Which animal are we supposed to be comparing ourselves with? This has been a classic ploy throughout history, to compare certain types of humans or human behaviour to animals as a justification for assigning a particular status to them. But there is massive diversity among animals.
You haven't shown why we need use the particular word animal at all. It is clearly as I have mentioned a word that is applied selectively for different purposes.
"Long before post-Darwinian “scientific racism” begins to develop, then, one can find blacks being depicted as closer to apes on the Great Chain of Being. Take mid-19th century America in circles in which polygenesis (separate origins for the races) was taken seriously. Leading scientists of the day Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, in their 1854 Types of Mankind, documented what they saw as objective racial hierarchies with illustrations comparing blacks to chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans." — Andrew4Handel
There must be some creative intelligence at work when it comes to positive adaptation.
If not, how would you explain a centipede developing multiple virtually identical legs at the same time? It is hard to imagine that it developed one stump first by accident, that allowed it to thrive compared to other members of its family...
@Thanatos Sand OK, so please explain how you propose nature 'did it'. Little atoms joined together into little cells that are operating according to some biological program spontaneously changed what they were normally doing, and said 'Hey, legs would be useful, and we can construct them just so.'?
OK, so please explain how you propose nature 'did it'. Little atoms joined together into little cells that are operating according to some biological program spontaneously changed what they were normally doing, and said 'Hey, legs would be useful, and we can construct them just so.'? — CasKev
↪Thanatos Sand
The topic in general. As is this next comment.
I think people are being hopelessly naive if they think words are simply transparent and not power tools intended to defend ones own ideology. I don't think classification and conceptual division are neutral.
In terms of the word animal you can say things like.
"You were an animal in bed"
"You're worse than an animal"
"We are just animals"
"She was a party animal"
"He likes animals"
"Men are animals"
There are even more sophisticated uses of language in rhetoric, polemic and persuasion
↪CasKev This gets a bit tricky to explain but if you look around, there are many levels of intelligence working with each other and individually? It can be imagined as waves within an ocean where the individual waves can be perceived independently or as an ocean.
It's profoundly obvious, that the ocean does have waves, and not vise versa.
— Metaphysician Undercover
The ocean is the ocean. It is continuous. We make the distinctions, when viewing the ocean from a given perspective. One can turn it upside down and say all the waves contain the ocean. There are and there isn't one or the other or both.
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.