The Arbour Arguments thread....

[PunkMaister]

• I have asked to define what a human is. Sonofccn has defined it as a »hairless ape like creature which stands errect which has mastered it's environment and developed a long list of inventions and labor saving devices including the very internet we are using now.« With his words: »Everything else is not human.«
  The pictures I have shown are showing individuals who do not meet the definition of sonofccn. Accordingly to his definition, they are not humans.
• If you are too stupid to understand what a definition is or why it is important to have exact definitions, there is no sense in continuing that debate. You can continue to decide arbitrary and according to your gut feeling. But don't expect that anyone can understand you.

[/list][/list]

But he gave you basically an exact definition within reason of what a human being essentially is. All you are doing is relying on minutia to keep the argument going.

And you cannot ignore the fact that you, yourself admitted that Humans are more intelligent than Whales or Apes. Anything else to counter that is just plain minutia to blur the issue.

Your arguments are so feeble they are not even funny.

Most humans are indeed hairless in comparison to other primates such as Chimps, Gorillas, Orangutans etc.

Babies have yet to develop into fully grown and capable human beings to say sonofccn's definition excludes them is nothing but a copout.

[Who is like God arbour]

I have just found an interesting article at newscientist.com:

• • • Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals
      
      To accompany the article So you think humans are unique? we have selected six articles from the New Scientist archive that tell a similar story. We have also asked the researchers involved to update us on their latest findings. Plus, we have rounded up six videos of animals displaying 'human' abilities.
      
      
      1. Culture
      
      Art, theatre, literature, music, religion, architecture and cuisine - these are the things we generally associate with culture. Clearly no other animal has anything approaching this level of cultural sophistication. But culture at its core is simply the sum of a particular group's characteristic ways of living, learned from one another and passed down the generations, and other primate species undoubtedly have practices that are unique to groups, such as a certain way of greeting each other or obtaining food.
      
      Even more convincing examples of animal cultures are found in cetaceans. Killer whales, for example, fall into two distinct groups, residents and transients. Although both live in the same waters and interbreed, they have very different social structures and lifestyles, distinct ways of communicating, different tastes in food and characteristic hunting techniques - all of which parents teach to offspring.
      
      Read the original article: Culture shock (24 March 2001)
      
      Hal Whitehead, Dalhousie University writes:
      
      "Since our 2001 review, people have often considered culture as a potential explanation of the behavioural patterns that have turned up in their studies of whales and dolphins.
      
      "Our own work has concentrated on the non-vocal forms of sperm-whale culture. The different cultural clans of sperm whales, although in basically the same areas, use these waters very differently, and are affected very differently by El Niño events. They also have different reproductive rates.
      
      "In sperm whales, and likely other whales and dolphins, culture has the potential to affect population biology, and so issues as diverse as genetic evolution and the impacts of global warming on the species."
      
      
      2. Mind reading
      
      Perhaps the surest sign that an individual has insight into the mind of another is the ability to deceive. To outwit someone you must understand their desires, intentions and motives - exactly the same ability that underpins the "theory of mind". This ability to attribute mental states to others was once thought unique to humans, emerging suddenly around the fifth year of life. But the discovery that babies are capable of deception led experts to conclude that "mind-reading" skills develop gradually, and fuelled debate about whether they might be present in other primates.
      
      Experiments in the 1990s indicated that great apes and some monkeys do understand deception, but that their understanding of the minds of others is probably implicit rather than explicit as it is in adult humans.
      
      Read the original article: Liar! Liar! (14 February 1998)
      
      Marc Hauser, Harvard University, writes:
      
      "The tamarin work didn't pan out, but there are now several studies that show evidence of theory of mind in primates, including work by Brian Hare, Josep Call, Mike Tomasello, Felix Warneken, Laurie Santos, Justin Wood, and myself on chimps, rhesus monkeys and tamarins. There is nothing quite like a successful Sally-Anne test, but studies point to abilities such as seeing as a form of knowing, reading intentions and goals."
      
      
      3. Tool use
      
      Some chimps use rocks to crack nuts, others fish for termites with blades of grass and a gorilla has been seen gauging the depth of water with the equivalent of a dipstick, but no animal wields tools with quite the alacrity of the New Caledonian crow. To extract tasty insects from crevices, they craft a selection of hooks and long, barbed tapers called stepped-cut tools, made by intricately cutting a pandanus leaf with their beaks. What's more, experiments in the lab suggest that they understand the function of tools and deploy creativity and planning to construct them.
      
      Nobody is suggesting that toolmaking has common origins in humans and crows, but there is a remarkable similarity in the ways in which their respective brains work. Both are highly lateralised, revealed in the observation that most crows are right-beaked - cutting pandanus leaves using the right side of their beaks. New Caledonian crows may force us to reassess the mental abilities of our first toolmaking ancestors.
      
      Read the original article: Look, no hands (17 August 2002)
      
      Gavin Hunt at the University of Aukland, writes:
      
      "The general aim of our research on New Caledonian crows is to determine how a 'bird brain' can produce such complex tools and tool behaviour. Since the New Scientist article appeared in 2002, our team has focused on continuing to document tool manufacture and use in the wild (New Zealand Journal of Zoology, vol 35 p 115), the development of tool skills in free-living juveniles, the social behaviour and ecology of NC crows on the island of Maré, experimental work investigating NC crows' physical cognition and general intelligence, and neurological work.
      
      "Some of this work is being undertaken collaboratively with laboratories in Germany (neurology) and New Zealand (genotyping). A very similar study is also being carried out independently at the University of Oxford. This parallel research has produced findings that are both confirmatory and conflicting."
      
      Alex Kacelnik, University of Oxford, adds:
      
      "We now know for sure that genetics is involved in the tool-making abilities of new Caledonian crows. We raised nestlings by hand and found that chicks that had never seen anybody handle objects of any kind started to use tools to extract food from crevices at a similar age to those who were exposed to human tutors using tools (Animal Behaviour, vol 72, p 1329). Clearly, observing others is not necessary for the tool use. However chicks exposed to tutoring exhibit a greater intensity of tool-related activity. Not surprisingly, genes and experience show a complex interaction.
      
      "We have also developed a new technique, consisting of loading tiny video cameras on free-ranging birds, so as to see what they see and document the precise use of tools in nature. We have discovered that they use tools in loose soil, that they use a kind of tool not previously described (grass stems), and that they hunt for vertebrates (lizards). All of this, together with laboratory analysis of their cognitive abilities is forming a richer picture of what the species can do."
      
      
      4. Morality
      
      A classic study in 1964 found that hungry rhesus monkeys would not take food they had been offered if doing so meant that another monkey received an electric shock. The same is true of rats. Does this indicate nascent morality? For decades, we have preferred to find alternative explanations, but recently ethologist Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder has championed the view that humans are not the only moral species. He argues that morality is common in social mammals, and that during play they learn the rights and wrongs of social interaction, the "moral norms that can then be extended to other situations such as sharing food, defending resources, grooming and giving care".
      
      Read the original article: Virtuous nature (13 July 2002)
      
      Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, writes:
      
      "Work published this year showed that animals are able to make social evaluations and these assessments are foundational for moral behaviour in animals other than humans. Francys Subiaul of the George Washington University and his colleagues showed that captive chimpanzees are able to make judgments about the reputation of unfamiliar humans by observing their behaviour - whether they were generous or stingy in giving food to other humans. The ability to make character judgments is just what we would expect to find in a species in which fairness and cooperation are important in interactions among group members (Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-008-0151-6)."
      
      
      5. Emotions
      
      Emotions allow us to bond with others, regulate our social interactions and make it possible to behave flexibly in different situations. We are not the only animals that need to do these things, so why should we be the only ones with emotions? There are many examples of apparent emotional behaviour in other animals.
      
      Elephants caring for a crippled herd member seem to show empathy. A funeral ritual performed by magpies suggests grief. Was it spite that led a male baboon called Nick to take revenge on a rival by urinating on her? Divers who freed a humpback whale caught in a crab line describe its reaction as one of gratitude. Then there's the excited dance chimps perform when faced with a waterfall - it looks distinctly awe-inspired. These days, few doubt that animals have emotions, but whether they feel these consciously, as we do, is open to debate.
      
      Read the original article: Do animals have emotions? (23 May 2007)
      
      
      6. Personality
      
      It's no surprise that animals that live under constant threat from predators are extra-cautious, while those that face fewer risks appear to be more reckless. After all, such successful survival strategies would evolve by natural selection. But the discovery that individuals of the same species, living under the same conditions, vary in their degree of boldness or caution is more remarkable. In humans we would refer to such differences as personality traits.
      
      From cowardly spiders and reckless salamanders to aggressive songbirds and fearless fish, we are finding that many animals are not as characterless as we might expect. What's more, work with animals has led to the idea that personality traits evolve to help individuals survive in a wider variety of ecological niches, and this is influencing the way psychologists think about human personality.
      
      Read the original article: Critters with attitude (3 June 2001)
      
      For an update on animal personalities and how research in this area is throwing light on human behaviour read The personality factor.

[PunkMaister]

Arbour I'm curious as to your persistence on this issue. Do you think that the only way for people to stop abusing animals is to degrade humans to the level of Snails and Protozoa? It seems that way...

[sonofccn]

This creature has not mastered it's enviroment or has developed a long list of inventions and labor saving devices including the very internet we are using now. It has not even a human genom.

Two genetic defects and a baby. Hmmm. I see. I give you a general answer you say that's vauge and illdefined. I give a more exact description and you cite outliers. In short you can not be pleased and will shift goalposts depending on my response.

With other words, your so called human rights are nothing more than a convention between humans.

Yeah...We invented them. There was no such things as rights until man decided that they existed and as I implied beyond a few very basic we can't all agree what is a right.

They have no universal validity and they are not to be observed by humans who have not agreed to such a convention

News flash many humans do not agree to what a right is. The rights accorded to me as an American are different from what a person receives in an African thugacracy. That does not mean I condone what the scum of humanity does to it's own kin but concepts of universal morality are laughable.

You guess. That means you don't know it.
That's pity because you could have used a dictionary, lexicon or encyclopaedia.
Wikipedia has an interessting article about it:

I'm not the one claiming the term doesn't have a meaning.

As you can see, it is only an intangible term.

Actually I see a bunch of intellecutals who as usual take a simple concept and try and make it as bloody difficult as possible but I digress. Most of the stuff under "AI" and "Science fiction" or "Senteince Quotant" meshes with what I said. That people, deciding that animals require rights, have thrown mud in the water does not make the term intangible.

What signs would be necessary in your opinion to display sentience? Have animals to debate the sense of life in plain English?

Well that would be useful but display critical thinking skills we would expect in a human speciman of comparative age or comunicating with us via some repeating pattern or mathmatics.

Two of the three creatures from above would not be able to do that. But because they are, according to your definition, not humans, it is irrelevant. We want to know what a human can do.

Cute. You really have problems with a baseline don't you.

With that example, I have come to the conclusion, that each child - until it has learned something about electrotechnology is not a human because it would not understand the construction and will not know to simply remove the wiring. It's not able to reason and master its enviroment.

Well first even a relatively small child, 6-8, could deduce that normal cookies do not shock but this cookie with the metal wires does and assuming they wanted the cookie more than the pain already inflicted could go from there. Second this was a single example to demonstrate a point. So are you going to cry generalities as irrevelent because their vague and than leap on any outlier when I try to be more specific the entire debate? Third small children as I have mentioned before are not regarded the same rights as adults so trouting out infants and such to try and poke a hole in my argument is futile.

The first time electrotechnology was taught to me in my school, I was ten years old. Okay, I have known a little bit of it even before. But my knowledge was mostly limited to "Do not touch because it will hurt you". I haven't really known anything important about it nor was I able to reason and master it.

I don't expect them to redo the wiring just realize picking up the cables that are taped to "bait" will make the ouchy's go away.

Have you seen young animals playing with each other? Some researchers have dared to suggest that animals may play because they find it pleasurable to do so. Doing something for pleasure, rather than for survival, is part of how you define the act of creating art.

I never denied animals have pleasure/pain receptors. Now you need to cite an example of them doing something, a dance, a song, a mud drawing etc and you will have art and then you will have an actual piece of evidence.

Is it important that the cat does not takes a brush and draws something?

For it be defined as art for the purposes of elevating animals? Yes it has to be something.

Intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to define intelligence. Insofar it is also a very intangible term.

It's the differnce between a drone and something truly alive. A robot without this intangible ability can be smashed, scrapped and sold for parts. A robot with this intangible ability can not.

But it is indisputable that animals have also intelligence. Chimps are even more intelligent than human babies. And some species have even education. The young learn from the elders things that are not already encoded in their genome.

I reserve the word intelligence for things that are sentient, that can reason and think. Animals do not have intelligence unless you have additional evidence. Chimps are a rather unique case and who are on the border, the debate is more do they fall just short of hte threshold or do they cross over, and are a poor example for claiming all animals deserve rights.

As already said, it is not a question of quality but quantity.

Try to have a discussion with a frog and then tell me there is no quality differnce in human thinking abilities and lower animals.

It is indisputable that animals are communicating with each other. We don't understand them and they may not debate Nietzsche. But to say they have no language is simply wrong.

Really? Are we talking about behavior signs or actual language that can be studied, anaylised and decoded. If so I would like to see base dictionary for rabbit or whatever animal it is. Oh wait. Do you mean those stupid dances bees do to comunicate the location of a flower?

On the other side. If I see another human, I also don't see that it asks its place in the universe. Most humans with which I interact don't ask such a question - at least while I'm there. And I'm pretty sure that some humans I know will never ask such a question. Insofar I see no difference to animals.

Actually religion, science etc are all have been mankinds attempt to understand thier place in the universe so if you have ever interacted with humans at all since we first stood up right yes we have questioned our place in the universe.

Each species has unique characteristics. That's what makes it a species. A bat has wings, a whale has sonar, a tiger has stripes, humans have intelligence.

That is like saying a firecracker is the same as an A-bomb because both blow up. The magnitude differnce and importance of say being able to think compared to having sonar couldn't fit inside this galaxy.

It would be great if you would look in a dictionary if you want to define them.
If you would have done it, you would have noticed, that they are intangible.

Actually I saw basic two groups. Actual science let's rate and grade sentency and animal rights activist animals are sentient so let's degrede the meaning until we get what we want.

I have never said that we are not different. I have always admitted that we have mental abilities other animals have not. As you have said, compassion - also for other animals - is one ability humans have.

Okay you are almost there. We are aware of our existence and mortality. We devised codes of conduct and morality to govern our society. Just what do animals posses/do besides being alive that qualify them as being on our level?

I'm the opinion that if we value these abilities, we should act accordingly. Especially if you think that you stand above all other animals you should act accordingly and not like each other animal if it only could.

So you are holding humans to another standard so we are different, superior to these animals by your own statements. Why do you wish to grant them rights when you obviously don't think they deserve it?

But your believe in God and that God has made you is a fundamental problem in that debate.

Funny. I was thinking yoru lack of believe was the problem making you a adrift in the sea of moral relativism. Funny that.

You believe in things that are not provable

So do you. My belief in God is no way inferor to you belief that animals are deserving of rights and in fact based on something more solid. At least some historical data in the bible occured were all you really have is debating minutia.

On the other side, as long as it is not proven that animals are not able to suffer, you won't care for them. With other words, it's irrelevant what I'm saying as long as it contradicts your believe.

Incorrect. I simply demand concrete proof before I change my mind. You ask me to alter my perception of the universe I can't "err on the side of caution" I need proof. Something that you have provided in very limited supply.

That is not human but human made. You do not swim better. You do not have sonar. You are not stronger than a chimp.
And when all yout technology fails (e.g. you have no power) you have not even that.

So? You said that made these animals special and I pointed out that man had replicated nearly every trait you mentioned. Why? Because unlike bigger meaner animals we can think.

Physic is not metaphysical musings. All reactions in your brain are following physical, chemical and bio-chemical laws. Your brain has a certain pysical structure. In a certain moment, the result of data processing is always determined. Another result is not possible. If you think you have a choice, it is only a misbelief. What you choose is dictated by the structure of your brain and the result of physical, chemical and bio-chemical processes.

Cute. That fact that outside stimuli can affect people must baffle you. I mean sort of brain damage the brain remains the same and thus all decisions would reflect that. Of course that would make your other arguments meaningless. I can't change my mind, I'm hardwired to believe what I beleive. It would also mean, as an logical extension, that any debate is pointless. If people do not have free will and are machines thier actions are predetermined and nothing we do can alter it. We should simply stop trying to improve mankind and settle into our armchairs to rot away and hope a more intelligent race replaces us.

Well anyway after that mordid thought as I said also I know I have free will. If you wish to be a drone you have the freedom to do it. Oh, yes, I hope you have a nice day WILGA. :) Something says you'll need it more than me.

There is an interessting article about determism at wikipedia. I recommend to read it.

Sorry I'll pass. I'm not a believer in that particular faith.

[Mr. Oragahn]

You make leaps of logic. Having a sense of reality doesn't mean we don't enjoy what we can enjoy as humans. That said, these criteria vary from person to person, and bliss can take many forms, even cruel ones.

There is a big difference in simply not knowing than to think that everything is irrelevant and absurd on those grounds.

You obviously have a problem with scales and thinking out of the box. I perfectly understand that certain things matter to humans. As a human, I feel those things. I share those emotions with billions of other humans and all the generations through the ages. But the universe still doesn't give a shit for all I could tell.

Some people like myself chose faith to fill in those blanks. Others do not but still ironically follow the moral guidelnes set by Judeo-Christian traditions and so on, for example some Atheists even sing Christmas carols during Christmas to me personally that a hardcore atheist would sing "Joy to the world" is both amusing and baffling. But I guess that's one of the things they hang on too so the world doesn't taste just like bone and ash.

There's no rule as to what an atheist cannot do. Now, pretending that the good oh humanity, the inherent human rights, what we feel is less hurting to any fellow human, could only come from Judeo-Christians traditions is patently absurd. I know you believers would like to have all of us think that the word is only a better place for humans because of the words of God, but if anything, I can read the Testaments and tell you right now that they were, at first, 50% common sense (which existed before these tablets came) and 50% bigotry, racism, fascism and other forms of bias (which also existed before).
And it didn't get better with Testament 2.0.

My point of view is that there's a great deal of hypocrisy coming from moderate believers within such religions, because if they really abided to the core rules, the former and true tenets of the theological laws, they'd be honest with themselves and their God(s), but be called fundies. Moderate believers are hypocrites, lying to themselves.

I get my truth on my own.

Thankfully, most of us are raised in positive contexts, so we don't turn into sick individuals, although what we experience later on in our lives greatly affects and shapes our tastes and objectives.

Yes but as you said how people are raised has a lot to do with it combined off course with genetic traits such as propensity to violence etc, etc...

You're sure you want to begin a thread about violence and genetics? Let's not get there, not only because I don't see how this would be relevant, and secondly because I don't think that even if you were right, this would be limited to humans, and thus making us more animal than anything else.

On that point, it's simple. I enjoy a great many things, but the real truth will come when I die, because then, and only then, will be the moment I may learn a bit more about what we are... or just disappear.

Which is what we all await regardless of what we may believe or not...

No. Believers are looking for something particular which is not exactly an answer, but protection and prosperity. They look for a confirmation of their beliefs.
True agnostics just wait and hope that, somehow, if there is something, it would be "good", based on what we see as good in general.
But who knows? Perhaps when you physically die, your mind is sucked by a ravenous creature, or perhaps you go through a hellish realm which is so frightening and torturing that typical christian Hell would be a Carebear tell in comparision. :)

I just try to live by the day and respect certain values, perhaps this is ridiculous because there's no true law that says to respect someone else, not to steal or not to kill. Nevertheless, what is seen as good values seems to be shared by a great fragment of humanity, but not its totality. It's, after all, only a consensus.
But there can only be a few alphas as there can only be a few wolves for so many sheep.

Obviously those values do work as they have helped create the greatest civilization humans have ever had.

It depends of your perspective. What you can see as great civilizations can be plain crap to others, or only good to them but not for lowly people.

Finally, we are only above animals depending on the scale we chose.
I find it odd that for a 42 years old man of faith, you're so fixed up on one single scale while it's only part of the logos.

So far that's the one that works the most...

Ask a cat and it would tell you that "works the most" is nothing like our crazy nightmarish shit that's been going on for tens and tens of millenia.

[GStone]

There's no rule as to what an atheist cannot do. Now, pretending that the good oh humanity, the inherent human rights, what we feel is less hurting to any fellow human, could only come from Judeo-Christians traditions is patently absurd. I know you believers would like to have all of us think that the word is only a better place for humans because of the words of God

I'm choking as I type this, but...as a fellow Judeo-Christian...I find it a ridiculous statement to say that faith can't follow logic and reason. Faith in a supreme being uses the logic that there will be some kind of intervention by an entity that is far powerful than ordinary man.

but if anything, I can read the Testaments and tell you right now that they were, at first, 50% common sense (which existed before these tablets came) and 50% bigotry, racism, fascism and other forms of bias (which also existed before).
And it didn't get better with Testament 2.0.

Many versions have been that way when seen from within the context of good and evil. Most people don't study what religions say, including most followers of judeo-christianity and this includes many of the priests. They learn to an extent of different degrees, but they don't go further. In judeo-christianity, god exists outside the context of good and evil. The fall of man was the spirit of what would be humans in the land of the living letting oneself become 'impure'. Taking and eating the apple of the tree of knowledge was the spirit of man descending from a state outside good and evil into a state within the context of good and evil. 'Converting others' is intended to be getting others to raise themselves back out of the context of good and evil. What's seen as 'bigotry, racism, fascism and other forms of bias' is really the attempt to get out of good and evil. This info is not widespread, so it's seen as being mean and unjust and hateful. And because of this, there's also the 'love thy neighbor' bit, sharing parts, etc. in the bibe.

My point of view is that there's a great deal of hypocrisy coming from moderate believers within such religions, because if they really abided to the core rules, the former and true tenets of the theological laws, they'd be honest with themselves and their God(s), but be called fundies. Moderate believers are hypocrites, lying to themselves.

There would be only one that could have done this and that's Jesus, whether one believes he existed or not. But, he doesn't count. He just had a human body. With further examination of the religion, one finds that Jesus is the actual word of god. God's actual voice when he created existence. He was his voice in a human body, so he doesn't count. The same would go for the angels, archangels, god himself and any other cosmic force that exists outside good and evil. There were jesus' apostles, but I'm not sure they were all completely able to follow as well as those outside good and evil, at least while being alive.