being  no lower animal can do to another lower animal. For instance, no lower animal has ever killed or tortured another lower animal over religious bullshit.
May be the only difference between us and them is that we can speak.

What's to be sad over being an animal? And there are actual instances where animals kill fellow animals. Chimps are known to form death squads hunting down rival groups. We're most closely related to them, so it's no big surprise we've taken violence to a whole new level.

My understanding of the whole issue at hand is, we are unique, but every species is unique in their own way. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.

[Napoléon]

Ever seen a cat ripping a mouse to shreds? Yeah, humans ain't the only ones who are capable of torture.

[Dystopia]

The idea that humans are special is an irrational one and it strikes me as one of the biggest causes of stupidity in the world. As a law student, I know and witness how anthropocentric the legal system is - You are either a Human or an object (legally), and anything that isn't a human is an object by definition. Certainly Humans are smart and different in some sort of way, but we are not special or anything like that. I find the idea that we are to be idiotic and holding us back. Abrahamic religions are set up on the premise that Humans are god's special snowflake, and that's something that still impacts our way of thinking. Just think about it, we have occupied all of the earth's territory (except Antarctica but there's still buildings and research being done there), done most wars and committed the hugest evils, but we still see ourselves as better?

[rado84]

Ever seen a cat ripping a mouse to shreds? Yeah, humans ain't the only ones who are capable of torture.

That's pure instinct. But have you ever seen a cat to kill another cat because the other cat doesn't believe in "the right" god? Or because the other cat is gay?

[AFTT47]

I didn't even look at the poll because it isn't an either/or question. Obviously, we are animals like any other. Equally obvious though, our level of intelligence puts us in a totally different class. We are capable of advancement from generation to generation. We will eventually be able to direct our own evolution and improve our own species. We can become god-like. None of the other animals can do this.