(February 10, 2010 at 10:09 pm)Pippy Wrote: No, the human curiosity is not assigned or decided upon by us, I don't think. All humans are curious, it is a "specialness" that we did not seem to decide upon.
We are not the one's that decided on our own curiosity ultimately, no. We can thank biological and - perhaps a bit of cultural - evolution for that.
I'm talking about the title of "special", whether something is worthy of being "special" or not is entirely up to us on this planet for no other life forms - at least yet - on this planet of doing that as far as we know.
With or without curiosity... it is US who give us our own title of "special" - who else does? It's the same with all moral values, they're subjective. Some may think humans are "special" others may not. There are many ways that other animals are special too... we are just the one's that make the definitions and decide that we're more special - if we do indeed decide that. Who else does?
Quote:Here is another angle: Where is the specialness? I heard a new report yesterday that the amount of DNA that is unique to humans is only about 1.5%. The number used to be higher and it has been whittled down until recently it got so low. Where in that 1.5% of unique DNA is everything that differentiates us as human? Or is it not there, we are looking in the wrong place?
I think that we reached a point of evolution where we reached the snowball effect and were able to evolve culture, use tools, think intelligently... and most of all - a sophisticated language (in comparison to any other animals that may have some form of "language") - Then we just took off like a rocket I reckon. Evolutionary speed speaking I mean - because cultural evolution moves a lot faster than biological.
Seriously though... like Adrian says in the OP, there are many ways that other animals are superior to us. And yes we have curiosity and superior intellect - but for us to decide that that's "better" or more "special" than say, having the eyes of an eagle - that's just by our own judgement as humans! Who elses? Sure we can do a lot of good with our intellect... but we can do a lot of fucking bad too. I don't come to the conclusion that we are "special" or "better"... I think we're just different and we judge ourselves to be "special" or "better" - just because we can. And then we may say we're special because we're the only species that can judge ourselves as special - but what's so special about that? Other species are unique too. We just say we're special.
EvF
