Steven Pinker has probably been one of the most important researchers on language, thats not even an exaggeration. Check out his book “The Stuff of thought” or various lectures and etc to see surprising things about language.
video.google.ca/videoplay?docid= … &plindex=1
“language isn’t so much a creator or shaper of human nature as a window into human nature”
The most unique thing to us as people is the unique delusion we have build for ourselves where we see ourselves as more specially privileged than all other living things in which we call this delusion “humanity”.
The underlying religious faith of this delusion revolves around the statement:
“For humanity’s sake”.
The global religion is one of faith in the future or futurism where we live for tomorrow instead of today.
We’re more privileged in some ways mentally, and in great ways at that, like other animals have them over us in different areas.
Delusions.
An eagle can see better than a human thats a priviledged adaptation to have, humans have mental qualities that many animals don’t, again the same.
Only people can suffer from delusions or go crazy - another example of how humanity is unique. As a rule, the more complex something is, the more ways things can go wrong, and human beings are uniquely complex.
Delusions are abstract thoughts. 
I am going to check this out when I get the chance Cyrene, thanks. =D>
Yet differences between species are all relative leaving a privileged mindset to be unfounded.
In relativity nothing is unique.
I don’t know what you mean by privledged, things are relative has no bearing on whether mental attributes are unique to humans. No known animal can meta-model six levels like the average human can. (he thought, that she thought, that he thought, that she thought, that he thought) no animal besides humans show an ability or even a close ability to reach level six, most animals don’t show anyything close to that complex.
We evolved to a unique evolutionary niche that wasn’t shared with other animals, we have adaptations that other animals don’t. If you can find any animal that has an adaptation that another animal doesn’t show, or if the complexity level is so different it can’t be compared, you can call that adaptation unique or rare.
What is your measure of uniqueness? What does it mean to be unique? How do we derive a knowledge of what is unique and what isn’t?
If we cannot precisely answer these questions then we must assume that uniqueness is a delightful absurdity or delusion that we pride ourselves in where beyond us as people uniqueness does not exist anywhere else.
Is uniqueness a matter of aesthetics? If so who cares what we as people think is unique or not? Certainly the indifferent, uncaring and unfletching cosmos cares not of our aesthetics.
Joker,
I see why you would find faults with the term ‘uniqueness’ due to the connotations it expresses. My meaning for this thread was more about differences between humans and all other living beings. In a way, you can say that humans are different from all other animals in such-and-such regard, which means that humans are unique. I wanted to find the one difference that stood out.
Cyrene made the point that the eagle’s vision is unique insofar that the eagle’s vision is likely not found in any other specie, except perhaps some other bird. That’s the point I wanted to make about humanity’s ability for abstract thought.
I defined unique-ness in by above post, let me do it again.
Having adaptations of such complexity that the complexity of such adaptations in their specific cognitive niche isn’t matched. FOR EXAMPLE: meta-modeling other minds, humans can usually do up to six, no other can even come close, it has widely far-reaching implications for social interaction/complexity as well…
unique adaptations, rare to only that species.
Such a view requires the anthrocentric view that somehow our position is better than other animals which is a fallacy all unto itself.
I simply can’t endorse such a belief.
I understand but these descriptions require a non-existent universal map and form of measurement to compare ourselves or other species with.
In relativity yes such and such animals have different abilities but it means nothing leading to no grounds of universal examination.
What if you say that the eagle’s vision is not better than a human’s vision, only that it is different?
Can’t that be considered unique in terms that no other animal has the same type of vision an eagle does, since other animals do not fly, hunt in the air, etc.?
Diverse
1 : differing from one another : unlike
2 : composed of distinct or unlike elements or qualities
Unique
being the only one : sole <I can’t walk away with a unique copy. Suppose I lost it? — Kingsley Amis>
2 a: being without a like or equal : unequaled <could stare at the flames, each one new, violent, unique — Robert Coover> b: distinctively characteristic : peculiar 1 <this is not a condition unique to California — Ronald Reagan>
3: unusual <we were fairly unique, the sixty of us, in that there wasn’t one good mixer in the bunch — J. D. Salinger>
To Realunoriginal: I see no reason why the term different couldn’t be used so long as it is used in a relative framework.
We should have a species or biological relativism similar to our cultural relativism don’t you think?
How many posts have you written saying that humans are unlike any other animals, ie. unique, by being “unnatural”, “delusional”, “hysterical”, etc.? You have no problem with the idea of uniqueness as long as it serves your ideology, as long as the unique features are negative. The reality, not coloured by your ideology, is straightforward: humans are unique in many ways, some positive and some negative.
I believe that uniqueness is a cultural delusion.
I don’t deny difference so one could say that men are different from other animals in their absurd beliefs of making themselves seem to be the center of the universe as being unique.
The word difference is different than the term unique itself.