(April 26, 2018 at 12:31 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:(April 26, 2018 at 12:16 pm)Hammy Wrote: The point is we're no more "special" than any other animal. We're creatures that evolved, and evolved intelligence.
It begs the question to merely define our specialness as the way we are, as intelligent beings.
What I mean is there isn't a sound argument for saying that we're special.
The most we could do is define ourselves that way for pragmatic reasons. There may be reasons for it to be useful to consider us different, or special, to split us. That's different to saying that we're actually special.
All creatures are unique and special in their own way. Like I said, there could have been other animals that developed the technology that we do if we hadn't killed and fucked them out of existence. Let's not compare apples to oranges: yes we can't breed with Chimps but we could breed with neanderthals. And we did. And what makes us "special" compared to them could merely be the fact that we fucked and murdered them out of existence. If it were not for us, it could have perhaps been neanderthals that ended up going to the moon and inventing calculus instead of homo sapiens sapiens.
That's a really bad analogy lol. And a strawman considering I'm not saying we're identical, or even essenially identical. It just makes no sense on an atheistic basis to say we're "special" for anything but pragmatic reasons. From a biological perspective we're just another species that has evolved. Nature doesn't give a fuck about the fact we sent people to the moon. We give a fuck about it. It begs the question to define ourselves as special based on our own judgements about what it means to be special lol. It's total speciesism. And special pleading.
Whether nature gives a fuck means nothing. We are we and not the rest of nature, nor are we spokes beings for nature. We likely owe our existence to our ability to defied nature in a manner other organism can’t.
We are certainly more special than any other animal for the our purpose of forming a working relationship to design a Tool. You simply prefer an loose concept of similarity based on personal aesthetic reasons, and then pick working definition of similarity to support the aesthetic taste, rather than give weight to pragmatic reasons which raise the importance of dissimilarity.
Ask the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs how special it thought they were. Ask the dinosaurs that are still alive how they mastered the planet.
Yes, we have a cognition to invent very complex tools. YES. BUT NO, sorry, even with our advanced knowledge it will not make us infinite. Humans ARE NOT superior. We simply have different adaptations and those 'tools" we invent, can lead to both good and bad. Oil created our industrial revolution, but it is now coming back to bite us in the ass in climate change. Not just harming other species but us as well.
