Why humans are so distinct from other species?

[Severan]

The things that distinguish us are an emergent property of the interaction between building blocks of behavior. The building blocks of our behaviors are individually an emergent property of our organic neurological chemistry. We can reduce our distinction by arguing that since the building blocks of our behavior are individually not too different from those of many other animals, and therefore we are not very different from chimpanzees or dolphins. But we can also extend the argument and claim since our organic neurological chemistry is little different from a horseshoe crab, therefore we are not very different from horseshoe crab, or a velvet worm, or a flat worm.

Ultimately, we are all neutrons, protons and electrons, so we are little different from saw dust.

In biology, these is a camp called lumpers, and a camp called splitters.

Human = saw dust would be lumping carried to obscure extreme.

You see where this is going.

Yet much as both we and gorilla are not much different from saw dust in some way of seeing, it is we who count the gorillas we didn't kill and whether that number represent enough genetic diversity for these to be gorillas in 100 years, and not the gorillas us.

Clearly the difference in emergent property is these.

So the distinction is the emergent capacity to let us count, organize, to learn and graspmmore complex behaviors.

We're likely the only animals who know that we're made of neutrons and protons.