Quote:

Originally Posted by Pythagorean

I don't believe it is aware of what it is doing as a real human would be aware.

This response means that you're not responding to my hypothetical scenario, though. I posited a group of chimps that IS aware, that has complex language, technology, is able to philosophize and think abstractly and rationally, and can communicate using language.

For my scenario to be worth pondering (and worth a response), then you have to imagine the scenario in which such a thing is possible. Because I'd argue that the ONLY thing that causes people to claim that reason or self-awareness or creativity is "what makes us human" is that these features happen not to be shared by other animals -- but if we suddenly discovered that they were shared by others, then you'd suddenly have to find another way of defining us. So my argument is that humans have to be defined by the ONE THING that cannot possibly be imagined in other animals -- and that is how we are biologically defined.

As I've said before, many times, this conflict lies at the very root of all philosophy -- the fact that we can't stand being things.

Are you saying that there are full humans and partial humans? Certainly this example is of a biologically defective human, but it's still without any possible argument a live offspring of our species. It's as human as anything else.

I have to side with the existentialists here:

Existence comes first. Essence second. You have to define a human by the most universal feature, not by an idealized essence.

Your argument that I've quoted looks very much like Aristotle's metaphysical ideas, which I find to be not a very useful way of understanding things anymore. A human being IS a material thing. We can describe non-material things like abstract thought as unique elements of the human experience -- but unless it's universal among all humans, sick or well, it cannot be said that this is what it means to be human.

Even if we were entirely explained in biological terms, it wouldn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that we feel and we experience. The biological mechanisms are incidental to discussions like this -- I think we can take them for granted and still have a conversation about meaning. But if you're going to define humans based on an essential quality, you have to alternatively and adequately define all the members of our families and communities who lack that quality.

I would certaintly consider them to be human beings. And I think that society at large would also consider them to be human.

And it's my intuition that we are not the only beings in the universe who posess such human-like sensitivities.

I don't understand how it can be as human as anything else.

As a society we take away certain rights from mentally handicapped persons.

Therefore those mentally handicapped persons are essentially deprived human rights, and justly so, since they are mere wards of a humane society and not capable of the full use of human reason.

I too have been considering the existentialist position in pondering this question. And while it is true that they hold existence to be prior to 'idealized' essence, they, as I recall, held historical authenticity not biological form to be the defining trait of man.

I wonder what in particular has changed that renders Aristotle as obsolete? It would seem that even a physicalist conception of man and cosmos must come to terms with at least some of Aristotle.

I would maintain that the mentally handicapped etc. are deprived of a full human nature by their organic defects.

Humans are beings who share statistical similarity to an "ideal" genome and it's phenotype; Which while not existing in any one of us is a sort of "average." (ideal here has no moral connotations)

Beyond this definition, there be dragons

And if these thinking, rational, linguistic creatures were not just chimps, but also included zebras, porpoises, and macaws, would you consider all of them to be human beings?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pythagorean
And it's my intuition that we are not the only beings in the universe who posess such human-like sensitivities.

I agree. But that is different than being an actual human.

Because 1) it is the offspring of human parents, and 2) we're all different in various ways; and in every population different traits have different distributions. This one happens to be an extreme example.

That is not a philosophical deprivation, though. It's a practical one. We also don't allow blind people to drive and people with seizure disorders to fly airplanes, but that isn't outlined by modern philosophy.

Uh, not quite. I can tell you that today alone I've had more than 10 patients with a fair amount of dementia who are not "mere wards of society", who live independently, who enjoy rights, and have severe impairment of their reasoning.

They held neither if I recall -- it was existence without qualities.

What limits do you place on a full human nature? If you're the tallest then you're not the shortest, if you're the strongest then you're not the quickest, etc. There are a whole range of attributes among us, and we all have a full human nature -- because we're all human first and foremost.

Hehe, if I accused Pythagorean of being Aristotelian, I can now accuse you of being Platonic.
There is no "ideal" genome.
In fact it's impossible to even hypothesize what an ideal genome would be.

Amazing how so many abstract philosophical debates, in the end, are an issue of ambiguities in language. And sometimes presenting a question a certain way makes it seem like there is a one question / one answer relationship. But as you say the original question "What makes us human?" hinges entirely upon what the original poster means by "makes", "us", and "human".

Since I define being a human as being basically an intelligent 'reasoner', then there can exist variations within sets of (as yet unknown) human-like species.

can you think of anything that speaks more loudly against your definition of a human being than legally allowing one to expire (to remove the feeding tube)?

Whenever rights are denied it is the legally sanctioned removal of a philosophical insight i.e. 'the rights of man'.

A "fair amount of dementia" is a relative phrase, good doctor.

I might add that as a society faces greater aging populations in its ranks it may begin to go slack in its prior, much lauded, commitments to humane values.

I beg to differ. Actually, there are as many different positions within the so-called "existentialist" movement as there were individual philosophers. However, none of them held to the idea that biology determines what it is that makes us human.

There are ideal genomes, if only in comparison to other genomes, depending on the environment where an adaptation takes place.

...your view is exclusionary (and can only define humans vaguely and based on an ideal). It therefore has ethical implications that can easily be a justification for mistreatment (and it has time and again in the past). Even though this isn't your intent, your view justifies discrimination against "lesser" members of our biological species because their handicaps are given ethical and metaphysical status rather than purely practical import.

My argument that a human is synonymous with a member of the biological entity Homo sapiens doesn't solve any ethical problem, because it doesn't make an ethical argument -- but it doesn't create ethical problems either, as I am convinced your argument does. I simply devalue any metaphysical and ethical overtones that may divide the concept "human". I thing that humanism and humanitarian ethics come from empathy, and a sense of shared participation in this human experience, and most of us extend this even to mentally incapacitated humans.

And my point of view is naturally informed by my experience in the medical profession, in which it does me and my patients absolutely no good to regard their humanity differently. Everyone is a human to me, whether they can reason or not, and I will not decide on their metaphysical worth based on what I think is happening in their head.

It sure seems simple when you look at it like that, but having been in this situation with a fair number of patients recently I think that this situation only supports my argument. Why? Because MANY patients, especially those with chronic diseases or the elderly, will openly declare and legally document that they would prefer to die than to have x, y, or z interventions. I had a patient die just about a half hour ago with the same circumstance -- he hadn't written it down, but he'd expressed his opinion to his loved ones who communicated it to me. So sending him to the hospice instead of the ICU was actually done to 1) respect his autonomy when he had been able to express it, and 2) to treat his real illness, which was terminal, incurable, and excrucuating -- and thus medically better managed with palliation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pythagoras
I beg to differ. Actually, there are as many different positions within the so-called "existentialist" movement as there were individual philosophers. However, none of them held to the idea that biology determines what it is that makes us human.

I didn't say they did. I said they were inclusive and not exclusive, and they disapproved of moral and metaphysical divisions within humanity based on secondary qualities.

What a cutting comment this is! Maybe you could elaborate a little. Shouldn't handicaps be given ethical consideration by society?

My view does not inherently 'discriminate against "lesser" human beings' nor does it entail 'ethical implications that can easily be a justification for mistreatment' but only through a misunderstanding of my position (which is a common enough position) could one conceivably conclude such a thing. I say this because I believe that my view gives them a kind of dignity that from your view it would seem impossible for them to have.

I wonder how one can construct empathy and 'a sense of shared participation in this human experience' at all from a mere biological or material definition of human beings?

I think, with all respect, that it is from your position that ethical difficulties are in fact created. I just don't know how one constructs a non-hedonistic moral frame-work from it - how do you quantify morality?

I don't say they are not technically human, I say rather that they don't reach the full human potential that is available to healthy humans. Which is why we state the fact that they are "mentally disabled" in the first place. Their technical locus within the human familiy is secured but their ability to enjoy life as normal is impaired therefore they are lacking some human qualities.

But since his biological constitution did not alter, the cause for the allowance of his death was therefore based upon a non-biological criterion of what it means to be human. He was still technically a human when he was allowed to die. If we hold to your position, then he was 'killed', if however, we hold to my position then we could say without any equivocation that he was humanely allowed the death of his body.

I think maybe it's time to stop using proxy arguments for a dispute which is essentially about the possibility or viability or belief in non-material qualities and the opposite position which would deny such a possibility: or perhaps "Qualities vs. Things".

Pyth, I'll respond thoughtfully to your points, but I'd like you to concentrate on this idea, to which I think you'll agree:

I do acknowledge that there are unique features of human cognition, abstraction, communication, and reasoning, that while not present in ALL people of our species, is indeed unique to us and qualitatively sets us apart.

You must (I'm sure you do) acknowledge that there is an easily defined entity in nature that we call Homo sapiens, which simply describes the kind of animal we are.

You call the first one human. I call the second one human. We disagree on this point. For all I know we agree on everything else.

So maybe the real debate is what do I call that phenomenon you refer to as human, and what do you call that phenomenon I refer to as human?

I think that society's job is to protect handicaps from unfair treatment in light of their unique needs, not to regard them as ethically special. They're ethically the same as anyone else -- but they're very vulnerable.

Your view can give them that dignity, but it can also set them apart as subhumans or justify discrimination. Why? Because from the start you put them in a different classification and ethical category, and this can be used for good or for ill.

This schema of mine is non-moral. In other words, with an all-inclusive view of what is human, I leave no room for morals to interpose themselves in some kind of fracture line in "humans". Besides, there's an abundance of evidence that humans make visceral moral judgements, then retrospectively moralize about them. This is probably true for ALL moral philosophers, though they didn't realize it -- which is why you could get Kant and Mill both to say that murder is bad using completely different rationale. Morality is something we philosophize about, but it's not something we actually create out of philosophy. I don't think morals inherently come from how we define humans -- I think people who discriminate are viscerally discriminatory and/or ignorant and justify it with their own definition of humans.

I believe in non-material qualities, but I also believe that they are cognitive constructs that we make, and they don't exist independently. Our brains are wired for pattern recognition. When you regard the pattern of Homo sapiens with abstract and complex thought, reason, and language, you assign this to the quality human. I recognize the same pattern as you; I just don't synonymize it with the concept "human", which I restrict to the Homo sapiens entity. Make sense?

then how is it possible that they seem to be publicly, universally, communicated with such apparent ease?

our disagreement might lie in the degree to which we consent to the notion that science is completely sufficient in itself when it comes to providing, or seeking, answers to the question.

The ethical act of protecting the mentally handicapped from unfair treatment is evidence in and of itself that society cannot bear any lack of distinction between normal, healthy humans and mentally disabled ones. It is the ethical and humane society which formally and legally categorizes the mentally disabled as such. This type of policy is at the very center of the welfare state as it exists today.

I do not put them in a different classification and ethical category. It is their mental defect which does this.

In that case I would be curious to discover where it is that you think that morals do come from? Do morals come from religion, for example? - and do you think they are to be found in equal levels within all societies -?

I do wonder as to how you would characterize the nature of these 'cognitive constructs' though. For example, if we 'make' them ourselves, and they do not exist independently, then how is it possible that they seem to be publicly, universally, communicated with such apparent ease?

Do you think it possible that human thought could be ultimately a kind of physical "stuff" which is then formed into words and more definitive thought and reflexible ideas?

So are you then saying that if a mental defect comes from a biological phenomenon, and ethical category is determined by mental capacity, then ethics are founded in biology? That seems to be the opposite of what you've wanted to convey.

To answer this I'd steer you to the article I linked that is in the Ethics forum here somewhere. Moral decisionmaking has a very strong psychological basis and perhaps even a biological basis. While overlap isn't perfect between all societies, it is extremely strong. So I believe (and with evidentiary support) that morals are largely innate, are influenced by experience (be it family or religion or whatever), and are explored and justified in philosophy. But I do not believe for a second that morals originate in philosophy or religion -- after all, philosophy and religion are human projects.

Because biologically, psychologically, and evolutionarily, we have a great deal in common with one another. But majority opinion doesn't equal absolute truth -- it only equals conventional truth; and this is subject to change.

That may be necessarily to define what thought actually is, but it's not sufficient to explain what it means for us. A physical explanation is like a recipe, but reading the recipe doesn't give you the actual taste of the cookie.

In short, the same things that make a cat a cat make a human a human.

No, I'm saying their not fully human which makes their well being dependent upon an ethical society.

What about evil? Do you think that evil can originate in philosophy or religion?

Certainly human beings posess an innate capacity for evil since it is only human actions which can properly be termed as evil or morally wrong. Is everyone then born good?

how would you characterize a cognitive construct when it holds true for all people at all times, is universally applicable, and can be ever communicable to all people? By this I am implying they might be types or forms that can transcend particular situations.

I guess this leads us back to the discussion of the nature of (certain) qualities - which seem to occur in the same form in different places and times -are the same in different contexts- and are directly knowable and communicable.

No. I think that most mass "evil" (like genocides and pogroms) puts on the cloak of a religious or philosophical justification, but it almost always originates in particular societal circumstances. Niall Fergusson wrote a phenomenal book about this with respect to the first half of the 20th century. I just don't think that an otherwise peaceful society can be spurred to violence and evil solely based on exposure to a philosophy. Why? Because those philosophies don't arise let alone gain traction in otherwise peaceful, stable societies.

Mother Teresa had the physical capacity to hold a gun and pull a trigger. Evil has to do with actions, not thoughts. I can, right now, entertain the thought of herding everyone I dislike into a van and sinking it in a river. Does that make me evil just because I've had the thought? Evil happens when some kind of inhibition is surmounted and the action happens. That inhibition may be consciously moral, but I think it's more visceral than that. That's why there were people who went through whole campaigns in the Civil War and in WWII without ever firing their gun. That's why the police and the military need to train recruits on first person shooter video games so that they can overcome an inhibition to harm and kill other people. That's why there's an abundance of evidence of how exposure to media violence influences behavior in children. In other words, the evil act is easy to think of and easy to perform -- the hard part is getting over that inhibition.

That's a very very hard thing to hypothesize about, of course, but there ARE some commonalities discussed in that Pinker article that seem to be transcultural. His argument, which seems very compelling, is that there is a biological and evolutionary basis. He gives an example of an experiment in macaques that shows something very reminiscent of human morals: a starving macaque, which can obtain food by pressing a button, will not press that button if it also causes another macaque nearby to receive an electric shock. In other words, in this monkey, witnessing another monkey suffering inhibits a behavior more than starvation stimulates it. Clearly that's something we'd expect in nearly all humans as well. So is this macaque using reason and philosophy to inform a moral choice? Or is this reaction somehow psychologically innate to it as it is to us?

That quality may be embedded in our brains, a psychological state that has been clearly advantageous to our evolutionary ancestors.

I had an agenda with this topic, but I am embarrased to admit what it was now. You all have taken this to a level far beyond what I expected (I don't know why I expected less!).

If anyone would like to know, I will tell you what the exercise is all about.

Very nice discussion.