What are your specialities?

[Eric the Green]

(10-20-2019, 05:31 AM)Ldr Wrote:

(10-20-2019, 05:23 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-11-2019, 09:33 AM)Ldr Wrote: I agree, Bill, but it is important to notice that all of the concepts you mentioned hold true for animals too, although humanism is obviously replaced with the correct species name.

I don't think so, since animals don't have the brainpower needed to grasp these concepts. They can be loyal to their pack like dogs, wolves and bonobos, but nothing more. Do you really think a dog is capable of "species solidarity" with oppressed dogs in a puppy mill?

Bill, concepts like altruism and empathy do not require "brainpower" in the way I believe you see it. Altruism and empathy are emotions, and animals like humans and chimpanzees have these emotions. We humans have created advanced languages to talk about these emotions and form them into concepts, but that's all, they're in no way human "inventions".

C.G. Jung was one who distinguished between emotions and feelings. Emotions are more of an automatic physical response. Feelings are more conscious and are part of an ability to understand reality and make a choice. I would say reason and thinking are part of this ability too.

I prefer to look at life as evolving toward higher conditions. Humans have developed abilities and sensitivities greater than slime molds. I agree with Teilhard de Chardin that the world holds together from above, not below. Humans cannot be reduced to the lower levels. Something in the lower levels holds the potential of the higher or more conscious levels. There is conscious intelligence of some sort in all of life and even in a primitive way in non-life. 

Reduction of the higher to the lower is, I would say, a kind of cynicism. I prefer a more optimistic view that the lower is a reflection of the higher, or has within it the potential of the higher; that life aspires to unfold and grow to greater consciousness and a greater complexity of relatedness. Only awareness of the higher can give value to all of life and being. Reduction to the lower erases that awareness.

I describe war as failure; that other species engage in war shows that war is a lower level of consciousness that humans are evolving out of. We do have a long way to go, apparently. Experience on the internet shows that we have a lot of trouble communicating.