What makes us human?

[Electric Alpaca]

To Err Is Human.
To Arr Is Pirate.

I'll take my clever dick award now please.

What makes you human is the ability to question what makes you human.

 

[shadow_Fox81]

But then you are arguing that animals cant possibly feel love on the basis that they are having sex - dont humans that love each other sometimes do that? What do you mean by animals cant comprehend love? How do you know? You, as I said in several earlier posts, are elevating the human condition beyond scrutiny.

Just because Keats did it, doesnt make it OK.

animals can't comprehend it because they havn't, i don't have evidence because there isn't any they're animals.

but if you want to whittle down the greatest single expression of humanities ability to feel and think to nothing more than biology or anatomy or chemistry or whatever science you feel puts it on no higher plane than a swan, i can not stop you.

but i will elevate it because it is worth elevateing.

Keats was not an odd duck and niot wrong to be beyond physicality, he lived to die his world was fleeting so he wanted the love he had to have meaning. That is why he threw off the shackles of mortality to grip the divine as fleetingly as he could because love is that powerful.

if such aspirations are worth so little and worthy only of reproach i'd rather the scorn of my peers than their approval.

 

[BrassButtons]

But my point is, if they are displaying the same biochemical reactions inside, and are behaving in the same way externally, how can we say they are not "feeling" the emotion?

Had you said this to begin with, I would have agreed with you. But you left out the part about biochemical reactions and spoke only of behavior, which can be misinterpreted. And if you look at my post after you did bring up biochemical reactions, you'll see that I did agree with that claim. It's the "they do action X so it must be emotion" claim that I am cautioning against.

and are behaving in the same way externally

I'd be careful with using "how humans behave" as a metric for gauging animal emotion. I mean, humans show teeth when happy--in other species that can mean "I want to kill you." Even using other species isn't necessarily a good idea. In a dog, a wagging tail means "I am happy." In a cat, a wagging (or rather, swishing) tail means "I am going to lacerate your face." Different types of animals have different ways of signaling emotion, making it incredibly difficult to say "this animal did X so he must be happy" unless we've found some other way of linking action X with happiness. I'm not sure how we could do that, which is probably why people smarter than myself are actually studying this stuff

 

[Lederin]

By being able to wonder what makes us human?

 

[jacobythehedgehog]

I think Therfore... I AM

 

[zombie goat fetish]

I think it is a biological question to be human is to have full behavioral modernity, we have a highly developed brain.

 

[Blue2]

The ability to learn, adapt and evolve faster then any other life on earth however we are easily fooled by emoticons and fear.