The most unique thing to humanity is that we are able to abstract thoughts, which allows us to heighten our own self-consciousness. All other animals on this planet are conscious of the world in which they exist. Many animals can even be considered self-conscious outside of humanity. However, the main difference between humans and other mammals, or any animal/living being, is that we have access to knowledge that they do not, through language, by abstraction.
Without the evolution of human language to where it stands today, there could be no civilization as we know it and understand it presently. Humanity owes everything that we value now to abstraction and abstraction alone.
ah, actually the conceptual semantics that underlie language is whats important and what language is based around, but thats only a tiny point to make. The language of the mind contains more then just abstraction, but thats a huge role. I find it hard to point to one set of mental adaptations that make us different, we have a lot of them that are the same, but we have a host a host a host of things animals don’t that all interact in complex ways. Like abstraction is a number of mental mechanisms interacting and many others interact with that to make us competent.
I wonder if it can be proved that humans use abstract thought and non-human animals don’t. Are the effects different? We used to use various yardsticks like ‘toolmaking’, but the toolmaking thing has been disproved. Other animals make tools. If abstraction can be correlated with power over the environment then humans seem pretty obviously to be the most abstract. But can such a sharp line be drawn?
lots of lines can be drawn but they weren’t accurately drawn until recently and research is on-going. Chimps/monkeys showed little ability to engage in abstract though given lab-testing, some genius though in retrospect obvious tests were done on them to stimulate natural conditions/environments, ie: problems chimps/monkeys would natural encounter.
Thus chimps showed self awareness and theory of mind (awareness of another having a brain),and different levels of awareness: ie (and that thing knowing what you know) in competition tasks: (needing to hide food frfom an aplha male etc) but show no signs of this complexity of modedling-awareness/theory of mind in cooperation tasks. Shows us that chimps have a limited ability to abstract, even severely in certain social situations.
Various brain disorders show us that abstraction over theory of mind and self-awareness can be damaged by certain neural structures and the correlation of these things in an active individual, results also suggest that animals do indeed have differing levels of ab stract thought.
say, the rhesus monkey is oftentimes capable of more abstracted though then a fully grown adult autistic… so, people can test to degrees in a lot of cases. (mirror neurons are associated with abstracted understanding of others actions as well, might be envolved in language and exists in language processing parts of the brain, and it happens in animals using hand communication/watching hand communication which lights up in the brain region most closely associated with broca’s in humans)
apparently humans can model on average six levels of abstraction/awareness in social situations “he knew that she knew, that he knew that she knew etc etc etc” six levels of that.
We can show how far apes understand that in a variety of tests.
Also mirror tests are useful, because unlike the liar Chato claims, despite the fact that differing brain evolution can lead to complex self-awareness in different ways, theres no reason to say ‘thats human oriented concept of self-awareness’ BECAUSE ITS NOT.
Dolphins had a radically different brain evolution with different structures responsible for producing complex self-awareness then the primate brain, they evolved completely different structures for similiar tasks and they pass the mirror test with flying colors, quickly checking their own bodies for a red spot planted on them without their knowledge. Dolphins it seems, are quite intelligent.
Various birds fail this test or outright attack the mirror which I assume upsets Chato’s since of the so called advanced intelligence that exists in birds (and it probably does, some bird species do show remarkable intelligence in certain ways) but he applies it too generally, lots of birds are really really ‘stupid’ (unprofessional to say i guess, they have an adaptive niche) and get caught in behavorial loops and show little signs of self-awareness or awareness of others. One bird does show some some ability to interpret the view of predators, thats a complex theory of mind but the testing wasn’t conclusive.
The point is i’m sure the failure of many bird species to fail these tests is evidence of exactly that, the lack of sophisticated of their ability to percieve or model the brains of others, other bird species, at least one, show the capability to understand the mind of others, (well so some evidence suggests) and they’re intelligent in other ways. but don’t listen to Chato simply bullshitting away scientific tests that have shown success in many animals.
Thanks for the information Cyrene. I’m not sure what Chato has said about this. If that was on another thread with really long posts and lots of arguing (I think I remember such a thread) I didn’t read any of it.
I don’t think human abstraction could have developed to where it stands without written language though. That may be the crucial factor, right after an evolved verbal language that already evovled for tens of thousands of years, or more.
Well, it depends what you’re talking about abstraction compared to what? Written word enables humans to develope number systems which can drag us from the “1, 2 and many” System of many hunter-gatherers, I don’t t hink written words are all that much different from a verbal language though, like one is probably the natural result of the other in humans anyway.
I’m working on a thesis regarding the evolution of human language and how it relates to abstraction, so unfortunately, I can’t go too into detail about how I think abstraction developed with language, written or verbal.
Language though, is based off the conceptual semantics (mental language and abstraction that creates it). So in a way there are lots of sets of mental abstractions and mechanisms that shine through in language/produce it. I’m not sure if you know what I mean or if you even agree with that.
Obviously the power of language still gives us more like a number system and etc, but largely language is based off of innate conceptions of the world/etc.
Language (or some form of communication–symbolism perhaps? etc.) was necessarily a part of that abstraction, otherwise how would it make sense to a human? They cannot be seperated.
