what makes us human?give long answer.
Answers
Answered by
1
Answer:
Explanation:
The physical similarities between humans and other mammals are quite plain. We are made of the same flesh and blood; we go through the same basic life stages. Yet reminders of our shared inheritance with other animals have become the subject of cultural taboos: sex, menstruation, pregnancy, birth, feeding, defecation, urination, bleeding, illness, and dying. Messy stuff. However, even if we try to throw a veil over it, the evidence for evolutionary continuity between human and animal bodies is overwhelming. After all, we can use mammalian organs and tissues, such as a pig's heart valve, to replace our own malfunctioning body parts. A vast industry conducts research on animals to test drugs and procedures intended for humans because human and animal bodies are so profoundly alike. The physical continuity of humans and animals is incontestable. But the mind is another matter.
Our mental capacities have allowed us to tame fire and invent the wheel. We survive by our wits. Our minds have spawned civilizations and technologies that have changed the face of the Earth, while even our closest living animal relatives sit unobtrusively in their remaining forests. There appears to be a tremendous gap between human and animal minds, yet the precise nature of this gap has been notoriously difficult to establish.
People tend to have opinions about animal minds that are in stark contrast to each other. At one extreme, we imbue our pets with all manner of mental characteristics, treating them as if they were little people in furry suits. At the other, we regard animals as mindless bio-machines—consider the ways animals are sometimes treated in the food industry. Most people vacillate between these interpretations from one context to another.
Scientists too seem at times to defend contradicting views, apparently aimed at either securing human dominance or at debunking human arrogance. On the one hand, scholars boldly assert that humans are unique because of things such as language, foresight, mind-reading, intelligence, culture, or morality. On the other hand, studies regularly claim to have demonstrated animal capacities that were previously believed to be uniquely human.
The truth, you may suspect, can often be found somewhere in the middle. In THE GAP I survey what we currently know and do not know about what makes human minds different from any others and how this difference arose. It is about time that serious headway is made on these fundamental questions. Nothing less than understanding our place in nature is at stake. There are also important practical implications of establishing the nature of the gap, for instance, in terms of identifying the genetic and neurological bases of higher mental capacities. Those traits that are unique to humans are likely dependent on attributes of our brain and genome that are distinct.
A clearer understanding of what we share with which other animals also can have profound consequences for animal welfare. Demonstrations of shared attributes of pain and mental distress in animals have changed many people's views on blood sports and cruelty towards animals. Establishing their mental capacities, their wants and needs can provide a better scientific basis for our decisions about how different species should be treated. It may be time to challenge the notion that mentally sophisticated creatures are legally treated as objects, no different from cars or iPhones.
Comparative research has shown that our closest animal relatives, the great apes, share some extraordinary capacities with humans, such as the ability to recognize their reflections in mirrors. Such findings have led to calls to accept great apes into our community of equals, with legally enforceable rights. But we need to take into account not only their impressive capacities but also their limits; because with rights come responsibilities—such as respecting others' rights.
Hope it helps.
Answered by
1
Answer:
Explanation:
perhaps one more thing that makes us human is realizing our weaknesses and to have anxieties about certain events. Right now in my part of the world is the concern about the AEC, Asean Economic Community, 2015; rather like the EU. I have been reading the good and bad about the EU...
'Under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), a single common market of ASEAN countries will be created by 2015. The regional integration”s objective is to create a competitive market of over 600 million people in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Five core elements are outlined in integrating ASEAN into a single market and production base – they are free flow of goods, free flow of services, free flow of investment, freer flow of capital and free flow of skilled labour.'
Similar questions