OT: do you Chan/zen dating?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Shaolin Kung Fu
21

Thing is Fuxn that most other animals DO think.

They just don’t have our level of technology.

The natural tool makers include:

Humans
Chimpanzees
Bonobos
Orangutans

The natural language makers include

Humans
Chimpanzees
Bonobos
Whales and Dolphins

These languages do go well beyond “hoots and howls”. In the case of Chimps and Bonobos there is a very complex system of body laguage that accompanies vocalizations. The main restricter on further complexification of their language lies in the shape of their trachea.

And as for wales? It’s only the fact that humans have had limited luck figuring out what they are saying that keeps people from calling whale calls a language universally.

and Gorillas have demonstrated the aptitude to teach human-instructed language to their offspring independantly.

These lists are not entirely exclusive

The natural social animals include

Pretty much every mammal to some level

Now, mind, the languages and tools of humans are more complex than those of the other animals listed but greater complexity alone is not sufficient to separate us from our bretheren. Whether it’s Des Cartes or Chomsky you are deriving your idea of humans as separate and superior from it’s still not condusive with the facts on the matter.

22

i can see this turning into a metaphyical debate…

but i guess its all comes to your definition of the different aspects separating man from animal. i still believe there is a certain something that separates us from other creatures. a single cell amoeba is also an animal like chimps and gorillas but no one puts this on the same evolutionary ladder. it may be humbling to believe so but all things aren’t created equal. i do see animals having personalities and intelligence, i never said they didn’t, but its only a small part of the full potential that nature gave us. people are held accountable for animalistic behavior because we hold ourselves to a higher standard. i see us as evolving ****her and ****her away from being simply apes. apes are good at simple ideas and mimicry but then what? now if a gorilla were to create its own concepts from sign language…that would be something.

23

and what does descartes and chomsky have to say on the matter? im not familiar with their work…

24

Hehehe… metaphysics

so what makes humans special?

I have to return to Nietzsche again (as always) and play the devil’s advocate.

what did he have to say on this topic?

he called humans “the sick animal” :slight_smile:

are we really higher than the animals we come from? or are we just a mutated evolutionary dead end?

we certainly think very highly of ourselves, but do we as a species deserve such praise?

certainly there are examples of extraordinary humans, men and women who have given the species as a whole all its science, philosophy, art and various technologies… but is this the norm?

far from it.

in fact for the average man the seperation from his animal cousins is not so profound at all.

he is a creature of habit… his world is ruled by basic desires, not lofty ideas

no matter how much he would like to believe otherwise.

as for the dolphin language… they can be taught to understand our languages to at least some extent, but we have not begun to decipher theirs.

and if we are talking about brain mass…

now for the real flame war to begin I will bring up the name of a man which always succeeds in bringing contempt

SITCHEN

hehe

how about the idea that the reason for human’s marked difference from his cousins is not due to direct evolutionary forces but instead was caused by genetic tampering by alien astronauts long ago…

this is a theory which explains a great many otherwise unexplained mysteries and which should be considered seriously

hail satan

:smiley:

25

no i wont turn this into a metaphysical debate…

lol d@mn nihilists

well a relatively short time ago according to scientists we were still swinging from trees and throwing our own sh!t so i wouldn’t discount of us yet. if we manage not to incinerate the earth with nuclear weapons i can’t even imagine the evolutionary steps humans will leap to.

i used to be as misanthropic as the best so yes i see animalistic behaviors in even the extraordinary examples of human beings but more and more i notice extraordinary things out of everyday ordinary people. yes we have a sorry excuse for culture and civilization in alot of cases. overhyped to be sure, we have a long way to go. but i can see the leaps and bounds we made in recorded human history in the last 10,000 years. thats an incredibly short time span. from scribbling art in caves to charting space…

i wouldn’t trade in my ideals and beliefs or the the ability to create things like art or music, to shape the world around me, my imagination and will being the only limit, or to discover how life and the universe operates. not for swinging in trees and throwing my own sh!t.

and about dolphins or whales. dogs can understand basic human language too. so dolphins have big heads? lol i never thought that was the only deciding factor in intelligence anyway. a human with half a brain can still outthink most animals… i dont know though. i think it would be kind of cruel of nature to have a super intelligent animal stuck in a dolphins body… no way to truly express itself. maybe speech and having thumbs spoiled me :smiley:

oh yea and hail satan! :smiley:

26

trapped in a dolphin’s body?

one of the most perfect forms in all creation

with the open sea as your playground… and with the best sashimi in the world for breakfast lunch and dinner! :smiley:

the only thing thumbs are good for are using can openers anyway.

I recall reading somewhere (no idea where) that the language of dolphins is vastly more complex than any human language. and we just can’t seem to figure it out at all.

avoiding the alien astronauts I see…

for shame

did you know in mapping the human genome they found a gene that shouldn’t be there?

more evidence for us being an engineered species I’d say

humans aren’t so great.. but we do have the potential to become something great, eventually

or we could be a disease

its a perfect analogy really

humans as a cancer on the earth

so long, and thanks for all the fish

:wink:

27

They have.

Try googling “Ape Sign Language”. Great apes instructed in standard American Sign Language routinely not only modify the language, constructing new concepts, but then pass on these modifications to their offspring through instruction.

As I said before greater complexity does not denote separate categorization. You class Chimpanzees in the same category as Amoebas? Chimps are 98.7% genetically identical to humans. If Amoebas are categorized in the same category as Chimps than Humans most certainly are.

Crushing fist got my point regarding dolphins out. It’s got nothing to do with cranial capacity but rather with the clear fact that they have developed a complicated family of languages that makes me consider Dolphins to be entirely sentient. Had they opposable thumbs they’d probably be running the show.

28

People go veg for all sorts of reasons…

Don’t be dissing my girl Pamela. :stuck_out_tongue:

29

we have language and writing in multiple and mutually unintelligible flavours!

no other creature has the ability to record through documentation in any media such as humans do.

this is what truly sets us apart.

and for you biblical types it’s like it says “At first, there was the word…”

pam’s hot and oso is a dirty liar. :stuck_out_tongue:

30

They had a special on T.V. a while back about Pamela, and you know she actually wasn’t bad looking before the fake boobs and pancake makeup.

I had no idea because I’d only ever seen her on Baywatch.

31

doug adams is the man :smiley:

if scientists cants decipher dolphin speak then how do they assume its more complex than our language? thats a very tall order… in what ways is it more complex? how do they describe their world better than we do? do they have a thousand different words for water? seems like circular logic. if we can’t decipher it then it must be too complex to decipher. a scientists pride…

and no im not touching alien astronauts… lol though i’d said before the big irony is we’re all prolly in a big game of “sim life” run by bored computer programmers…


i never said amoebi and chimps were the same. both are animals but completely on different levels. thats the point i was trying to make. im not saying we're gods on earth but i do think we're superior to the rest. so what if we share 98.7% of monkey dna. every animal shares something in common with another. their are only so many logical forms that life can take on earth. we need thumbs but so do raccoons. nature recycles alot of good ideas. maybe that 1.3 percent makes all the difference. and correct me if im wrong but geneticists still haven't figured out what the functions of the other 90+ percent. they call it junk dna. its a possiblity they'll find other differences. 

otters use tools....parrots talk....gorillas do math......dolphins rescue sailors. im still not gonna hold my breath for the dolphin version of pythagoras or chang tzu or siddharta gautama...  


dolphins with thumbs is an interesting idea though. 

i was reading this story by arthur c clarke (a fu'king genius by the way) about a mentally advanced species of wolf. they developed teleptahy, philosophy, and something like science. i dont think they were good at math for some reason. all types of yoda like abilities. but they couldn't really discover or manipulate anything about the world around them. they were limited in that regard. basically living in the pre-stone age no better than the simple minded beasts around them. forced to hunt for their food and sleep in open fields, basically completely at natures mercy. that is until they discovered a race of primitive apelike creatures. they were much less mentally advanced but were good craftsmen. so they developed a sort of symbiotic relationship and they both advanced each others cultures. the wolves able to to let their imaginations run wild and develop complex machines and tools, and the apelike creatures would create these things. they both made huge leaps in science and technology and civilization. charting the sea and distant lands.......biology.....agriculture etc...


so i know it can't be complex tools that set us apart, since some of the most enlightened men in human history lived as ascetics or hermits and gave up worldly possesions. it has more to do with the control we have over our destinies and our free will. our awareness and consciousness. and ape will always just be an ape. but an ape will never be a human. will humans always be just apes? :confused:
32

barbarian

when man lost the barbarian, man lost the animal.

barbarism is the true way of man.

civilization is the poison in which man moves further and further from the way of nature.

33

I forgot to add that we use cutlery and make porno.

ain’t no dolphin porno out there, that’s for sure.

as for ape sign language, well, for the most part, they learned that from humans and did not create it themselves.

most beings communicate in some way, including trees for pete’s sake, yes trees!

Trees will warn each other of infestations by releasing chemical substance that will allow other trees to manufacture a repellent of sorts and avoid the infestation that is killing the messengers.

Now, I personally think that all living things share this same place and that is enough in and of itself to give value to all living things and no one species is greater than any other and each has their setbacks and virtues.

Humans are self evidently quite different from virtually all other lifeforms on earth in too many ways to simply write it off. But do we have more value than other living things? No. At least, not by my reckoning. All life has value. And because we really cannot escape dualism except perhaps through death or maybe momentarily through some method or another, the void has value as well, for it helps us to define what is and what is not.

34

Well basically you are asserting that dolphins don’t show signs of civilization.

But you should remember that early humans likely didn’t show any signs of civilization either, even though they were the same species as human.

So how do we decide, what is intelligent, and what is not? It seems communication, reasoning ability, and memory would be signs of intelligence, would they not?

Or do you have other criteria, like PSPs? Because by that criteria, early humans were animals, then, even though they were the same species as we are.

35

i dont think anyone said dolphins dont show signs of civilization. but what is ur definition of civilization. it can mean alot or a little

ants show signs of civilization. some species have **** near utopian societies.

36

As I said humans have more complex technology than other animals. Writing is a technology it is nowhere near as old as biologically modern humans.

As for language in multiple and mutually unintelligible flavours the whales provide a strong example of non-humans who share this trait. A weak but present example is the fact that both communicative methods and toolkits vary from group to group of Chimpanzees.

37

and i dont think one life should have more value than another. in fact i think because of our position we should be held to a higher standard in our relations to nature and life around us. meaning we should show compassion to all lifeforms and cruelty shouldn’t be tolerated because we have the power to overcome our base instincts unlike other living things. but of course that isn’t the case…we have wars and poverty and we show most the cruelty to our fellow living creatures and to nature because our base instincts are bolstered by our intelligence, knowledge, ideals, imaginations and desires… its a catch 22

38

That’s one of the reasons that Dolphins think they are smarter than people.

:stuck_out_tongue:

39

Dolphins don’t need porn

Weren’t there dolphins on Baywatch?

40

Dolphins cannot apply “the shocker.”