Social Darwinism: Right or Wrong

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

??????
Why not then just run around in jungle with spears hunting your food?

What makes a human so different from an animal is, that we have a grasp of our surrounding world which goes beyond instinct.
We may or may not understand it and we influence it and our fellow species in it.
We found means and knowlege to build skyskrapers and delusions to fly planes into them.

While a cockroach lives under your frige, which it doesn`t understand the concept of, because it is a lower species which doesnt have a bigger grasp of it`s surroundings.

Humans are special when compared with other species, and only because we understand nature it doesn`t mean we have to live by it`s cruel standerds.

By the way, you dont seem to understand evolution, it is the survival by the fittest and not the survival of the ruthless.
The survival of those who best addapt to their surroundings and not of those who exterminate others.

This is quite a thoughtful response, reflective on the nature of what makes humans special.

Your suggestion is that it's whatever goes beyond instinct. I suppose that means intellect- the ability to rationalize and have logical thought. Self-awareness, maybe?

So I presume there's [humans] in category 1, and [non-humans] in category 2. You assume this is a clean, neat way to delineate, but neurological studies show this is not the case. Many animals, especially higher primates (I've been doing a lot of research on the PFC, structural granularity and brain development in higher primates lately) show some very similar functions to human beings. Ie, the rudimentary skills of what human beings do, from metacognition to reasoning to even higher level emotions like jealousy and depression.

So the science disagrees with such a neat categorization.

But there's another problem with this position: That we base our own special treatment based on our mental performance, but babies, who fail to have the special mental abilities as grown ups, we still give special protection.

In many ways, a dog is said to be as intelligent as a 2 year old human. So by your own logic, wouldn't we treat dogs more valuable than 1 year olds? This is the second problem with your position.

There are more, but they are much more sophisticated, and frankly my brain is fried. I'll revisit tomorrow.

But in summary I think because of these reasons, we cannot base the idea that humans are special simply because they are smart. Einstein would therefore be more valuable than George Bush. A child with down syndrome would be less valuable than a healthy child. An infant would be less valuable than an adult. This reasoning for anthropic value fails.

You mentioned something else: That my position is survival of the ruthless. But I don't believe this is true. Because I believe all humans are equal, and humans are equal to animals, I believe that since we have no problem selectively breeding, spaying, neutering and even putting down dogs and cats, we can do it to humans.

Not to be ruthless. We are not ruthless when we do it to pets.

We do it to manage our population. If our population grows more than we can feed it, we will have to manage it. If crime becomes a problem, we have to manage it. If diabetes or other issues become a problem, we have to manage it.

This is not ruthlessness. This is simply the state of nature- to survive and reproduce the species.