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Resolved: Humans are fundamentally different from other animals.
in Philosophy
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Arguments
While most people will not argue that humans and animals are substantially different, the word fundamentally causes controversy.
Definition of fundamentally:
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/fundamentally
So does it matter which words we use to describe the difference? Absolutely. The language we use to describe our reality influences how we think about it. The problem with viewing ourselves as being “fundamentally different” reinforces a view of being separate from, rather than part of, the rest of the world. Perceiving ourselves as “further along the complexity spectrum” is a more productive way of describing our relationship with the other species with whom we share the planet.
Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ted-cadsby/humans-versus-other-animals_b_4957590.html
My Affirmative arguments:
1) Humans are differentiated by language abilities, social interaction, symbolic behavior, and cultural aspects from animals.
These are all consistent with fundamental definition.
2) Humans have a fundamentally different level of cognitive development than animals.
The argument that “we are apes” is not a valid evolutionary one. After all, the distinguished evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote in a 1949 classic, “It is not a fact that man is an ape, extra tricks or no.”
"It is important to understand the fundamental difference between humans and nonhuman animals. Nonhuman animals such as apes have material mental powers. By material I mean powers that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation. These powers include sensation, perception, imagination (the ability to form mental images), memory (of perceptions and images), and appetite. Nonhuman animals have a mental capacity to perceive and respond to particulars, which are specific material objects such as other animals, food, obstacles, and predators.
Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals but in addition entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not. Human beings have the power to contemplateuniversals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts. Human beings are rational animals"
source:
https://evolutionnews.org/2015/11/the_fundamental_2/3) Animals lack morality that is normally present in (most) humans. Animal kimgdom normally operates exclusive on inborn instincts and that is due that the other parts of the animal brain (other than "lizzard brain" are not developed).
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The opposite of 'different' is 'same' but no two beings, even two humans, are the same because everyone is 'different' indeed. Due to this, you can always argue for the resolution as any difference can be made fundamental since being fundamental is simply being necessary to something.
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Your 3 contentious are highly debatable and position our species on a slippery slope.
1) Humans differential abilities - language, culture, etc.
If you subscribe to theory of evolution, How different are we as humans amongst ourselves? What about aborigines that still live in a jungle? What about early humans, they are very different from us in so many fundamental ways.
2) While our cognitive abilities maybe more evolved than apes, it's just not that different genetically. Our genetic composition is very close to apes and our brain size is also essentially the same.
We can also say that fish is fundamentally different than apes, but wait didn't lifeforms come out from the oceans?
3) The argument of morality is highly subjective. Please recall snat happens with multiple genocides in history of our humanity, including Nazi Germany.
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I disagree that humans are fundamentally different from animals.
I did like the article you shared in the opening argument.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ted-cadsby/humans-versus-other-animals_b_4957590.html
Research in comparative psychology reveals that behavioral traits once considered unique to humans are, in fact, shared with other animals, including cognitively sophisticated ones such as deception and self control. A low-rank male baboon will, for instance, threaten a top-rank male for the sole purpose of distracting him so that another low-rank male can have sex with one of the top rank’s mates. Chimps will even distract themselves to enforce their willpower: in experiments where they are rewarded with more candy if they accumulate it rather than eat it right away, they will play with toys to resist temptation. Chimps will also stockpile and hide rocks for future use as weapons, indicating an ability to think outside the present moment to a hypothetical future.
There goes your differentiation regarding cognitive ability argument.
- Walt Disney
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Are humans fundamentally different from animals? I have to say no, because otherwise it will be difficult to draw a line on any comparison.
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We also have obvious differences.
In just the same way that dolphins have fundamental similarities with other animals, but also obvious differences.
What's to debate really?
Is this just going to descend into another creation v evolution debate?
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While many people will point at the technology we created, or at our ability to convey very complex ideas through verbal language, and say, "Does this not prove that we are different?" - I will say that the technology itself is merely indicative of the circumstances we found ourselves in, but not necessarily of our inherent difference. Pterodactyls could (allegedly) fly without any technology 150 million years ago; we still cannot, despite sending ships into space. Does this mean that pterodactyls are much more advanced as a species than us? Of course not. They had certain physical advantages over us, and we have certain physical advantages over them - but it is hard to say which one is "superior", and, arguably, in their environment (the air) they were much more dominating species, than we are on the land today.
We should see how long we as a species (including the post-human species we create or evolve into) exist to make any meaningful comparative analysis. If we exterminate ourselves in 100 years, than we are fundamentally different from other species, but not in the direction people think - rather, in the opposite direction, in that this evolution strain proved a complete and utter failure, unlike those ancient crocodiles. If, however, we exist for dozens millions years, or even forever (until the ultraviolet catastrophe or whatever else makes the Universe uninhabitable) - then fundamentally the original Homo Sapiens will be seen as similar to other animals.
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