IB Philosophy Core: Are we distinct from animals?
- Created by: Milly
- Created on: 11-04-13 18:34
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- Are we distinct from animals?
- Characteristics we share with animals
- Self consciousness
- Knowledge of other minds
- Creativity and aesthetic appreciation
- Reason and problem solving
- Ability to communicate through language and body language
- Ability to feel emotions
- Characteristics defined to humans
- Level of communication
- The hyoid bone allows us to articulate words when speaking and the larynx sits lower in the throat than chimps to enable human speech
- Level of intellect
- Greater awareness of morals and ethical responsibility
- Ability to blush
- Upright posture
- Use of hands and grip
- We have powerful grip and exceptional dexterity to hold and manipulate tools with
- Control of fire
- Long childhoods
- Life after children
- Desire for clothing due to very thin short hairs
- Do these characteristics not just prove that we are characteristics that set us apart from other species, but we are still a type of animal
- Birds are able to fly but that makes them not less of an animal, though others cannot fly
- Level of communication
- Does our moral status make us human?
- No
- Animals should have equal moral status because we all share a similar concept of pain - Utilitarianism shows that pain should be minimized. If animals feel pain then surely their pain should also be minimized.
- We can not use our intellect to show that we have superior moral status as . Not everyone shares extremely high intellectual abilities eg young children and those suffering from mental disabilities
- Both humans and animals live in different societies which determine their own moral rules. Therefore, moral status cannot be compared across different species
- Yes
- We are the only species to understand the definition of moral status and so only we can have this moral status
- Some animals go against would we would deem moral. For instance some female spiders eat males spiders after mating
- Descartes believed that animals are mere machines, so he concluded that they can feel no pain, reason, think or suffer
- Bentham advocated utilitarianism so believed that it was acceptable to kill animals for food, as long as they felt no pain in the process
- Nagel believed that it was incomparable as there is no way of appreciating what it is like to live as another creature
- Singer believed that only humans enter into the social contract and so only they have moral status
- Scruton believed that animals interests should be satisfied. But only humans have duties and rights, like moral status
- Kant believed that animals are not rational beings and so do not have moral status
- No
- Darwin's theory of evolution suggests that humans have developed from apes and before that, fish. Therefore, the distinction between humans and other animals becomes blurred
- The Materialistic view of consciousness is that it is simple functions of the brain
- Does not seem to explain the irrational and abstract beliefs we hold, for instance spirtuality
- Will robots ever be classified as humans?
- Do artificial implants make us less human?
- Is a being only human if it is reproduced by a human
- Characteristics we share with animals
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