Are humans unique?

[Roses]

I did say it tongue in cheek, LR;
however :-

Spirit:
the non-physical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.
"we seek a harmony between body and spirit"

'the prevailing or typical quality, mood, or attitude of a person, group, or period of time'.
"I hope the team will build on this spirit of confidence"

The brain creates the emotions and characters, the 'soul' is only another name for human consciousness, once the body dies so does the 'soul' and spirit, imo.

[Robbie]

I accept that from your pov, L.roses.

[Walter]

as far as I know, only humans can do this

https://youtu.be/-dCln8n0i5g

[jeremyp]

as far as I know, only humans can do this

https://youtu.be/-dCln8n0i5g

That looked more like a rocket to me than a human.

[Outrider]

As Sean Carroll says somewhere...we can't keep looking at the world as sub atomic...classical...cosmic....as though they are three separate worlds.   Everything is basically quantum in its nature and that is the physical reality. The classical world is merely our perception.

Yes, but we function at the level of our perceptions - quantum effects, whilst random individually fall within fairly rigidly defined probabilities over a population such that, when writ large (i.e. at the macroscopic scale) the various random fluctuations balance out and we get the predictable macroscopic world we live in.  In the absence of a unified quantum theory we HAVE to persist with a classical and microscopic view when it's appropriate, or we just have to give up on any science above the quantum scale until that theory arrives.

O.

[Outrider]

It's indicative of the fact that, at the moment, humans are unique in the their mental capacity.

I suppose getting there first could be considered a 'uniqueness' of sorts, I'm not sure it fits the spirit of the original question, but I can see it.  It seems more as though it's a technicality (CURRENTLY, we're unique, but that might change next week, like it's a matter of circumstance more than something intrinsic? Maybe I'm overthinking the original intent...)
O.

[Steve H]

I suppose getting there first could be considered a 'uniqueness' of sorts, I'm not sure it fits the spirit of the original question, but I can see it.  It seems more as though it's a technicality (CURRENTLY, we're unique, but that might change next week, like it's a matter of circumstance more than something intrinsic? Maybe I'm overthinking the original intent...)
O.

No other creature has ever shown the slightest capacity for developing their own, complex language, or designing complex tools or machines, not even the stone axe I keep referring to, even though they've had at least as long as us, so it's not just that we got there first; it seems that we are the only creatures capable of getting there at all. I read somewhere of gorillas being observed in the wild using stones as hammers. some bits broke off the stone, some of which had sharp edges and would have served as crude cutting or chopping tools, but the gorillas ignored them. Even when they are presented with a naturally-formed cutting tool, they don't cotton on.

[Harrowby Hall]

Gorillas and chimpanzees have shown that they can acquire and use human language - they just cannot communicate verbally. Several researchers - and other interested people have shown that other primates can learn and use sign language (for example ASL) and use it expressively. It has been observed that chimps who are raised in close contact with humans can be seen to think like humans. Chimps can also communicate using sign language with each and teach sign language to other chimps. The first animal to be taught ASL was a female named Washoe.

[Outrider]

No other creature has ever shown the slightest capacity for developing their own, complex language, or designing complex tools or machines, not even the stone axe I keep referring to, even though they've had at least as long as us, so it's not just that we got there first; it seems that we are the only creatures capable of getting there at all.

Except that, until we got there, we didn't look likely to either, I suppose.

I read somewhere of gorillas being observed in the wild using stones as hammers. some bits broke off the stone, some of which had sharp edges and would have served as crude cutting or chopping tools, but the gorillas ignored them. Even when they are presented with a naturally-formed cutting tool, they don't cotton on.

Can we safely presume that what's current, though, suggests an absolute limitation on what's possible?  At some point in our evolutionary background our predecessors were (presumably) as limited as the gorillas are now, but our strain evolved and adapted - can we be certain that this can't happen to another species?

I guess, what I'm saying is, it's possible that we're unique, that there's something distinctive about humanity that can't be replicated, but I don't see anything to suggest that's the case.  If it could happen to us by accident, why couldn't it happen to something else by accident?

O.

[Nearly Sane]

Animals and tool use.


https://www.livescience.com/9761-10-animals-tools.html

[Steve H]

Gorillas and chimpanzees have shown that they can acquire and use human language - they just cannot communicate verbally. Several researchers - and other interested people have shown that other primates can learn and use sign language (for example ASL) and use it expressively. It has been observed that chimps who are raised in close contact with humans can be seen to think like humans. Chimps can also communicate using sign language with each and teach sign language to other chimps. The first animal to be taught ASL was a female named Washoe.

As I've pointed out previously, learning to use human language (at a fairly basic level: their vocabulary was quite small) is not the same as spontaneously developing a language of their own. Similarly, chimps and gorillas can learn to use human machines, but have never themselves managed to invent so much as a stone axe.

[Steve H]

Except that, until we got there, we didn't look likely to either, I suppose.

Chimps and gorillas have been around at least as long as humans. I repeat: gorillas don't even cotton on to the possibilities of edged tools when presented with them. No doubt they would do if shown how to use them, but they haven't got the ability to do it themselves.

[Outrider]

Chimps and gorillas have been around at least as long as humans. I repeat: gorillas don't even cotton on to the possibilities of edged tools when presented with them. No doubt they would do if shown how to use them, but they haven't got the ability to do it themselves.

And, again, given the apparently random nature of mutation and variation in a species, how does the fact that we evinced this capacity earlier signify that we are unique and that these other animals can't manifest it at some point?

O.

[Steve H]

And, again, given the apparently random nature of mutation and variation in a species, how does the fact that we evinced this capacity earlier signify that we are unique and that these other animals can't manifest it at some point?

O.

Because we have, and they haven't, in spite of many millennia, and the opportunity of copying us. FFS - are you deliberately trying to wind me up, or what?

[Roses]

My family think I am unique, the mould was broken when I put in an appearance.

[Walter]

That looked more like a rocket to me than a human.

oh dear! 


btw, I cleaned that comment up before posting

[Dicky Underpants]

And, again, given the apparently random nature of mutation and variation in a species, how does the fact that we evinced this capacity earlier signify that we are unique and that these other animals can't manifest it at some point?

O.

I'm with Steve H on this one - not because I want to claim any anthropocentric view of the world (as far as I can see, nothing whatever matters a jot sub specie aeternitatis), but simply because we can see that this is what has happened when we compare the evolution of humans with other higher primates. Humans have evolved extremely complex 'tool-making' capacities etc along with other complex cultural features, whereas those of chimps, gorillas etc have remained static over millennia.

To return to the views of Prof Steven Mithen, to whom I referred earlier. He suggests that this  stagnation in other primates was due to the way the neural structures of the brain became arranged. He uses two analogies to describe the marked differences between the chimp brain and the human brain - the 'Swiss army knife' model (chimps etc) and the 'cathedral with side chapels' model (humans). The former led to various specialised forms of social behaviour, without much possibility of 'transferable skills', whereas the latter allowed the functioning of the human imagination, the ability to conceptualise things and situations not present, and greater integration of many of the brain's conscious capacities. Once these neural pathways were laid down, the ability of chimps and gorillas to evolve complex tool-making methods was compromised and led to their cultural stagnation.
This is all speculative, though Mithen bases his research on sound paleontological and archeological evidence, along with primatology studies carried out by Jane Lawick-Goodall, for instance.
It may be that some genetic mutation might 'rearrange' the brains of chimps to allow greater cultural achievements, but as Steve rightly points out, it doesn't look like it's going to happen next tuesday.

[Outrider]

Because we have, and they haven't, in spite of many millennia, and the opportunity of copying us. FFS - are you deliberately trying to wind me up, or what?

How often is it supposed to happen? It took 'us' millions of years to evolve to this point - in the evolutionary timescale it's been next to no time since we evolved the traits.  What makes you think that the very small time (relatively) since we developed the trait is a significant enough delay on the part of the rest of the natural world as to consider us unique?

O.

[Nearly Sane]

If I remember from The Runaway Brain by Christopher Wills, there is a distinction that is made between 'the unique evolution of humans', and 'evolution of human uniqueness'. I believe in the 2nd but I think Steve appears to be thinking of the first, and that seems unjustified by his claims.

[jeremyp]

And, again, given the apparently random nature of mutation and variation in a species, how does the fact that we evinced this capacity earlier signify that we are unique and that these other animals can't manifest it at some point?

Clearly, even extremely stupid humans are vastly more intelligent than the next most intelligent animal, which is probably the chimpanzee or bonobo. I would argue that makes us unique, although not necessarily special.

It is entirely possible that, given the sudden extinction of human kind, chimanzees or another species could evolve equivalent intelligence, but they haven't yet and if they did, they would be a different species to chimpanzees in much the same way as we are different to our ancestors from six million years ago.

[Steve H]

My family think I am unique, the mould was broken when I put in an appearance.

Thank f*** for that!

[Steve H]

How often is it supposed to happen? It took 'us' millions of years to evolve to this point - in the evolutionary timescale it's been next to no time since we evolved the traits.  What makes you think that the very small time (relatively) since we developed the trait is a significant enough delay on the part of the rest of the natural world as to consider us unique?

O.

Hom. sap. hasn't existed for millions of years! Ffs - if you must disagree for the sake of disagreeing, at least don't ignore known facts!

[Roses]

Our human ancestors are millions of years old. Homo sapiens are reckoned to be about 300,000 years old.

[SusanDoris]

Because we have, and they haven't, in spite of many millennia, and the opportunity of copying us. FFS - are you deliberately trying to wind me up, or what?

But the human species does what it does with the abilities it has because it has been lucky enough to have had the random mutations which have produced those abilities. Other species cannot choose to have those mutations.



ty.

[Dicky Underpants]

But the human species does what it does with the abilities it has because it has been lucky enough to have had the random mutations which have produced those abilities. Other species cannot choose to have those mutations.



ty.

Susan

I think that sums it up. In fact, I think we see these kinds of phenomena paralleled many times in evolution. Sometimes a mutation will produce a particular life form with a considerable potential for variation, and other mutations will produce a life form which has little innate capacity to adapt and evolve, which will then lead to its evolutionary stagnation and likely eventual extinction.
There are certain life-forms, such as the coelocanth, which appear to have all the potential for setting off a whole new line of evolutionary development (in this case the evolution of amphibians). I believe that looking to the coelocanth as the origin of amphibians has now been abandoned by biology - though new fossil evidence may turn up. This 'walking fish' however, seems to have just taken to a life of evolutionary stasis, since various examples kept turning up in the nets of 20th century fishermen in the Indian ? ocean. These specimens appear to have differed little from their prehistoric ancestors, apart from some adaption to deep sea conditions, where it seems to have found a comfortable niche. Likewise the crocodile, which seems to have evolved little from the forms of its historic ancestors.

Where the ancestry of humans is concerned, we see a plethora of evolutionary 'experiments', particularly with the development of the many varieties of Australopithecines in Africa - a number of species having lived contemporaneously. Some like A. robustus prospered for a considerable time, but eventually became extinct (were they perhaps hunted for food by the gracile Australopithecines, one type of which -A afarensis - probably launched the line to Homo sapiens?) The presence of so many species of "Ape-men" suggests that the genetic mutations that had produced them had considerable potential for diversification.

Whereas their distant cousins among the other higher primates had long been 'condemned' to evolutionary stasis by their particular genetic makeup. Some scientists trace the ancestry of chimps and gorillas to the Miocene apes (Dryopithecus?), and I'd say it is a fair speculation that the life style of these modern primates is not so very different from their ancient ancestor. The mutation that produced them had not much capacity for variation, and evolutionary stasis is the result. And likely extinction as their environment becomes more and more threatened.

My own speculations (riffing on the ideas of Steven Mithen).