Are All People Human?

from:
The Prerational and Premoral Choice to Live
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/0757_3.shtml

Ed Thompson in Post 63:
Will is a part of the intellect. It is commensurate with our conceptual faculties. Animals, lacking conceptual faculties altogether, have NO free will. Animals are beings that "life happens to" -- they are not conscious planners, dreamers of alternative (improved) realities, etc. They skip along from desire to desire -- and that is ALL that they do, in their entire lives.

You cannot get inside someone else's head and watch it work, but you can observe the consequences from the outside. The huge numbers of hominids and homonoids that have appeared over the last million years or so have produced some fascinating artifacts -- cave paintings, cathedrals, arrowheads, airliners -- but not all anthropoids create these things, though many seem trainable to repeat them. On the other hand, I have seen bears riding bicycles (which they did not create), so it is not clear to me just what makes a person a human being... or what difference it makes.

I think that the touchstone question is: "What have you done?"

Post 1

Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 10:27am

Catchy title, Michael.

;-)

First off, to be clear, you can have a "human being" and you can have a human "being." When a human being is being human, then you may call them human.

But your question is, though not in so many words: When a member of the species, H. sapiens, is not performing that activity that is uniquely human (exercising that potential, rational faculty) -- are they, at that moment, human?

Of course they are. The definition of a human being doesn't include always being conscious and rational (otherwise we would cease to be 'human', whenever we fell asleep!). The correct definition of a human is ...

The individual animal with the potentiality for rationality.

This definition is a contextually-absolute statement about factual relationships. It effectively differentiates man from animal (the other type of sentient life form on planet earth).

As to bears riding bikes, this is inconsequential to the salient point -- bears don't EVER learn to ride bikes on their own. It is only with the 'help' of humans -- along with the possibility of rote-memorization -- that animals can 'appear' to have rational faculties.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson
on 7/04, 10:30am)

Post 2

Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 12:09pm

In a way, I agree with Marotta that possibly the a better definition for human is needed. Will may be a function of a mind, but what has to be understood, atleast for me, is that Will cannot be seperate from a mind that has it. Now, animals do have a Will, but not free will. So, what makes a non-human animal's will different from ours? And I think Ed hit upon it easily enough, it's that we can plan ahead. I remember as a kid planning and figuring out things most kids, and probably most people, did not. I could imagine how things like atoms and such might work, and I did ask questions about them, but more specifically, I wanted to know for my own benefit. No other animal can do that. No bear on a bicycle, nor any trick pony can ask questions or develop means to answer them. In a way, human will, or free will, is reflecting the nature of a rational mind itself, and it's ability to improve and add to itself.

Most animals do not improve nor have the ability to improve. Take fish for example. My dad use to be an aquarium nut and had many different sorts of fish, salt and fresh water kinds. He liked Discus fish for freshwater and angel fish for the saltwater aquariums. In all the years of owning such animals, none of them ever showed a means to improve themselves, not even the fancy acting blue wrasses we had to keep the angel fish clean of parasites, which do have a behavior for making dens under rocks. Besides fish, my dad had several dogs, many of which seemed quite bright as dogs go, but none ever learned to improve themselves. All the pets we've had just simply acted as they did per their makeup. Even my own pet dachshund, which is particular of how his bedding is laid before he goes to sleep on it, has not showed any real signs of intelligence and the free will that accompanies it. Often it is the case that humans assume such animals must be intelligent for their behaviors to operate. But, if that were true, then crickets must be geniuses for calculating the distance between each other in the summer, when they mate, which they solely use sound and no other method to find each other. (BTW, scientists have been studying this calculatory behavior of the cricket and found it only has four neurons throughout its body which allows us to do this feature in its behavior. No real intelligence on that front.) So, really the majority of what it seeming to be intelligence for animals isn't really intelligence since one cannot append the methods of conceptualization nor the passing of knowledge to it. One can assume this is similar for humans, but that would only be true if no methods of conceptualization and passing of knowledge did not exist. Then again, the PoMos claim all knowledge is simply a 'narrative.' ;-P

-- Bridget

Post 3

Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 12:39pm

Very well said, Bridget.

And Michael, to make my point plain ...

I think that the touchstone question is: "Of what are you capable?"

;-)

Ed

Post 4

Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 6:16pm

Dagny: "They're human aren't they?"
Francisco: "Are they?"

Dagny: "They want to live, don't they?"
Galt: "Do they?"

Plato defined man as a featherless biped.
The next day, Diogenes came up waving a plucked chicken, yelling, "Here is Plato's man!"

The taxonomic fallacy claims that all featherless bipeds have the potential for reason.

Julian Jaynes theorized that until about 8,000 years ago, there was no "I" possible. We can see the vestiges of the birth of "I" in the differences between the Iliad and the Odyssey. Odysseus lies. He has a hidden agenda. He holds one goal while pretending another. That was impossible in a not-much-earlier age. Even in our time, people "hear voices" because they do not identify the source of those "voices" as inside their own heads.

Is a being with no sense of self human?

Post 5

Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 8:19pm

The people that are nonhuman to me are those that strip away the humanity of other humans. Re: Hitler, Stalin, etc. To consider other humans nonhuman is an act of betrayal to one's own humanity because it allows for the bad to come through.

Normally, even in group settings, people are aware of humanity. It's the balance of power in the relationship that is off-kilter.

Post 6

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - 9:58am

I think where Michael gets the idea right is that the being human isn't simply our biological components, but rather the content of our minds. I've seen people in my brief life that you could consider as mentally featureless as the fish my dad raised by their inability to 'wrap their heads' around simple issues like politics, complex causal events (stuff at work that wasn't easily explainable by a single cause and such...), and similar-in-content issues. Hell, most of such folks have been my bosses (Hehe...), and I've often had to explain to them in their own mental frame of reference what was being said in a memo or what some exec wanted. It's a strange world out there when some folks that are humans but not to their fullest advantage. Sometimes we call them idiots, other times leeches, and what-not. I simply call them self-destructive individuals. Then again, I'm nuts according to many folks. ^_^

-- Bridget

Post 7

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - 4:53pm

I've seen people in my brief life that you could consider as mentally featureless as the fish my dad raised by their inability to 'wrap their heads' around simple issues... stuff at work that wasn't easily explainable by a single cause and such... Sometimes we call them idiots, other times leeches ...

Bridget's post reminded me of one of my favorite Mary Tyler Moore, episodes, Feeb. MTM was a 70s sitcom and "Mary Richards" was the ideal girl next door: brave, talented, social adept, totally non-confrontational, loyal to her co-workers, a smoother of feathers and waters. But in Feeb, May had to face the truth about a "feeble" individual.

Synopses from some online video sales outlets:
"Feeb," illustrating the dangers of feeling sorry for someone, as Mary arranges to have a klutzy ex-waitress (Barbara Sharma) take a job at the TV station...
... in "Feeb," she feels compelled to write a letter of recommendation for an extraordinarily incompetent secretary ...
An incompetent waitress is fired after Mary complains about her poor service - and Mary feels obliged to hire her when she applies for an assistant's job at WJM-TV. (The end credits roll with Mary explaining to Murray what a 'feeb' is.)

That last scene is actually a three-way dialog, with one of the other regulars, another newsroom clerical, giving Mary lines, to which she replies, "Feeb!" It was a side of Mary Richards we never saw -- or saw again -- as Mary is the kind of girl who would be put upon a thousand times before she said anything... and that is what happened. It was not just that the ex-waitress was incompetent as a clerical (which she was), but that she did not care about the job. The feeb left her desk at the end of the day with work undone... which Mary finished... until she realized that this was now a pattern... and that it was not just exploitation, but exploitation in service to incompetence. I only saw the episode once, when it first aired 23 years ago, but as you can tell, it stayed with me, resonating powerfully with the precepts of Objectivism. Actually, many of our virtues were reflected in the MTM show. The writing was excellent.

Moving away from the office and into the metaphysical... They say that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, but H.G. Wells wrote "Country of the Blind" (http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2157/) to show that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is considered insane. The fact is that we are "sighted" and they are "blind" and "sight" is the sine qua non of humanity.

Humans are rational, by definition.

Post 8

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - 6:57pm

In post 5, thus Jenna Wong spake:

The people that are nonhuman to me are those that strip away the humanity of other humans.

The first time I saw an autopsy photo of an anencephalic newborn, I wondered if this dead baby was still human. It came from a human seed and it had eyes and nose and mouth and perfect fingers and toes -- it was born barely alive.

Because it had no brain, I didn't consider it fully-human. Which I think is not quite the angle taken by the question "Are All People Human?" Since the baby never got to be people, I must look further.

Once I helped cook and serve a special banquet of the local community of severely disabled young people. It was their special night. I saw things that shocked me. I saw a tiny tuxedoed handsome faced fellow about 23. In a knot of clenched limbs his body stretched out 3 feet on his gurney. And he screamed. A hoarse screech, never before heard by my ears.

Was this fellow human? His brain didn't do much more than keep his body breathing, eating, sleeping, shitting and pissing, and sometimes screaming. Was he a fellow human in a way that the anencephalic newborn was a fellow human . . . no, he had more humanity. Although the dead baby was human, only by virtue of its seed, its line, and not by virtue of its character or its expression, for it had neither. Over forty-eight hours the vestige of a brainstem kept the lungs moving, then they stopped.

So both monstrous, perhaps, and not-fully formed humans, and not able to be fully human, but only one to my mind a human being. The other a failed try.

Another being with monstrous deformities, the Elephant Man. Fully human? Yes, I say, fully human.

Then a parade of consciousless monsters, Clifford Olson, Andrei Chikatilo, Jeffrey Dahmer. Human beings? I say yes. Fully human? I say no.

I wonder if I (or if many of us) have ever spent time in the company of a full-on psychopath. I do hope that some mixture of intuition, calculation, or a heightened ick factor would alert me to such a person.

So, I am not alert to the one kind of not quite fully human like the handsome gurney dude at the banquet (but remember, he was loved enough to be tuxedoed and spoon-fed). I am more alert for the nonempathic, psycho type. Jenna will correct me, but I think Damasio goes on a bit about a type of early brain injury that can result in an odd adolescent and adult syndrome: the kids so injured lose a bit of their frontal lobes, an emotional link to other people and the ability to learn from aversion -- they cannot be conditioned.

Of course these guys make awful mistakes and blunders in their lives. They cannot read or predict social consequences. They cannot love. They are, in an almost autistic way, missing a tile or two in the floor of fully-human cognition -- "aquired sociopathy" says a note in "Frontal Lobe Syndromes" from Emedicine.com. A childhood blow to the head and they are fucked for life.

Human beings? Yes. Fully human? Maybe not.

Jenna stresses 'humanity.' It's a good rough guide for my attitude towards people -- I am alert to inhumanity. It is a sense I hope to further develop.

So, are all people human? Yes, by definition -- but not all people are fully human. Some are defective. Some walk and talk and eat just like us, but are sociopaths.

Post 9

Thursday, July 6, 2006 - 5:24am

Bridget wrote:

And I think Ed hit upon it easily enough, it's that we can plan ahead.

Well so can some animals, but I don't want to argue that. What I am genuinely interested in is the reasoning behind why human cognition is considered to be a difference in kind from animal cognition and not a matter of degree. Can anyone elaborate or point me to a resource?

Thanks,

Bob

(Edited by Mr Bob Mac on 7/06, 5:35am)

Post 10

Thursday, July 6, 2006 - 6:37am

You might want to look at Mortimer J. Adler's The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes.

Post 11

Thursday, July 6, 2006 - 10:22am

Or look at the International Space Station.

Ed

Post 12

Thursday, July 6, 2006 - 2:00pm

I found an essay written by Adler that outlines his views on this topic called "The confusion of the animalists". He argues many issues, but central to his argument is the following assertions:

Only man is a rational animal with free will.

Only man has the power of conceptual thought and the power of free choice in selection of means for the accomplishment of a given objective.

We should be able to determine from the observable behavior of men and other animals whether only men have the power of conceptual thought and the power of free choice, or other animals also have these powers, even though to a somewhat diminished degree. If other animals do possess these powers, even to the slightest degree, then men and other animals differ in degree, not in kind.

all other species totally lack the power of conceptual thought

But he the apparently contradicts the third point above by stating

The solution of this problem -- whether the difference in kind between man and other animals is superficial or radical -- will never be found or even approached by means of experimental work on animals, but only through another kind of experimental work (on artificial intelligence) and through the construction of "thinking machines" which will simulate syntactical speech and be able to engage in conversation with human beings.

Seems a bit strange to state both in the same document. Anyway...

He defines the distinction between perceptual and conceptual thought as follows:

The power of perceptual thought does not extend to objects that are intrinsically imperceptible -- incapable of being perceived by the senses. In order to deal thoughtfully with such objects, it is necessary to have the power of conceptual thought, and with it the powers of conceptual abstraction and conceptual generalization.

Well, there's some evidence that seems to meet this criteria, but I'm not sure.

If the concept of "same-different" fits the criteria of conceptual, then Adler is wrong. While any two objects can be perceived as same or different, is the concept of "sameness" or "differentness" conceptual? To me, using the word "concept" indicates that it is conceptual, but I'm not sure because the concepts are related to objects, but it seems they are concepts no? One cannot directly perceive a generalized "sameness".

Bold added by me

Thompson, Oden, and Boysen (1997) have recently demonstrated that language-naive chimpanzees can judge relations between relations in a conceptual MTS task. This application of MTS differs from that previously used in studies of the same-different concept. The samples in Thompson et al.'s (1997) conceptual MTS problems consisted of either two identical items (e.g., AA) or two different items (e.g., AB). The chimpanzee was then required to choose from two alternatives: one of which consisted of two identical items (e.g., EE) and the other of which consisted of two different items (e.g., FG); none of the items appearing in the sample were members of the alternatives. This task thus required the chimpanzee to match a relation - which of the alternatives involved the same relation between its constituent items as that between the constituent items of the sample - and is thus decidedly more conceptual than the conventional MTS task. Thompson et al. (1997) found that chimpanzees can learn this task and, furthermore, that prior language training was not a prerequisite, although experience with arbitrary tokens that were consistently associated with abstract relations may be necessary.

Pepperberg (1987) has trained a language-trained grey parrot (Alex) to identify the specific difference between objects (matter, shape, or color). Alex learned to properly identify the dimension on which the objects differed at well above chance levels and to generalize this knowledge to novel objects. The bird's and the nonhuman primate's demonstrated abilities to learn and use an abstract relational concept make one thing clear: nonhuman animals are capable of conceptual feats heretofore thought to be solely within the ken of the human species.

(Edited by Mr Bob Mac on 7/06, 2:06pm)

Post 13

Friday, July 7, 2006 - 4:59am

Ed Thompson suggested: "Or look at the International Space Station."

I believe that what Ed means is that only humans could have constructed this, therefore only humans have the ability to create and use concepts.

Does Ed Thompson intend that the ability to construct a space station be the sine qua non of humanity? I'm in. I have my NASA id tag on a shelf along with other awards and mementos. Luke Setzer is in. But is Ed Thompson human? What has he done to construct a space station?

It is a fallacy to point to 6 billion bipeds and claim that they have the potential to do this, but have not actually do so, yet they are human. I could point to all the elephants in the world and make the same claim: they could, but they have not.

I agree that the ability to construct a space station reflects humanity. I maintain that not all featherless bipeds are human. Most of the billions of people are pre-conceptual or quasi-conceptual creatures similar to the chimpanzees cited above. They can be taught tasks that require concept formation, thus indicating the potential for rational thought. However, that standard apparently qualifies more than one species of primate, leaving the "humanists" with an unsolved problem.

I put "humanist" in quotes. I believe that in the near future -- if not the present -- the term will identify those collectivists who claim taxonomic standards for intelligent life.

Post 14

Friday, July 7, 2006 - 11:34am

====================
But is Ed Thompson human?
====================

Michael asks the question in terms of whether I've had a hand in bringing about the International Space Station. Because, he says, if I didn't -- then that begs the question (COULD I have had a hand in it? Did I have the potentiality in my being -- to be able to make a contribution to making of the Space Station?).

===================
It is a fallacy to point to 6 billion bipeds and claim that they have the potential to do this, but have not actually do so, yet they are human. I could point to all the elephants in the world and make the same claim: they could, but they have not.
===================

You CANNOT point to the elephants and claim that they have the potential for space construction -- because there is no precedent, and no plausible mechanism to appeal to. Extending the argument, you could then say the same about plants (that plants -- potentially -- could build a Space Station); which is, on its face, absurd.

===================
I agree that the ability to construct a space station reflects humanity. I maintain that not all featherless bipeds are human.

Most of the billions of people are pre-conceptual or quasi-conceptual creatures similar to the chimpanzees cited above.
===================

Here we disagree. What 'defines' humanity (or a "human") is an individual, rational potentiality (rather than an actuality). What 'conclusively demonstrates' humanity is actualized rational potentiality. In this conceptual framework (but not in yours), infants are still human. This is not a merely a (post facto) rationalization -- it is an honest (ie. noncontradictory) integration.

===================
They can be taught tasks that require concept formation, thus indicating the potential for rational thought. However, that standard apparently qualifies more than one species of primate, leaving the "humanists" with an unsolved problem.
===================

Here, Michael equates (some) folks with apes -- as if they are "incurable" of their chosen intellectual mitigations. One might make note of Michael's recent and well-put notion of the Failure-to-Thrive; and import a similar notion here: Failure-to-Think. This "failure" (of which humans are capable) however, is not "final."

If you put a man (any man) into a situation where his life depends on his rationality -- then he'll rise to the occasion. He'll use rationality as soon as he sees its immediate value. Some folks, due to culture, don't see the immediate (or long-term, for that matter) value of rationality. They "choose" an existence similar to trained apes.

And though this makes them less of a human "being" -- it does not make them less of a "human being."

Ed
[we can all be a little more fully human, if we choose to focus on that]

Post 15

Friday, July 7, 2006 - 11:20pm

An ape cannot be blamed for lack of power to reason beyond its condition. A man cannot escape blame for all the power to reason beyond his condition. -- Me

-- Bridget

Post 16

Saturday, July 8, 2006 - 10:19am

Ed Thompson hit the nail on the head:
If you put a man (any man) into a situation where his life depends on his rationality -- then he'll rise to the occasion. He'll use rationality as soon as he sees its immediate value. Some folks, due to culture, don't see the immediate (or long-term, for that matter) value of rationality. They "choose" an existence similar to trained apes.

Question Authorities
Why it's smart to disobey officials in emergencies
WIRED Issue 13.06 - June 2005
... Disobey authority. ... in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.
Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned flight ruled the day.
In fact, the people inside the towers were better informed and far more knowledgeable than emergency operators far from the scene. While walking down the stairs, they answered their cell phones and glanced at their BlackBerries, learning from friends that there had been a terrorist attack and that the Pentagon had also been hit. News of what was happening passed by word of mouth, and fellow workers pressed hesitating colleagues to continue their exit.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/start.html?pg=3

But what about the people who died? Some, were trapped, metaphysically dead in the instant of impact, but suffering through their demise. Others, it seems, perhaps another 2500, died because they were not rational. They were trained apes. Most people are.

Post 17

Monday, August 14, 2006 - 4:20pm

Humans are humans regardless, in all tense and purpose. No matter what they do, how ever evil or good. A lion is a lion because it cant be anything else without interference. A human might be a trained ape, but that human chose to behave that way. We all have a rational, we all reason, how ever unreasonable that person's reason is to you.

A lion may kill something and say hey, food. If we kill something, at the time we may not consider this but eventually we will say hey, what if? No other animal will ever ask, what if? The lion will not say, what if I started eating vegetables?

What if, I decided not to be a human, is that possible?

"I think therefore I am"

Post 18

Monday, August 14, 2006 - 6:41pm

No - I am, therefore I think....... one cannot cease to be a human and survive, so - that which you are, the human, the 'am', has no choice if it wishes to survive, but to think....

Post 19

Monday, September 18, 2006 - 8:35pm