On Being Human — A Reflection

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Excellent point. My only response, which is only a hunch and I don’t have evidence to back up, is that, in some way, many of the unicellular organisms are a necessary part of an ecosystem that can support advanced life. Certainly not everything that exists but perhaps much of what does exist. My feeling is that the ecosystem of the earth probably functions similar to this scenario:

“Any viable ecosystem is going to involve animal predation and death for the health of the ecosystem as a whole. I saw this beautifully illustrated a few years in a PBS special that described how the Canadian government was reintroducing wolves into the Canadian wilderness for the sake of the caribou on which they preyed. Now if that sounds paradoxical, the situation that the Canadian government found itself confronted with was that in the absence of these predators there was nothing to pick off the diseased and the aged caribou so that the population was exploding and as a result the herds were overgrazing and so they were dying of starvation. So for the good of the caribou themselves they had to reintroduce these natural predators into that ecosystem and that would result in healthier caribou and the herds would flourish as a result paradoxically.”

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-2/s2-creation-and-evolution/creation-and-evolution-part-21

We may be shooting ourselves in the foot by saying that most microorganisms are entirely unnecessary for an ecosystem in which advanced conscious life can thrive. Are we sure of this? Of course, I don’t deny that evolution is more a bush than a tree and that some parts of the bush may be unnecessary for humans (maybe God made certain things evolve for his enjoyment).

@Zachary_Ardern, @swamidass,
If you have any actual examples to support OR DISCONFIRM THIS, please bring them. I know I can count on the non-Christian biologists here to do the same.

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Well, certainly some of them are. Can’t have animals without photosynthesizers. Can’t have photosynthesizers without nitrogen fixers (well, you can; it just works better that way). But no, a much simpler ecology could easily support us. What you have is human exceptionalism run wild. Life was created for us. The world was created for us. The universe was created for us. Don’t buy it.

Not true. Plenty of viable ecosystems don’t involve animals at all.

I’d say that most eukaryote microorganisms, barring the photosynthetic ones, are unnecessary to us. Lots of prokaryotes are necessary, though. But let’s face it, human egotism is running wild here.

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@John_Harshman Somehow several distinct ideas have been lumped together. I haven’t read the whole thread, so I don’t know why. But for me human exceptionalism is the idea that we have abilities that are unique , creative an cognitive powers that came seemingly out of nowhere in a very short space of time evolutionarily speaking, and language being the most significant. That statement is not the same as the the claim that the world was made for us. Those are two different things,

Eukaryote microorganisms certainly are necessary for food production. Beer, wine, bread, cheese. And there are some pretty nasty diseases caused by eukaryotic microorganisms, diseases that are not necessary obviously (unless you consider them to be a fitness pruner), but significant in their effects. But I would not say that is why these eukaryotes are there. I do not make the claim that the ecosystem and the living things that make it up are here for our sake. They are here for their own sake, It happens that some of them are good for making beer and some of them will kill you.Some of them are quite lovely, and some not so much.

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Not at all. It’s just that different people have different ideas. And at least one person has proposed that evolution has been moving toward the goal of greater consciousness. That’s what you jumped into here.

What about avian exceptionalism? Unique wings and lungs, right there. Are we really so exceptionally exceptional compared to other taxa? And how do you know how long it took our cognitive powers to evolve? How do you know how much language various hominids did or didn’t have?

Not that this is relevant, but they’re only necessary for a few types of food we could easily do without, and there are even alternate sources for leavening in bread. Not sure why nasty diseases are on point at all.

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Or ant exceptionalism, or bee exceptionalism.

Yes, humans are exceptional, compared to all other species. But that’s only because humans set the standard as to what should be considered exceptional. It is all self-serving bias.

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Do you think up right walking is exceptional? Or is exceptionalism just those things that only modern humans do? When did humans become exceptional compared to other primate species? Did Neanderthals have any exceptional qualities? Do all humans have more or less the same exceptional qualities? Or are some more exceptional than others?

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@Patrick @nwrickert . @John_Harshman These are all really good questions. They are making me think. The reason I became a biologist is because when I looked at a rose or anolis lizard or palmetto bug or meadowlark I saw something unique and distinctive in each, another way of being alive in each one.

Have any of you read “What Is It Like To Be A Bat?” by Thomas Nagel? It Is about the nature of consciousness and subjective experience, but along the way he discusses the idea that we can’t know what it is like to be a bat. We literally lack the equipment and the experience. We can imagine using our perceptions of how things are, but the internal experience of flying by sonar, nearly blind, and catching mosquitos and moths, is a sensory and mental experience we will never attain. Are bats remarkable? Yes. Likewise I will never live inside a zebra’s skin, or become a diatom.

Can we acknowledge that all of biology is wonderful? We’re not bats or beetles or bears (or tardigrades, though that might be useful during the next Zombie apocalypse). We don’t have those gifts, they don’t have ours. But we are the only ones who notice this fact. Or write about it anyway.

Still I think the general case for the human race’s exceptional (unusual, outstanding, extraordinary, unprecedented) traits can be made because of the nature of the traits we have.

creativity (music, art, dance, pottery, sculpture),
language (communication, plays, books, poetry, essays, blog posts),
intelligence (science, engineering, math, chess, strategy,),
sociallity (marriage, family, community, tribe, warfare, ritual, religion, politics) For one perspective on the traits that distinguish us from just the great apes read Ajit Varki.

https://genome.cshlp.org/content/15/12/1746

These are generalist traits, abilities that can be put to many uses, and have been. Together they are they are the powerful synergy that has propelled human culture since, well, at least 100,000 years ago.

One of @Patrick’s comments brought me up short and reminded me that we need to be careful not to make it sound like these special abilities define us and give us worth. Not all humans concert pianists. Some humans can’t speak or get out of a wheel chair or remember their daughter’s name any more. Here we enter into moral and ethical issues. These individuals have value for us because we have a responsibility to care for them. And that instinct is one of the things that makes us human. @Patrick, from my reading Neanderthals had that too. But then I consider them to be human.

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There are many animal species which exhibit altruism and care for other members of their species besides their own immediate kin. It’s not a trait unique to humans.

Altruism: How Wild Animals Care for Their Own and Others

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Yes, I have read that. I did not find it very persuasive.

I agree that I cannot know what it is like to be a bat. But I also cannot know what it is like to be @Aguager. Perhaps I cannot even know what it is like to be me, because there could be no standard of comparison.

In my earlier post, I suggested that human exceptionalism comes from self-serving bias. But I also want to be clear that I don’t think there is an unbiased way of looking at this.

Yes, I like that. We are all exceptional. And that include the anolis lizard, the palmetto bug, the meadowlark and countless other creatures. All are exceptional in their own way, and we can never fully understand what that way is.

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Can you give us an example?

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Every ecosystem before around 600ma, for example.

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It is how we handle adversity which can make us exceptional. I agree with you that we are exceptional and getting more exceptional all the time. We all have the capability to do exceptional things on our own by working together.

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@Agauger,

You spoke of the disabled, etc.

How do you feel about the idea that the aged and disabled should be treated with dignity because they are part of the essence or logos or NATURE of humanity that Christ assumed. Because Christ is the only true human being, then He actually defines what humanity is and so because the aged and disabled can become by grace everything that Christ is by nature, they qualify as human just like the rest of us.

The aged and disabled are part of a common nature of humanity whose POTENTIAL is to become Divine by grace through Christ. Therefore, they deserve to be treated with the same dignity as a Mozart, an Einstein, or an apostle Paul. Tigers and chimps are not of this nature because their nature does not consist of these potencies and so they should not be accorded equal rights as humans.

Trying to put together a theory of human rights consistent with evolutionary theory and scripture/Tradition.

@vjtorley,

I’m drawing a lot of this from Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor. I’m curious how well Aquinas might fit in with what I’m saying.

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@Mark
This view is a particularly eastern orthodox or Byzantine view of theology, the idea of the divinization of humanity into Christ. It has found some expression in the writings of Pope John Paul II as well. It is certainly an approach that can be taken. We do find the idea that humanity finds its true and fullest expression in Christ in the Church Fathers and in the Scriptures for example, when it says when we see him we shall be like him. But it’s a little hard to sell to the secular world. It won’t work as a defense of the human nature since they don’t buy the scriptural arguments in the first place.

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Ok. Very good point. That’s why I’m wondering if Denton’s work on type defining novelties and the work of people like Ian Tattersall regarding human uniqueness can add some heft to these theological claims. The fact that Denton is working within a quasi-Aristotelian or Platonic framework seems to work very well with what I just wrote.

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@Mark he does take it in the direction of humanity having been specially prepared in advance, that the cosmos was prepared in advance for a creature like humans. But I don’t know that he goes the whole theological route yet. He doesn’t go in the direction of Christianity. So he wouldn’t argue necessarily that the disabled or incapacitated were of the same nature and value ( though I’m pretty sure he we would personally) and therefore deserving of protection and aid. His arguments don’t support that yet. They argue that the world was designed with creatures like us in mind but not that therefore the world was designed demanding that all creatures like us whether disabled or not be kept alive.

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If some sort of Aristotelian or Platonic framework could ever be accepted as legitimate philosophical interpretation of evolution, I think it would be much easier to start talking about human rights in the way I did above. Simon Conway Morris and Andreas Wagner seem on board, at least to some extent. I hope this will continue.

No, I know Denton doesn’t do that. But what he and Conway Morris and others are doing is helpful for theologians to develop some sort of theory of rights consonant with human evolution.

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https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2017/05/01/ep163-1-stewart-umphrey/

I hope more things like this continue to be written.

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@Mark
I hadn’t thought about it but it would be necessary. Unfortunately in an evolutionary world you are fighting against a tidal wave. Your anxiety may be explained by neuroexistentialism — Quartz

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@Agauger,

This is where we disagree. Not in an evolutionary world. The evolutionary world is just fine. It’s In a reductionist materialist world. This is perfectly possible even in the evolutionary world of Nagel, Denton, and other “teleologists” out there who don’t believe in any divine breaking through into the world, or “divine intervention.”

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