Differences between Animal and Human Cultures - Essay Example

? Animal/Human Cultures Several things make humans different from animals. These include burying of the dead by humans out of respect, humans evolving to stop relying primarily on instinct, humans being aware of themselves, the feeling of wrong and right sense, as well as evil and moral, complex languages and methods of communication by humans, human use of the brain in exceedingly complex ways compared to animals, and human ability to advance technology. The premise of this paper is to delve into the consequences of these differences. The paper will study moral behaviour, human uniqueness, and consciousness or lack of consciousness. The first consequence of the difference between humans and animals is human uniqueness (Levinas, 2004 p48). Any attempt to answer the question of what humanness is should involve a study of the results of seeing people as lacking or having humanness. Consequences of this question include the dehumanization of groups that are despised and the excuse making to explain ones failings as being only human. This question reveals that there exist two direct consequences of humanness: human nature and human uniqueness (Jeeves, 2011 p32). Human nature refers to the attributes seen as typically, essentially, and fundamentally human. Human uniqueness, on the other hand, refers to those attributes that distinguish an animal from a human being. Differences that lead to human uniqueness are a large brain and an erect posture (Levinas, 2004 p49). Human is the only species of vertebrates that possess an erect posture and a gait that is bipedal. While birds are also bipedal, their backbone stands horizontally rather than vertically with the exception of the penguin. Despite kangaroos being bipedal, they do not possess an erect posture, and their backbone is highly distinct from that of humans. These consequences of human uniqueness involve changes morphologically in the feet, hipbone, and backbone. In mammals, brain size is usually related to the size of the body. Humans, relative to the mass of the body, have the largest brains. The chimpanzee has a brain that is approximately 300 cm3 in volume, with a gorilla having a slightly larger one. In contrast, the human brain is 1300cm3 to 1400cm3. The human brain is also more complex with the cognitive function processor, cerebral cortex, being much greater to the rest of the brain in comparison to apes (Jeeves, 2011 p35). A large brain and an erect posture are just a selection of the features that distinguish humans from non-human primates, despite being the obvious ones. Others include teeth and jaw size reduction, face remodelling, larynx and vocal tract modification with implications as to what language the human will speak, body hair reduction, opposing thumbs, and cryptic ovulation (Jeeves, 2011 p35). Humans are different to all apes and animals in anatomy and no less in functional behaviour and capacities (Levinas, 2004 p49). This is seen both socially and individually. The most fundamental of these are intellectual faculties that are advanced, allowing the human to think abstractly and visualize reality that is not present, categorize objects in to general classes, and to reason. Other features that result to human uniqueness are awareness of death and self, symbolic language, technology like tool making, extremely variable and complex forms of co-operation means as well as social organization (Jeeves, 2011 p36). Others include legal codes, literature, science, religion, art, and political institutions. Humans live in socially organized groups just like other primates. However, primates do not have the human, social complexity of organization (Levinas, 2004 p50). A distinct human trait that is unique is culture, the set of human activities that are non-strictly biological and creations. Culture can be defined as the pool of social and technological innovations accumulated by a people to aid them in their lives. The emergence of culture has brought along cultural evolution, which is primarily a mode of evolution that is super-organic and has been super-imposed on the mode that is organic (Levinas, 2004 p50). Over the lat millennia, this has become human evolutions dominant mode. This, in turn, has been caused by inheritance and cultural change. This is a human trait, distinct to him, that helps him to adapt to the surroundings, transfer that via generations. Another consequence of the difference between humans and animals is moral behaviour (Levinas, 2004 p50). Moral behaviour is the person’s action that takes, in a sympathetic way, into account the actions and their impact on others. While altruism maybe defined in a similar manner, that is unselfish devotion to or regard for other’s welfare; it is usually taken to involve a cost to the altruist for other’s benefit. Moreover, altruism is normally predicated on animal and social insect behaviour, with no intentions but rather resulting from genetically predetermined behaviour. Another name for moral behaviour is ethical behaviour. As long actions are not harmful to others, they may be categorized as moral. Moral values are possessed by people and are a measure of what they find acceptable standards, through which one’s conduct is judged to be either wrong or right, evil or moral (Nitecki, 2003 p56). Moral actions are judged using norms. These norms vary from one individual to another and from one culture to another. Some norms, however, like not killing, honouring parents, and not stealing can perhaps be termed universal. This universal nature raises two key questions that are related: moral sense constitutes a part of human nature, and ethical values can be biological evolution products as compared to being born by cultural and religious traditions. Morality can be considered as distinguishable between normative ethics, metaethics, and practical ethics (Nitecki, 2003 p57). Metaethics aims at justifying why we should do what we do, related to divine commands. Normative ethics are those that refer to laws or rules that determine what we are supposed to do. Practical ethics consider moral norm’s application to certain situations that often involve values that are conflicting. An example is the justification of abortion when necessary to save the life of the mother. Humans justify, in practice, the moral norm’s set that they follow on not one but several metaethical doctrines. Thomas Aquinas says that there are those moral laws that are implanted by the worship of one God, others derived from natural law, and others derived from civil authority. The evolution theory raised questions about the tenets and origins of moral behaviour (Nitecki, 2003 p56). The question of the biological determination of ethical behaviour may refer to any of two issues. Is ethical capacity determined by a human being’s biological nature and whether the codes or systems of these moral norms accepted by man determined biologically? Moral action evaluation emerges from human’s intellectual powers that are highly developed. These powers enable us to anticipate consequences resulting from our actions relating to other people, therefore; allow us to judge as evil or convenient in relation to consequences they might have on others. Moral norms in most cultures are considered universal within that culture (Nitecki, 2003 p57). However, as with other culture elements, they are evolving continuously within one generation. Western societies recently experienced the ammoralization and moralization of various behaviours. Smoking first became moralized, then ammoralized. Other behaviours that have become amoralized have switched to being lifestyle choices from moral failings. These could include illegitimacy, marijuana puffing, divorce, and homosexuality (Nitecki, 2003 p57). Religious beliefs and civil authority usually reinforce this acceptance of norms. This cultural evolution as eventuated over the history of humans is a direct consequence of the distinction between humans and animals. Another consequence of the distinction between humans and animals is consciousness, or lack of consciousness in animals (Descartes, 2007 p58). There exist three senses of consciousness applied to this distinction between animals and humans. One is the consciousness sense that animals and humans feel when they are awake or in a coma, which is implied by the ability to perceive and respond to various selected environmental features making them aware and conscious of these features. Consciousness in these senses can be identified in both animals and humans. The third sense, which is more technical, is access consciousness, which captures the way via which representations could be poised to be used in the control of rational speech and action. This sense also includes an aspect that is occurrent where there is broadcasting of the content in order that other systems may use it in a workspace that is global which then avails it for cognitive processing of tasks that include reasoning, categorization, voluntary attention direction, and planning (Descartes, 2007 p59). There exist two other consciousness senses. These are self-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness (Kant, 1963 p240). Phenomenal consciousness is referent to subjective, phenomenological, Experiential, and qualitative aspects of the experience of consciousness. Sometimes, they can be related to qualia. Phenomenal consciousness is more likely in mammals, especially humans, than it is in other animals such as crustaceans, a majority of molluscs, insects, and other invertebrates. This sense is not developed to a significant degree in fish, amphibians, and reptiles. Self-consciousness refers to the capacity of an organism for representation, in the second order, of the mental states that organism possess (Kant, 1963 p240). Second order representation refers to thought about thought; the difference between animals and humans is that humans are able to attribute to others various mental states. Since animals do not utilize language to converse or reason, animals are not considered to have the element of consciousness. Parrots that vocalize human words are simply repeating words that are meaningless to them. Cartesians point out that the consciousness limitations in animals that make them unable to tell the rest what they are thinking, show that they have not mastered fully natural language of humans and its recursive syntax. The difference in phenomenal consciousness between animals such as earthworms and humans is extremely large, and these creatures cannot be sentient (Kant, 1963 p242). In conclusion, there exist many differences between humans and animals that lead to humans being imbued with the term having humanness. This humanness has several consequences that include moral behaviour, human uniqueness, and consciousness, or lack of it. These consequences, along with others, are what make humans the distinguishable life form that they are. While animal right crusaders try to disprove these consequences, it is necessary to note that the consequences are freely observable, and are what make a human be referred to as so. References Cavalieri, Paola. The Animal Debate: A Reexamination” in In Defense of Animals: The Second . London: Blackwell Publishers,, 2006. Descartes, Rene. From the Letters of 1646 and 1649” in Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald Eds. . Oxford: Berg, 2007. Jeeves, Malcolm A. Rethinking human nature : a multidisciplinary approach. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2011. Johnson, Clarence Shole. Cornel West and Philosophy. London: Routledge,, 2003. Kant, Immanuel. Duties Towards Animals and Spirits” in Lectures on Ethics, trans Louis . New York: The Century Co, 1963. Levinas, Emmanuel. The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights” in Peter Atterton and Matthew. London: Continuum, 2004. Nitecki, Matthew H. Evolutionary ethics. New York: State Univ. of New York Press, 2003. Read More