At a Science Journal: Humanity Is Just So Doomed
Opinions differ as to the details of what will wipe us all out — or maybe notIn one version, the coming human eclipse originated in a sin against Darwinism: destroying the competition.
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In Moral Terms, Are Microbes More Important Than People?
Jeff Sebo advocates widening the moral circle to include, plants, microbes, and computers in a sort of radical equalityWith all the talk of morality, I was particularly struck by a category of moral “patients” he fails to discuss: gestating human babies.
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Clinical Psychologist Defends Human Exceptionalism
Gregg Henriques is responding to an evolutionary biologist who sees recognition of human uniqueness as “speciesism,” akin to racism and sexismFrom a secular humanist perspective, he says roughly what Aristotle (384– 322 BC) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) would say about our unique human nature.
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Defining an Ape Theory of Mind Into Existence
We are told that “recognizing when someone else lacks information” has been thought to be a distinctly human trait. Really?The researchers have set out to show that bonobos have a theory of mind. Are they willing to consider that dogs might have a similar theory of mind?
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Vice President Vance Defends Human Exceptionalism at Munich
The idea that humans are special is under increasing attack by some of society’s most powerful political and cultural forcesOppression, genocide, discrimination, slavery, and other evils arise from refusing to see us all as equals based upon our common humanity.
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Science Writing: Cat Intelligence Compared With Baby Intelligence
Cat intelligence is of a rather different kind from dog intelligenceCat intelligence is often underrated but the human mind belongs to an entirely different order of being from the feline mind.
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Science Writing: Dog Intelligence Compared With Baby Intelligence
It’s an odd question because what we should be asking is, “Are kittens and puppies smarter than babies?”The comparison doesn’t really work but it underlines the *doctrine* that human intelligence is just another type of animal intelligence.
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The Subtle Ways That Science Writing Erases Human Exceptionalism
Stone tool use among animals versus the Stone Age provides a useful illustration of the tendencyThe assumed equivalence between animal behavior and the human mind is a feature of contemporary science beliefs, not of evidence.
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Liberal Prof: Intelligent Design Is Not Just for Conservatives
Robert Shedinger’s findings certainly changed his perception of the nature of the controversy over DarwinismHe told colleagues he is planning a new book, tentatively titled “Why Liberals Should Ditch Darwin and Consider Intelligent Design.”
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Neanderthals Used a “High Tech” Method for Making Glue
High tech for the times they lived in, that is. They had to figure out why the lower tech method got poor results and develop a more sophisticated oneNeanderthals cannot be the missing link that many paleontologists are looking for. But if the human mind has no history, there is no missing link.
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At SciAm: When did human ancestors start using stone tools?
Setting aside the question of whether the various groups mentioned in the article are in fact our ancestors, stone tool use is not even confined to primatesIt’s not stone tool use that is exclusive to humans; vultures can do that. It’s the ability to form abstract ideas — like the study of tool use among animals.
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Study: Great Apes Point to How Human Language May Have Evolved
What’s revealing in these types of studies is not what the researchers find but what the science media choose to make of themIn reality, where language is concerned, there is a vast gulf fixed. It is not between primates and other mammals but between humans and all other life forms.
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Researchers: Did Neanderthal Children Collect “Stuff”?
The items that raise the question are small marine shells found in caves. They were carefully preserved but have no known function. A baby tooth was found in the same areaThe study, along with recent studies of Neanderthal tools and stone circles, is making the idea that they were intellectually inferior increasingly untenable.
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Why Human Intelligence Thrives Where Machines Fail
We're worried about AI and trust. We should be worried about something deeperOur intelligence interacts dynamically with our environment in a way that machine intelligence doesn’t.
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Can Brain Structure Alone Explain Why We Have Language?
How human languages came to exist is an unsolved mystery within scienceThis recent find in evolution studies is strikingly negative. There is no physical limitation to chimpanzee speech; rather, the limitation is a mental one.
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At Big Think: Getting Stoned Shaped the Modern Mind
Cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian sees human civilization forming something like “the brain of Gaia” in a cosmos that is becoming increasingly consciousWe learn nothing specific here about how our remote ancestors thought but we have learned something useful: Big Think sees this as cutting edge science.
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The Hard Problem of Consciousness Remains Inescapable
Neuroscientist Francisco Aboitiz starts by offering to tell us how consciousness evolved but then makes a critical concessionAboitiz concludes, “In the end, the dualistic dilemma between subjective experience and mechanistic explanations seems to me inescapable.”
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“Plant Philosophy” Denigrates Human Uniqueness
Much contemporary advocacy is obsessed with deconstructing human exceptionalismPlant philosophy seeks to change the definitional understandings of “intelligence” to elevate the moral status of plants relative to humans.
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An “Evolutionary” Analysis of Childhood Provides No New Knowledge
Archeologist Brenna Hassett offers to explain the evolution of childhood and grandmothers — but, unfortunately, ends up providing no real insightHumans have reason and ethics and other animals don’t, and there is no evidence that these qualities — that shape our societies — simply “evolved.”
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If Humans Were Just Animals, We Would Not Help Animals
Whether we like it or not, the gulf fixed between humans and other animals is what makes it possible for us to reject cruelty to animalsThe “human evolution” narrative that ignores the critical distinction handicaps the thinking of philosopher Hugh Desmond and many others.
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