Challenge: What do all humans have in common?

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pyrrion89 said:
I think your definition of subjective is... subjective.
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If you're going to hold epistemology beliefs which are inconsistent like this, you shouldn't bother trying to convince people of anything. It doesn't make sense to try to communicate with someone if you believe communication has no meaning.
 
Womb Raider said:
What makes us "human"? What is our unique distinguishing characteristic(s) that we all have in common? I have my thoughts, but am anxious to hear yours.

*EDIT*
I'm looking for something that is exclusively a human quality/attribute. E.g. a "heart" is incorrect, since other creatures have hearts.
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They love to see others suffer
 
I suppose that a characteristic exclusive to humans is to ask "why" and then research it to the extent that humans have.

Why does the sky light up with pinpoints every night
Why does the apple fall from the tree
Etc
 
Humans use drugs (alcohol, caffeine, etc) as medicine, and also to alter their consciousness. Is there evidence that any other species engages in this behavior?
 
Ashley1989 said:
I suppose that a characteristic exclusive to humans is to ask "why" and then research it to the extent that humans have.

Why does the sky light up with pinpoints every night
Why does the apple fall from the tree
Etc
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Yo momma so fat she makes apples in China fall from trees because of the increase in gravity on the other side of the planet.

(We're also the only species we're aware of that makes "yo momma so fat" jokes.)
 
From an evolutionary standpoint, one of the things that always fascinated me about humans is language. Many have argued that dolphins have language, or even some primates, but their communication systems lack the distinguishing feature of recursivity (I can make a sentence that has never been said before, and it could theoretically go on forever and ever, and you would still be able to extract the meaning from it).

To me, THAT is the biggest evolutionary accomplishment we have made as humans, and it leads to many other peculiar characteristics we have... like asking "why" and researching it. Other animals ask "why" -- dogs have been shown to contemplate the existence of God -- but they don't have the language to express their thoughts.
 
A consciousness. We all are aware that we exist and are aware of our own mortality (the fact that we will die of old age, if not by other causes).
 
QuinnTheEskimo said:
Humans use drugs (alcohol, caffeine, etc) as medicine, and also to alter their consciousness. Is there evidence that any other species engages in this behavior?
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There are several species which consume certain plants for their analgesic properties and bottle nose dolphins may chew on a kind of puffer fish to get high.
 
BrainsIsCool said:
There are several species which consume certain plants for their analgesic properties and bottle nose dolphins may chew on a kind of puffer fish to get high.
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Wow that is really interesting!

Right after I wrote that comment, I remembered my dog likes to take stealth sips of other people's beer and cocktails lol
 
There are always exceptions, but...
Complex language (esp. written, although not all cultures possess written forms); clothes (except some extremely isolated cultures); religion/spirituality/philosophy/higher-level-thinking; self-awareness to include the future and mortality; [general] avoidance of cannibalism [in most cultures]
 
It seems that the only thing we can say for certain that separates us from other life on Earth are the products of our intellect. Assuming that there are a potentially infinite number of "advanced" civilizations in the universe or universes, that argument loses validity on that scale, because they would obviously be cable of the same or greater intellectual creativity. What I would say that separates us from them and everything else must be our perception of ourselves and our tendency to measure all in and of existence on a scale relative to us. This faculty must not be unique to humanity, but the conglomeration of each individual's perceptions and our capacity to identify with each other as being of a greater family must be distinct. We could never relate in the same way to any extraterrestrial intelligence as we can to each other, regardless of our idiosyncrasies and in order to better understand said intelligence, we would invariably compare and contrast it with ourselves.
 
Rik1111 said:
If you're going to hold epistemology beliefs which are inconsistent like this, you shouldn't bother trying to convince people of anything. It doesn't make sense to try to communicate with someone if you believe communication has no meaning.
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I'm just being flippant with you---maybe I shouldn't have. But we both know what I mean when I say that mankind's manipulation is more radical than that of any other known species, in the sense that creating a submarine is a more radical alteration than using grass to extract termites from a mound. You can redefine radical to have certain criteria, like exceeding spatial or temporal threshold of X value, tools that generate X amount of Newtons or X amount of Joules. But I think most compelling (see---again, it happens. You could ask, "What does 'compelling' mean?") definitions of achievement are measured in more abstract terms that I think you would consider "subjective" adjectives, as opposed to adjectives that refer to physical qualities and quantities.

Anyway, I'll leave my thoughts at that since I don't want to go too off-topic.
 
pyrrion89 said:
I'm just being flippant with you---maybe I shouldn't have. But we both know what I mean when I say that mankind's manipulation is more radical than that of any other known species, in the sense that creating a submarine is a more radical alteration than using grass to extract termites from a mound. You can redefine radical to have certain criteria, like exceeding spatial or temporal threshold of X value, tools that generate X amount of Newtons or X amount of Joules. But I think most compelling (see---again, it happens. You could ask, "What does 'compelling' mean?") definitions of achievement are measured in more abstract terms that I think you would consider "subjective" adjectives, as opposed to adjectives that refer to physical qualities and quantities.

Anyway, I'll leave my thoughts at that since I don't want to go too off-topic.
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I didn't disagree with you in the first place; I just didn't think the point was clear. I still don't. If you're going to propose a definition, it's important for it to mean something. Else, why bother as per previous post.

And no, definitions of achievement are not subjective terms. They may lack clarification, but that does not mean they're subjective. Saying "I got into medical school" is not subjective. It lacks clarification (DO? US? Post background check?), but that does not mean that it can mean something to me and also something different to you at the same time while both of us arrive at the correct conclusion of what it actually means.
 
We remain as the only species capable of investigating our origins and the origin of the cosmos. Humans are unique in that we have the scientific method.
 
Arcumis said:
Definition of civilization? What about ants, bees, wasps, termites, and the like?
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Social animals (i.e., societies) doesn't necessarily correlate to civiliation.
The earliest hominids were "social" and formed groups, but would you consider those who existed before Homo sapiens as having built civilization?
 
What makes us human is not merely our ability to communicate, but our ability to use communication to share, store, and build knowledge with one another. If we didn't have this, we would still be living in caves and beating each other with sticks. It is our ability to pass down complex skills and knowledge in an incremental fashion that truly makes us stand apart from all other members of the animal kingdom.
 
Expression.
It's the one characteristic that everyone has.
Regardless of what is being expressed, the ability to express is existent throughout the human species.
This may be as simple as a couple of neurons firing, or complex as a theatrical performance.
 
What makes us human is self-awareness. The ability to think about how you think or reflect on the decisions you made. To remove yourself from your mind and see yourself from a third person perspective. This is what makes us learn from ourselves and others which allows for innovation and discovery.

Animals and humans both learn from conditioning and habituation, but we have the unique ability to teach ourselves new ways of thinking regardless of past experiences.
 
All humans think in symbols. It's what anthropologically separates us from apes.

Also, upon googling "humans think is symbols" a NPR article is the first link. As we know, NPR is solid gold.
 
Graywolf said:
What makes us human is self-awareness. The ability to think about how you think or reflect on the decisions you made. To remove yourself from your mind and see yourself from a third person perspective. This is what makes us learn from ourselves and others which allows for innovation and discovery.

Animals and humans both learn from conditioning and habituation, but we have the unique ability to teach ourselves new ways of thinking regardless of past experiences.
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I think you are defining personhood, and not what makes an organism, "human."
 
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