The difference of Man (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, February 16, 2013, 12:21 (4094 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The classification is irrelevant, except that some humans think it's an insult to their intelligence. What matters is the subjective value we attach to the similarities and differences, and the subjective interpretation we put on them.-Exactly. I am insisting that the subjective interpretations that come from insisting we are primates first and humans secondly, degrades the impression of our human-ness and makes us seem less special. We are very special. -"Degrades...seem less special..." in whose eyes? If we are special because of our huge brains and the astonishing feats we accomplish with them, do these huge brains and astonishing feats seem less special to YOU when Mr X says we are primates? And if Mr X doesn't think we are "very special", will he change his mind because you tell him he's human and not a primate? You can make out a subjective case for us being very special even though we're primates, and he can make out a subjective case for our not being very special even though we're humans. I don't think these subjective interpretations will be changed by wrangling over terminology. And I'd still like to know your definition of "primate", so that I can understand why you think it's degrading.-DAVID: There is no evolutionary theory that demands our appearance on Earth. The primates from whom we descended are still travelling along happily unchanged, unevolved beyond their ancient and also current state. -I agree. And what is the evolutionary theory that DEMANDS the appearance of dinosaurs and dodos? All we know is that they happened. What is the evolutionary theory that DEMANDS any form of life beyond bacteria, which have travelled along happily since the earliest days, and will almost certainly survive us? If demand is the criterion, then every multicellular organism is special. However, I do agree that our brains have enabled us to achieve feats far beyond the reach of any of our fellow animals (a term which incidentally I do not use derogatorily, and which I do not consider to be in any way a degradation of my human-ness or my special-ness). But that is a long way from saying that we are the goal of evolution (see below).
 
DAVID: For a very unexplained reason our line took off and evolved well beyond what was required for survival. Why was that? Even you will not accept chance. What other choice is there but a driven directionality. What or who drove it?-I will not accept chance as the force that inexplicably put together the mechanisms for life and evolution, any more than I will accept an equally inexplicable, self-made, self-aware, eternal maker of universes and evolutionary mechanisms. But once those mechanisms were in place, busily combining, adapting and innovating, I have no more reason to believe in directionality than I have to believe in randomness. As I have said repeatedly, the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution itself does not seem to me to denote a single goal, and so I find your divine teleology no more (and no less) believable than the view that the mechanisms simply followed their own random course, or they were imbued with an inventive "intelligence" of their own, or a possible designer fiddled around with his building blocks to see what he could come up with.