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What’s the powerful argument to this?

SkepticalScience

Thinker
S
Joined
Jul 2, 2003
Messages
225
Sorry for spamming the JREF boards this morning, but I had a bunch of questions this weekend! Anyway, I was reading an essay by Richard Dawkins this weekend that started by showing this hypothetical letter:

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Sir,
You appeal for money to save the gorillas. Very laudable, no doubt. But it doesn't seem to have occurred to you that there are thousands of human children suffering on the very same continent of Africa. There'll be time enough to worry about gorillas when we've taken care of every last one of the kiddies. Let's get our priorities right, please!
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He then reworks that letter to say this:

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Sir,
You appeal for money to save the gorillas. Very laudable, no doubt. But it doesn't seem to have occurred to you that there are thousands of aardvarks suffering on the very same continent of Africa. There'll be time enough to worry about gorillas when we've saved every last one of the aardvarks. Let's get our priorities right, please!
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He then continues to say this:

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This second letter could not fail to provoke the question: What's so special about aardvarks? A good question, and one to which we should require a satisfactory answer before we took the letter seriously. Yet the first letter, I suggest, would not for most people provoke the equivalent question: What's so special about humans? As I said, I don't deny that this question, unlike the aardvark question, very probably has a powerful answer.
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My question is, what is the powerful argument for the “specialness” of humans? Like Dawkins, I’m sure there is one too, but I am just not sure I know what it is.

Thanks!
SS
 
SkepticalScience said:
My question is, what is the powerful argument for the “specialness” of humans? Like Dawkins, I’m sure there is one too, but I am just not sure I know what it is.
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It seems to me that we register confusion regarding the second letter but not the first due to the fact that we ourselves are human, and not necessarily due to any specialness of humans.

Imagine if gorillas could read. It looks to me like both letters would have the same impact for them.

Not that I disagree that humans have 'specialness', but I don't think that Dawkins' scenario in and of itself demonstrates anything other than the fact that humans are special in the opinion of humans.
 
SkepticalScience said:
...snip...

My question is, what is the powerful argument for the “specialness” of humans? Like Dawkins, I’m sure there is one too, but I am just not sure I know what it is.

Thanks!
SS
Click to expand...

I actually don't think there is one unless you count survival as the reason for treating humans as special. In other words you are a human (I assume - sorry if I'm wrong) so you want to ensure you have more of a chance of surviving it's better for your chance of survival if humans can't be shoot like any other animal or used for food etc. so we act in such a way to prevent that i.e. we consider humans special.

Indeed I'd say our history actually shows that we don't have an innate sense that humans as a species are special, that sense of specialness seems to be reserved for our "family" it's just we've culturally been extended the meaning of family for quite some time.
 
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I think we do have an innate sense that humans as a species are special. It's just that the farther you get away from your immediate family, the less you're going to care. My son is extremely important to me to save. My relative's kids are very important, though not so much as my own. Down the list are my neighbors' kids, then kids in my city, country, then kids on the other side of the world. Down further are other species. I do care about other species, just not as much.
 
Every single gorilla is about 60000 times more special than you or me.
 
I'm prepared to bet my genome is unique in the history of the universe.

I'm a threatened species.

Nuke the pandas! More bamboo for ME!
 
SkepticalScience said:
My question is, what is the powerful argument for the “specialness” of humans? Like Dawkins, I’m sure there is one too, but I am just not sure I know what it is.
Click to expand...

Let me suggest making a slightly different claim, namely that humans are special to humans. Put in those terms, it's really not so hard to figure out why that's the case. Similarly, I would expect gorillas to be special to gorillas, and aardvarks to be special to aardvarks.
 
SkepticalScience said:
My question is, what is the powerful argument for the “specialness” of humans? Like Dawkins, I’m sure there is one too, but I am just not sure I know what it is.
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Sentience? Theory of Mind? Or is it just that we mate with humans and hence want to keep some around?
 
logical muse said:
Sentience? Theory of Mind? Or is it just that we mate with humans and hence want to keep some around?
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And there's nothing wrong with that. We're on the cusp of resurrecting extinct species, and of constructing our own shortly thereafter. Oops, I mean we have been able to do that for several years.

So what's so special about saving what old schoolers in the 21st century used to call "gorillas"?
 
My question is, what is the powerful argument for the “specialness” of humans? Like Dawkins, I’m sure there is one too, but I am just not sure I know what it is.

Thanks!
SS
Click to expand...

Use of tools, machinery, and the ability to worship something we cannot prove exists. We can be creative, abstract, and downright malicious.

Just the complexity of our brains compared to all others is what sets us apart. Factor in the other extremes, and how can we not be "special"?

We have yet to see if we can overcome that ultimate obstacle that may ensure our survival, or doom us to the looming fact that all other species have gone extinct. Well, all extinct species have gone extinct...:boxedin:
 
Eos, cool.
But by the above criterion many species are "special". Elephants are the largest land animal, they have their tusks and the trunks and their behaviors that are unique to them. They could call all these things special and suggest that this separates them from the 'animals'. What about our distinctness is non-arbitrary?

There are plenty of animals that have claims to being unique in some way. I wonder why we consider those things about us that may be unique to give us some moral superiority.
I think if we're going to answer that question somehow, we need to first answer this question: "Why is it wrong to do X to a human?" If we can know that, then we can ask, "Does species Y share that property in a meaningful way?"

Personally, I think that for many speices, gorillas included, I'd answer yes for many variations of X. Not all, however.
And for many other species I'd answer no for many variations of X. Again, not all, however.
 
Eos of the Eons said:
Use of tools, machinery, and the ability to worship something we cannot prove exists. We can be creative, abstract, and downright malicious.
Click to expand...

I'd say that apart from the worshiping then all the other special qualities you list can be found among other animals, and all of them are found in chimpanzees. (And perhaps elephants do worship the great trunk in the sky.. ;) )

Eos of the Eons said:
Just the complexity of our brains compared to all others is what sets us apart. Factor in the other extremes, and how can we not be "special"?
...snip...
Click to expand...
That isn't really a reason for us to be considered special, unless by special we just mean "extreme in some way"?
 
The Key is the sentence "Let's get our priorities right, please!"

"Our" and "Priorities".

"our" is a partisan word. The stronger in the group shall win the debate and decide the "specialness"-attribute and thus settle the "priorities".

"our priority" indicate a common goal.

If the arguement happens in the "Club for protection of Gorilla, and disdian in human/aardvarks", we would all be able to easily identify the "specialness"

To answer "What's so special about humans?"
Just ask "Who am I?". And get your priorities and affiliation right.
 
Jyera said:
The Key is the sentence "Let's get our priorities right, please!"...snip...

To answer "What's so special about humans?"
Just ask "Who am I?". And get your priorities and affiliation right.
Click to expand...

I disagree - that just gives an answer for why I am special to me. It doesn't follow from that that I should regard other humans special, in fact if I use the "I'm me" as the bases for why I am special it means that others humans aren't special since they are not me.
 
To answer one part of the OP, which I don't think is the intended point in fact, I don't really agree with the proposition that everything else should go on the back burner until all human suffering is relieved. No spending on art, music, advanced scientific research, no space programme, no designer clothes or makeup or jewellery.... everything beyond necessities goes on somebody else's necessities until these are all provided for? The implications for culture and scientific advancement are just too horrendous. I'm for some degree of compromise.

But the real point being made isn't that, and it's a very valid one. Why favour our own species over others? I think it's to do with self-awareness. I think humans are self-aware at a level that other animals aren't, quite, in particular the ability to anticipate their own death, and the ability to rationalise the situation they are in and realise that it doesn't have to be like this. So if I saw a human in need, I'd empathise far more than with a cat or a gorilla in need. I'd feel sad, but I could cope with the idea of relieving the animal's suffering by euthanasia, if necessary, while the idea of killing a person just because help couldn't be found for them is anathema.

Rolfe.
 
Roboramma said:
Eos, cool.
But by the above criterion many species are "special". Elephants are the largest land animal, they have their tusks and the trunks and their behaviors that are unique to them. They could call all these things special and suggest that this separates them from the 'animals'. What about our distinctness is non-arbitrary?

There are plenty of animals that have claims to being unique in some way. I wonder why we consider those things about us that may be unique to give us some moral superiority.
I think if we're going to answer that question somehow, we need to first answer this question: "Why is it wrong to do X to a human?" If we can know that, then we can ask, "Does species Y share that property in a meaningful way?"

Personally, I think that for many speices, gorillas included, I'd answer yes for many variations of X. Not all, however.
And for many other species I'd answer no for many variations of X. Again, not all, however.
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all exept the important quality that defines our uniqueness:
The ability and curiosity to ask "why are we unique" and expect answers...
 
rwguinn said:
all exept the important quality that defines our uniqueness:
The ability and curiosity to ask "why are we unique" and expect answers...
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We're unique because we... think we're unique??

eta: Actually if you change that to: "we think we're unique because we think we're unique" then I'll agree with that. For what it's worth. ;)
Of course there are other more specific answers to why we think we're unique. Like because it's an attractive idea (and then, "Why do human minds find it to be an attractive idea?").
 
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Because considering one another special is a mutually beneficial arrangement. Animals can only reciprocate such an arrangement to a lesser degree (Some more than others, which is why pets are more special than vermin)
 
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