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I tend to think that our ability to abstract concepts[1] from instances of physical things is what makes us human.
This is something people think a lot about, it seems. I was recently reading an article about elephants[2], and the author included a passage from a book called The Explicit Animal, which lists out all of these supposedly human-specific traits:
Man has called himself (among other things): the rational animal; the moral animal; the consciously choosing animal; the deliberately evil animal; the political animal; the toolmaking animal; the historical animal; the commodity-making animal; the economical animal; the foreseeing animal; the promising animal; the death-knowing animal; the art-making or aesthetic animal; the explaining animal; the cause-bearing animal; the classifying animal; the measuring animal; the counting animal; the metaphor-making animal; the talking animal; the laughing animal; the religious animal; the spiritual animal; the metaphysical animal; the wondering animal… Man, it seems, is the self-predicating animal.
Last updated Fri Feb 18 2022 in Berkeley, CA
1: /thought/abstractions-make-us-human.gmi
2: /thought/do-elephants-have-souls.gmi