I'm incredibly interested in animal minds (I just started reading that book that was posted a while back, Other Minds, about octopuses and consciousness, and I'm really liking it.) And of course, I think that poaching should be illegal and that we should protect and conserve the environment.
But...
> … the world would be a brighter, smellier, noisier place – and you would be a better, wiser, kinder person
No, I wouldn't be a 'better ... person', I would be an elephant! Elephants have not created great works of art, literature, architecture, and poetry. Elephants have no written language, cannot build complex machines, and have not traveled to other worlds, or even explored their own. People have done incredible things with their bodies and minds in a way that animals simply cannot, period. This is (arguably) all a consequence of evolution being a competition, and humans being predators. People like to fight and win, to be better than something else. And while it would be great if human nature was just competitive enough to produce results, but not make humans physically violent, that would be fantastic! But I don't think evolution can exactly fine-tune something like that.
This happens every time that animal consciousness is discussed: somebody tries to claim that the animals in question have a completely different way of life than humans, and that their way of life is 'better', usually because they are peaceful, and that you are arrogant and ignorant if you don't agree. I think that's horseshit.
This would be almost tolerable if it didn't have the subtle feminist jabs hidden in there with the smug moral superiority - "As a boy, your function would be to inseminate, and that's all. Government would be the business of the females." As if being a walking pair of testes was somehow more noble than fighting, struggling, learning, winning, like human boys do. Stop all those pesky masculine behaviors, you "infantile phallocentric [nihilist]." Just be good and dumb and stay where you are.
Personally, what annoys me is the the current (soon to be completed) genocide against certain elephant species -- and the people who profit from it. Once we have the problem contained (and reversed), I can imagine someone having the time and adrenaline to be "really annoyed" by some less than precisely articulated philosophical musings they read in The Guardian.
Have you created great works of art, literature, architecture and poetry or built complex machines? That's precisely the kind of arrogance the author is arguing against. Yes, as a species we create art and complex machinery, and we write. How exactly does that make us better than every other life form on Earth? What does 'better' even mean? How is an elephant supposed to hold a pen? Elephants can be very agile with their trunk, but that's just one member. We've got ten of them. We can physically do more nifty stuff.
Who are we to deem an elephant's mind inferior to our own? Its brain is three times as massive as ours! Perhaps elephants have long solved questions we aren't even considering, handing down knowledge from generation to generation. Maybe their memory is more reliable than ours and preserves knowledge perfectly. How can we know?
This human arrogance seems to stem from the fact that communication with other beings is difficult at best. We have no practical way into their minds, and they don't write, so they can't show us what they're pondering all day. That does not mean they sleep, eat and fuck waiting for the coffin like the rest of us. Make no mistake, humans are more physically sophisticated, but mentally? Bar the rare individuals that advance our civilization, we're a bunch of wildly destructive animals held together by a set of rules we can't actually agree on. We're the only species that destroys environment and life just for the heck of it.
I like humanity a lot. It has a great ability to transform its environment, and writing things down certainly helps in enabling its intellectual progress. As you rightly point out, we've only come this far through competition, but I think we have reached a point in our technological development that enables us to shed that character and refocus. We should turn inwards, because the outside is reaching the limits of what it can give us. Our minds are something we have no grasp of, and provide those who look with endless wonder and discovery. If we want to be truly more advanced than any other life form on this planet, we have to get our shit together regarding the mind, otherwise it's all for nothing (i.e. will physically be blown to pieces sooner or later).
I'm sorry. It is preposterous to claim an elephant has greater level of intelligence than a human being. Cooperative behaviors require little individual intelligence (look at ants or bees). It is competitive and predatory behaviors that require cunning and sophistication. We are more intelligent because we have been constantly doing battle with the apex predator on this planet since the dawn of our existence. Conflict is what has shaped us into what we are today. Human technology and ingenuity does not exist despite our tendency toward violence but because of it.
I for one am filled with extreme pride when I look at the works of my human ancestors. We descended from the trees and will soon travel those distant points of light that filled us with wonder so long ago. Billions of us have died in that effort, your comment betrays their noble contribution.
Elephants are great. We should endeavor to protect them and show them kindness, but the reason we are able to do so is because we are vastly superior to them.
You're right, we've come this far because intelligence is a competitive advantage. However, we do not fully understand the mechanisms of evolution, and I thus find it hard to categorically deny all other beings' ability to think extensively. Their intelligence probably wouldn't be competitive ("how do I get there before that guy"), but maybe there are other kinds of intelligence. Kindness and compassion is not a human invention, and may well be an evolutionary advantage under some circumstances (grouping is needed for survival, and the group survives better by sharing), leading to intelligence based on kindness and not focusing on any single individual.
2) What distinguishes humans most of all is our lack of competitiveness, especially amongst ourselves[1]. The genetic underpinnings of that are still largely a mystery--nothing we understand about Darwinian genetic evolution, game theory, etc, explains how it arose nor how its sustained. But it clearly has something to do with our intrinsic ability to empathize. And some biologists would argue that our heightened empathy preceded our rationality.
Given the apparent overlap of empathic ability with other mammals, especially mammals like elephants, we would likely do well to focus on preservation. Because of the scientific value. And because showing compassion and empathy is perhaps the most important human quality of all. Fortunately, we have the brains to figure out how to do that without neglecting our own existential dilemmas. And it may turn out that maintaining and increasing intelligence in the zero-sum Darwinian evolutionary meat grinder is predicated on empathy.
[1] All the wars in all our history don't conflict with this fact. Humans can still be exceptionally violent, but in comparison to the degree in which non-familial members cooperate it's minimal. Our habitual willingness to cooperate in the first instance with random individuals is even more interesting given our capacity for violence. There's a reason that even after bootcamp most soldiers will still hesitate--if not downright refuse--to shoot an enemy without direct provocation. Or why a soldier would even go to war when his family isn't in immediate danger, or he could move his family to some other, non-belligerent country. And most violent people in our society suffer from recognized mental disorders which, among other things, cripple their ability to empathize.
You've defined greatness in terms of accomplishments and creations. The author was defining it in terms of kindness.
What use are accomplishments if you let people starve or actively and violently punish them for being different than you? If you choose not to help those in need when you have the power to help them, how can you call yourself a better person because you have a higher IQ or wrought more complicated works?
> You've defined greatness in terms of accomplishments and creations. The author was defining it in terms of kindness.
> ... how can you call yourself a better person because you have a higher IQ or wrought more complicated works?
I easily could, by defining greatness in terms of accomplishments and creations. (Not saying that I do that, but I could.) It all depends on your values.
I think there's a much deeper question here, which addresses the possibility of a total ordering of everything 'valuable'. Is life of an individual elephant valuable? Undoubtedly. However I think most people, in some twisted hypothetical scenario, would choose to protect the life of an individual human over the life of an individual elephant. Elephant communities are undoubtedly valuable. So are human communities. This question, of which one is 'more valuable', is for some reason, significantly more personal and subjective than the last question. Once you add objects or concepts into it then it gets even more subjective: a child's doodle is certainly not more valuable than the life of an elephant, but what about the entirety of the Sistine Chapel? What about the US Constitution? That's hairy.
I think much of the discussion in this thread is between people who don't think life can ever have a total ordering with regards to 'value' and people who think it does, and that the total ordering is quite clear. I won't give an explicit opinion because I don't think I can, and also because we're getting off-topic, but feel free to note that I did support conservationism in my original comment.
Neither do they slaughter one another in their millions, which is the precise point of the quote that apparently went over your head. And elephants do things with their bodies and minds that people do not do: numerous examples were provided.
And you exhibit little understanding of how evolution actually works. Kindly educate yourself about the role of mechanisms like cooperation and symbiosis in driving the "advancement" (sic) of species.
And your axe-grinding about feminism is just silly and semi-hysterical and basically tiresome. Please just take that somewhere else. Stuff like this really annoys the rest of us.
I'm incredibly interested in animal minds (I just started reading that book that was posted a while back, Other Minds, about octopuses and consciousness, and I'm really liking it.) And of course, I think that poaching should be illegal and that we should protect and conserve the environment.
But...
> … the world would be a brighter, smellier, noisier place – and you would be a better, wiser, kinder person
No, I wouldn't be a 'better ... person', I would be an elephant! Elephants have not created great works of art, literature, architecture, and poetry. Elephants have no written language, cannot build complex machines, and have not traveled to other worlds, or even explored their own. People have done incredible things with their bodies and minds in a way that animals simply cannot, period. This is (arguably) all a consequence of evolution being a competition, and humans being predators. People like to fight and win, to be better than something else. And while it would be great if human nature was just competitive enough to produce results, but not make humans physically violent, that would be fantastic! But I don't think evolution can exactly fine-tune something like that.
This happens every time that animal consciousness is discussed: somebody tries to claim that the animals in question have a completely different way of life than humans, and that their way of life is 'better', usually because they are peaceful, and that you are arrogant and ignorant if you don't agree. I think that's horseshit.
This would be almost tolerable if it didn't have the subtle feminist jabs hidden in there with the smug moral superiority - "As a boy, your function would be to inseminate, and that's all. Government would be the business of the females." As if being a walking pair of testes was somehow more noble than fighting, struggling, learning, winning, like human boys do. Stop all those pesky masculine behaviors, you "infantile phallocentric [nihilist]." Just be good and dumb and stay where you are.