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!
Tag: human exceptionalism
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…
Yes! Now there is a Darwinian explanation of suicide
It’s amazing what passes for insight among evolutionary psychologists. How would it help anyone decide how to help a depressed person? Read the whole thing for sure. It gets into beehives and such.
If apes are people, we aren’t (but that’s the point, right?)
One factor that helps diminish awareness of the fact of human exceptionality is the promotion of “buzz” concepts around animal intelligence that are not supported by the histories of disciplines and fall apart under scrutiny. But any time one fails (apes can be taught to talk!), another rises, seamlessly, in its place (elephants can be taught to communicate via high tech!). No one ever calls any of these people to account.
Believing elephants into personhood
For decades, researchers were transfixed with the idea of humanizing great apes by raising them among humans and teaching them language. Emerging from the ruins and recriminations of the collapse, philosophy prof Don Ross has a new idea: Let’s start with elephants instead…
Apes and humans: How did science get so detached from reality?
We’re not “one” with chimpanzees. The wall has not “been breached.” So far as anyone can tell, it is not even breachable. Nobody thinks chimpanzees are the same as humans except a few researchers who mayhave spent too long in the bush.
Why do plant scientists need to tell the world that plants are NOT conscious?
You didn’t think plants were conscious, did you? Did you really think salad is murder? Yet telling us that plants are not conscious is the gist of a recently published major paper in Trends in Plant Science. (open access) Part of the background to the “plants think like people” movement in science, which they oppose, Read More…
Ideologies that devalue human life – with historian Richard Weikart
You can go away screaming I suck! at an uncaring universe if you like or else you can look at evidence-based alternative views.
Breaking: Common sense statements about human vs animal intelligence
In a respectable venue. That’s so rare now. Noticing actual differences is radical in an age when politically correct nonsense is a form of virtue.
Wesley J. Smith: Human exceptionalism is as close to a self-evident truth as one can find
Increasingly, the “scientific” view of many questions involves looking reality in the face and spitting at it. Why is that?