Humans are defined as rational animals. — TheMadFool
What of the insects?Suicide hasn't been observed in non-human animals as far as I know. — TheMadFool
So, I would like to know if the definition can be improved or even perfected. — TheMadFool
What of the insects? — Shamshir
Animal suicide — Hanover
Animals are perfectly capable of rational thought. They wouldn't survive if they were NOT rational. — TheMadFool
Your definition based on self-awareness is a good one but I think some apes pass the mirror test — TheMadFool
What do you understand rational to mean? The understanding I have of the word makes me surprised that you would say this. Clams survive, and they are certainly not rational in any sense that I understand the word. They don't even have a central nervous system! Could their behavior be said to be rational? In other words, would a rational agent in their circumstances act as they do? Perhaps! But evolutionary forces may simply have selected for behavior that serves their survival interests. It likely has nothing to do with rationality on the part of the clam itself. — petrichor
TheMadFool. If so, why is it that I don't find any contribution on this forum written by an animal? If you are right, there must be at least one or even a few, written say by chimpanzees. Or, is it perhaps a matter that these animals are simply not interested in these human discussions and have decided not to participate? Can't help to wonder, or is there something else that I am missing — Daniel C
Ok. Then, the only real difference left that I can note would be that humans can reflect without the impetus of an external influence, kind of like meditation. Our defining factor would be that we can interact through abstract forms, e.g. ideas, ideals, etc. So, that would make us something like homo philosophicus :grin: - I know, it's like there's a joke in there somewhere. — BrianW
ultimate freedom of our existence - that we can end it if we so choose. — Evil
unable to face pain. — TheMadFool
"Homo suicidus"?
I think our species' uniquely distinctive characteristic - functional defect - is Stupidity, that is, the path-of-least-effort reflex of
(a) answering the wrong questions or
(b) solving pseudo-problems or
(c) pretending to know what isn't - can't now/ever be - known or
(d) pretending not to know what is demonstrably - even ineluctably - known or
(e) playing lose-lose games "to win" (e.g. scapegoat violence) or
(f) (other yet-to-be-defined varieties of oblivious self-sabotage ...) or
(g) in a given instance some combination of (a thru f)
- perhaps as a spandrel of language-instinct/use (i.e. discursive rationality). "Suicide", as has been pointed out, is clearly a more common - natural - occurence across many species than the 'human, all too human' meta-cognitive vice of Stupidity (i.e. folly); so it seems to me more proper, or precise, - and honest - to define our species as homo insapiens instead.
And if so, what use to ourselves (or, charitably, as exemplars) are 'we philosophers' if, fundamentally, we're not ironic fools committed (via reflective study & creative critiques) to life-long withdrawal & recovery from folly ... i.e. to be a gadfly or a Gump? - that's the (right?) question, or so it seems. Or maybe this quixotic 'fixation' expresses - exposes - nothing more than my own peculiar folly ... — 180 Proof
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