[C Elegans]

This thread contains so many misconceptions regarding the concept of "intelligence", human evolution and other things, so I hesitate to post in it, but at least, I'll reply to Magrus' opening post:

Originally Posted by Magrus

All things considered, if you look at everything in an unbiased manner, humanity has essentially killed off species they didn't want around, killed enough of them to drive them off the land they wanted (I.E. Wolves), or enslave them for their own uses (I.E. chickens, cattle, horses, dogs, etc).

This is true for a lot of regions but not for all. There are regions where the human population is still dependent on the ecosystem in the same fashion as other omnivores, and thus they behave like other omnivores.

If another species, or more than one, lets say a group of the larger predator species decided they'd had enough of humanity messing with their world and broke into houses all over and started slaughtering families, would you think it was unwarrented, and cruel? Or would you think it was justified?

If I understand your question correctly, your question boils down to the age-old principal moral question: is it justified and right that the stronger should rule the weaker on the criteria of being stronger? To this, my answer is clearly no.
However, the questions gets more complicated in the case of different species because as far as we know, no other species on earth has the large degree of adaptabiliy and the kind of self-awareness that is necessary in order to choose to change their behaviour as humans in can under certain circumstances.

My personal opinion is simple. Humans have the same right to eat other species as other carnivores or omnivores. Moral vegetarians often claim that humans have a choice which is true for some humans, but it should be noted that nutrition studies show less good health for vegetarians and vegans than omnivores, especially children. I do think it is justified to eat other species to keep your health. I do not think it is justified to make your living lunch suffer.

I do think medical reseach on animals are justified, as well as medical research on humans. Unnecessary suffering must be excluded though. I do not think cosmetics testing on animals is justified at all.

I do think humans can use and keep other species (animal husbandry) for her own well-being and survival as long as no unnecessary suffering is introduced. I do not think it is justified to create inbred strains of crippled animals and to keep these animals as pets for the sake of personal pleasure and entertainment.

The above is a very short summary of my views on this topic, views that are based on:

1. My view of humans as a species among other species, quantitatively different in terms of current evolutionary success, level of adaptation and cognitive functions but not different in the sense of what mechanisms determines our behaviour and what needs and rights we should have in relationship to other species.

2. The potential for suffering and the potential to make a difference to decrease suffering. A human has the potential to do a vast amount of destruction or a vast amount of helpful acts far beyond her own individual being or proximal surrounding. A human also a nervous system and a social system that can elicit more emotional, physical and social suffering than most other species. Thus, it is for instance better for me to eat an insect than another human being and it is better for me to eat a cat than to eat a baboon.

Originally Posted by Aramant

I went to one of the highschools that services the largest Native Reserve in North America (or so I've been told), and I tell you, the vast majority of the Native student population, as well as non-students about town, really showed very little to be admired or respected.

Do you meant that the vast social problems caused by the hunting and then discrimination of native North Americans change the immorality of the behaviour of the European population who colonised North America?

Originally Posted by Denethorn

I've certainly seem programmes about the same idea - either physically or intellectually Neanderthals had bigger brains than Homo Sapiens. I can't remember the exact cause of their extinction, however, I recall something to do with their failure to migrate, or mis-migration as it were

It is not known why Homo Neanderthalensis went extinct. There are several hypothesis, among them lack of adaptability due to cold-adaption and even that they did not go extinct but interbreeded with Sapiens, but none are validated so far. Neanderthalensis has been estimated to have a larger brain size than Homo Sapiens, but most of this is believed to be bulk due to cold-adaptation. From the scientific community it is not believed nor has it been claimed that Neanderthalensis had more complex or higher cognitive skills than Sapiens.

Originally Posted by Chimaera182

We're a selfish species, we always have been, we always will be. That's why it sucks to be anything else on this planet.

Originally Posted by Masa

Animals are only animals, they can't think as we humans. They just act upon their senses and that is what gives us the right to "use" animals to our own advantage

Originally Posted by Lestat

Well, you can object to Masa's calling humans the greatest race, but if you strip the word "great" of the moral content and purely look at achievement, he's right. No other species has been able to adapt its environment to it's need in the way humans have, most other animals (excluding some insect specieses) have to adapt fully to their environment.

This three statements are completely related although the posters may not have intended them to be. Humans are selfish in the same sense as everything living is selfish: we strive and compete for our own survival and for the survival of our species. In this competition, our species is the single most successful due to our cognitive functions. No other species are as dependent of learning as Homo Sapiens, and this learning dependency is what makes us so highly adaptive so we have the most global distribution of any single species. The same cognitive skills also make us the most powerful species (I don't like value-loaded terms like "great" or "superior") since we have the ability to change our environment to fit our needs. Like all other animals, we act on our survival needs but we have larger power to act in a way that influence the world around us and thus, other species as well. This does not give us a larger right, and it does not make us any better. But it does not make us any worse either, since we do what any other species with the same abilities and drives as we have, would do. Animals and humans alike act on the evolutionary drive to survive.

So why are humans so seemingly unnecessary cruel, to other species, to nature, and not the least, to our own species? Well, one current hypothesis is that it is due to the extreme selection pressure that occurred on the relatively small group of animals who were our ancestors. It would take me a thesis to explain this fully, but let's just conclude that "it is in our nature" to behave in a cruel way in competitative situations. This will not change and it will not go away, Homo Sapiens have these features and needs to evolve to another species to be nice and kind at group level.

However, now we come back to Magrus original question: do we have the right to destroy and torture just because we are more powerful? Homo Sapiens flexibility and adaptability also means that theoretically, we could also create an environment where the factors that trigger our destructive behaviours (ie competition for resources, conflicts etc) were minimised and thus, destructive behaviours were made redundant. So why don't we do this? Most likely because at group level, our cognitive skills require vast amounts of learning and training in order to understand long-term gain as opposed to short-term gratification. So, at group level we are as stuck in our destructive behaviour as any other animal is stuck in their behaviour. The "free will" of humanity is an illusion made up by our higher cognitive functions that enable us to visualise and think things that are not. We are only partly free, and as a group, because we are a group living species, we are not especially free at all.