But wait! What fuels the possibility of separating ourselves from nature? Every run-of-the-mill science writer knows that we are merely the 99% chimpanzee that cannot transcend the accidental blob/monad-to-man history of life. This human exceptionalism could be the most radical suggestion that Avi Loeb, no stranger to controversy, has ever made.
Tag: human exceptionalism
Palmer Study Course On Intelligent Design: Human Exceptionalism 6, Part 2
In Part 2, we consider the alleged genetic similarity between chimps and humans. Then we look at what makes humans unique in the created order.
Palmer Study Course On Intelligent Design: Human Exceptionalism 6, Part 1
From the course unit: Darwin claimed that bipedality would have been the first indication of apes evolving into humans. But after searching for evidence of increasing bipedality, the best scientists can do is claim that hominids were facultatively (optionally) bipedal. All apes today are facultatively bipedal. Is that a convincing argument that humans and apes are closely related? What other fossil evidence shows us the distinct difference between apes and humans?
At Mind Matters News: Chimps who can’t crack nuts prove they are more like humans? Huh?
The fact that no chimpanzee figured out on its own how to crack a nut using a stone does NOT make them more like humans, rather less.
At Mind Matters News: Evolutionary psychology: When we looked in, no one was there…
Evo psych likely got started when psychologists wanted to get in on illuminating findings in evolution, like the Cambrian Explosion. Trouble is, there aren’t any prehumans around. And we don’t have a good reason to believe that early humans differed much from us in psychology.
At Mind Matters News: Would cognition in bacteria “dethrone” humans?
Takehome: Of course we can “see ourselves” as an earthworm. But it doesn’t work in reverse. And Pamela Lyon sheds no light on that fact, apart from denigrating humans.
Human neurons are strangely more efficient than animal ones
In the most extensive study of its kind, nine other [than human] mammals were studied. Larger mammals have larger neurons. And in every case but one, they found that “as the size of neurons increases, the density of channels found in the neurons also increases.” Except in humans, it was the reverse.
At Mind Matters News: Can AI help us talk to whales? Maybe. But then what?
In the real world, if we succeed in communicating with whales, it will be much like communicating successfully with dogs, cats, and horses. None of them are furry people. Whales are not blubbery people either. They won’t bring us closer to understanding what sets humans apart than dogs will.
At Mind Matters News: A philosopher simply invents animals’ concept of death
Like many people who use evolution to conjure a worldview, Monsóis has evolved the world she needs.
Human exceptionalism: You can be a good or a bad human but you can’t just be an animal
When we try to escape into being animals, all that happens is that we reason badly and become bad humans. And the moment we even bring reason into the discussion — well, that’s precisely what human exceptionalism is about!
Primate intelligence test just makes humans more exceptional
A recent finding was that mouse lemurs, with a brain 1/200th the size of that of a chimpanzee, performed approximately as well on a primate cognition test. And then there’s human intelligence…
Are smart birds felling “pillars of human exceptionalism”?
Findings about smart birds are more of a problem for conventional evolution theory than for human exceptionalism.
Michael Egnor: How Noam Chomsky showed that humans are exceptional
Chomsky’s insight that language is an in-born “organ” unique to humans is of obvious relevance to our understanding of why humans are exceptional.
David Berlinski’s thought experiment: Darwinism vs. the obvious
A thought experiment by philosopher and mathematician David Berlinski echoes something Michael Egnor noted recently: Not only are human beings unique but we are unique despite being animals in nature. Here’s the thought experiment:
What Does It Mean To Be Human? Don’t Ask A Darwinist
“What does it mean to be human?” is one of the fundamental questions we all ask. Every once in a while something happens to remind us that those influenced by Darwinism usually only answer the question with “not much”. As a case in point, just today it’s being reported that the father of a son Read More…