[MD] Social level for humans only

[Krimel]

> [Krimel]
> Ever since "Origin of Species" people have been trying to find something,
> anything that makes humans unique from the rest of God's creation, tool
use,
> language, opposable thumb...

[Horse}
Yeah, I agree, and I'm not looking at it from this point of view. I'm 
not trying to imply that humans are necessarily superior to other 
animals and therefore have some sort of god given right to dominion over 
them and the way we treat them as the bible seems to imply, just that 
there is a different and additional level of development brought about 
through evolution and natural selection.

[Krimel]
I hear you but I am afraid that that train of thought is usually were that
line of thought comes from and where it ends up. Just by adopting an
anthropomorphic stance our discourse in shaped in that direction. It becomes
not so much that we are the products of nature, like unto it and bound by
it. But that we are set apart for a special purpose or the more pernicious:
we have evolved qualitatively to a state beyond nature and to a position of
dominion over it.

> [Krimel]
> Music and art? Maybe, except birds sing and so to whales.

[Horse]
Birds and whales make sounds which are, in general, fixed and limited in 
scope and range. There is little variation in their repertoire and it is 
generally for the purposes of attracting mates, alerting others to 
danger or summoning the offspring. Whale sound may sound like music but 
that is mainly human interpretation. You might as well say that a tree 
grows it leaves to create a certain type of musical rustling sound or 
that glaciers cut though the ground to produce echo chambers.
Humans music is highly varied in timbre, metre, pitch etc. and is more 
often than not produced using created implements. As far as I'm aware no 
other species is capable of creating the complexity of sounds that 
humans produce.

[Krimel]
I think my point is that we are in no position to judge non-human esthetics.
Kind of like Thomas Nagel's famous article on "What It's Like to be a Bat."
We can't know that. We don't even want to know the answer to that question.
We want to know what it would be like for us to be bats. We want the
experience of batness overlaid on our own perceptions and conceits. We want
to acquire a sense of batness without giving up our sense of humanness.

> [Krimel]
> Many species have "dances" built into their mating rituals.

[Horse]
Again, as with music, this is for specific purposes and not just 'for 
the hell of it'!

[Krimel]
But as always we are judging our own behavior from our own point of view and
attempt to measure other species' behavior in our own light. Sure there are
these differences and to us they are not only meaningful but obviously
meaningful; but I fear that too often we amplify them out of proportion and
quantitative baby steps become full blown qualitative differences. In other
words, we use our own standard to turn our own behaviors into something
totally new and divorced from the contexts that produced them.

> [Krimel]
> With regards to art I am hard pressed to think of a species that produces
art but
> I am also hard pressed to see how we would recognize it if they did.
Another
> species' esthetics would in all likelihood be so different from ours, they
> might be singing, dancing and creating art all around us and we wouldn't
> notice anymore than other species recognize these capacities in us.

[Horse]
But this is just saying that because we haven't found their art, because 
we don't recognise it as such, therefore we can't say they don't have 
it! The same argument could be used to say that just because we haven't 
found chimps using cell/mobile phones, it doesn't mean they aren't doing 
so - we just don't recognise their design of mobile phones!

[Krimel]
Or as an old friend of mine puts it, "Lack of evidence is not evidence of
lack." But yeah that is what I am saying.

[Horse]
At a biological level I agree and even at a primitive (and sometimes not 
so primitive) social level I agree. But once we come to intellect then 
I'd disagree. There is no evidence for any animal, other than humans, 
that show this sort of advanced development.

[Krimel]
True enough. We are massively intellectual but there is still nothing to
suggest that what we have is anything more than a quantitative expanding of
the traits already present in the primate family. There are clear precursors
to what we do in our immediate close relatives and no clean break between us
and them. Arlo mentions "joint attention" which I suspect he is taking from
Tomasello. I read Tomasello's most recent book over the summer. It was
longer but not quite as interesting as his first but in it he makes the case
that language evolved from gestures. It begins with pointing; an act of
shared reference. He claims for example that apes who interact with humans
will point and attempt to engage human attention in the other. But apes who
don't interact with humans don't do this. Apes can be trained to express
themselves with sign and symbol but they don't do this naturally or with
each other to any great extent. It is as though certain traits are there
latent within them but never find a context in the primary experience of
apeness.

> [Krimel]
> My concern is that this attempt to carve humans out from the rest of
nature,
> is a byproduct of resistance to the historical dethronement of man as the
> "capstone" of creation and the center of God's creative effort.

[Horse]
Absolutely. Humans are what they are through the same processes of 
evolution and adaptation as applied to all forms of life on the planet. 
We are not to be 'privileged' because we are created in 'His' image or 
favoured because we we can create nifty digital watches. Everything 
about man and animals is equally from a natural cause.
Humans have their own type of biological and social uniqueness as do 
other members of the Animal kingdom and in particular areas there is a 
further qualitative uniqueness of intellect. This is not due to 
supernatural intervention but a variant of adaptation and natural 
selection. But I do believe that intellect is the route to Music and Art.

[Krimel]
When the first part of what you are saying forms the backdrop of the
conversation I am perfectly willing to talk this way as well. I don't really
think you and I have much to disagree about in any of this. But that is not
a good assumption for some others around this forum and I am concerned that
resorting to a vocabulary of convenience and utility just helps fuel their
delusions.

[Horse]
Humans, as per other animals, group together to 
survive and share resources. We may go a step further and use those 
resources, when in excess of immediate need, for trade etc. but it is 
still essentially the same idea.
It's when you get to the use of intellect that I think we become 
qualitatively different - and especially as I have said, in our creation 
of Music, Art and as you mentioned, Dance.

[Krimel]
Like the plumage of the peacock and other birds of paradise. Whatever
function it originally served gets hijacked by other considerations. In this
case, literally, "chick's dig it."

[Horse]
I've never seen an Ant Marching Band, a Bee Picasso or a Termite Rudolph 
Nureyev!! Although, I may not have been looking in the right places! :)

[Krimel]
Right, but to see one, you'd have to "bee" one.