What makes Humans Human?

Inspired by the Dave, of the House, I hope to start a discussion on the topic above.

To begin with, this how I answered the question some 2 years ago.

Feel free to tell me how wrong I am... just tell me why...




"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117)

What makes Humans Human?


To understand the idea of humans it is important to explore their origins. Within Christian societies before Darwin, it was ‘common knowledge’ that humans were created as higher beings in God’s image. When On the Origin of species by means of natural selection was published in 1859, it provided a clear lineage between apes and what we know as humans today. It was only when this genetic heritage was discovered that the question of our distinction came to light.

Leakey and Lewin (1992) have also searched for the moment of human evolutionary birth: in their book Origins: Reconsidered, they stated that homo erectus was truly the “harbinger of humanity” (1992:46). The discovery of the first fossilised remains of homo erectus dated back 2.5 million years, at a geological time when man first began to fashion the environment around him in the form of stone axes and tools. Leaky and Lewin have argued that, whilst developing a notion of discovery (to choose food by thought rather than instinct) and also of record (cave paintings), that we can see this time as being part of history that coincided with the beginning of the human ‘brain expansion’, when the total capacity of human brains, and hence human minds, increased dramatically. It was at this time when humans started to become aware of their environment and to understand the idea of time. Further, with this new idea of time, came the concept of mortality. Through observing other animals and plants, humans began to conceptualise life and death, creating a conflict within the blossoming mind of homo erectus: the instinctual urge to survive was strong, although the new concept of death was unrelenting; they must survive, yet they will die. Man needed to resolve this problem, humans began to search and to reason.

Plato once said that the true essence of man was reason; he believed that only through reason can humans approach the true forms. We might surmise that Plato is referring to the human ability to think, to analyse and to remember the results of such analytical studies. The human ability to reason and run simulations of thought through the mind, and further, to compare these thoughts against each other, certainly appears to be a unique feature of humans as we know them (today). It has been argued however, that this level of purposeful thought is not enough to define us as human. Dawkins (1976) refers to this idea in his work The Selfish Gene. Here Dawkins asserts that, not only the human ability to simulate, but also the memory to compare simulations, has been a major evolutionary success; it can be expressed therefore as a successful survival tactic within evolution. Further, Dawkins argues that such a purposeful system could have evolved into what we now call consciousness.

“Each one of us knows, from the evidence of our own introspection, that, at least in one modern survival machine, this purposefulness has evolved a property we call consciousness.” (Dawkins, (1989) : 50)

This tells us two important things whilst considering the problem of what makes humans human; that Dawkins was open to the idea that humans are possibly not the only life form with this ability (see Midgely 1979) but also that it has taken the ability itself to understand the existence of it. Further we can see that Dawkins considers consciousness to be a development of evolution, and so it could be said that we think/reason/simulate, because it makes us better survivors. Therefore, like the eye or the muscle, the human ability to think and to reason is another genetic tool to increase our chances of survival and therefore it is part of the biological and physical definition of humans that we are looking for.

So, in the search for the resounding explanation of what makes us humans human, one should exclude the biological references such as brain size, bone structure and larynx, for all these things fall under what has been called the ‘blind’ control of our genes. To accept only these empirical values as defining properties, we are saying that humans are simply the sum of our biological parts and nothing more. Philosophically, it could be argued that this particular question also holds the definition it seeks: Castoriadis (2003) said that “…man is, of all the beings we know, the sole one that seeks knowledge in general and knowledge in particular.” (2003:235). We are human from the days when we began to search rather than to accept instinctively. One might consider then that this single development removes (although not elevates) humans from every other being on the planet. However, when Gray (2004) addresses humanity’s place on this planet in his book Heresies, he simply states that the “chief difference between humans and other animals is simply that humans have acquired enormous power” (2004:76). Although humans may have gained a dominant place in the ecology of the planet, this has been to the detriment of our environment, rather than the understanding of it.

As humans we have amassed great power within the world; we have created knowledge, meaning and we have developed a culture that could appear to transcend that of any other known life form. Our ability to reason and to use that reason to understand and therefore to learn, has allowed our thoughts and innovations to manipulate the environment around us. It has been argued that these attributes are not what distinguishes us, but instead the first instance of a questioning thought that led us to search and hopefully, discover knowledge and meaning of the world. As Buddhist philosophy teaches, the single difference between man and the rest of life on earth is that we walk through the garden and marvel at nature, we prune and we protect, always forgetting that we are simply part of the garden ourselves.

Bibliography:

Castoriadis, C. (Internet Publication date 2003)
The rising tide of insignificancy (The Big Sleep) Retrieved: 7th February 2005
http://www.costis.org/x/castoriadis/Castoriadis-rising_tide.pdf

Darwin, C. (1859/1861), On the origin of species by means of natural selection,(3rdEd.) London, Murray

Dawkins, R. (1974/1989), The Selfish Gene, London, Oxford Press

Eriksen, T.H, (1995,2001), Small Places and Large Issues: An introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (2nd Ed). USA, Pluto Press

Gray, J. (2004), Heresies: Against progress and other illusions, London, Granta

Leaky, R.E. & Lewin, R. (1992) Origins: Reconsidered, London, Brown

Midgely, M. (1979/2002), Beast and Man, London, Routledge

Plato (1954/1969), The last days of Socrates, London, Penguin Classics

Plato (1998), The Republic, London, Oxford World Classics