Are humans animals?

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Yeah, humans are considered animals from a scientific point of view, but what about from a philosophical point of view?

when you make a thread, it gets many replies. when i make a thread no one posts in them

im thinking of a topic idea of a thread with a real clickbait title

I think humans are considered animals by both viewpoints.

"philosophical" point of view?

which philosophy?

i feel that the human/animal "divide" comes from our having many mental abilities and thought processes that the rest of the animals lack. namely, theory of mind.

the solution, my friend, is to make a thread people want to post in.

you're looking at one right now. simple, easy to understand OP. open ended question in the title with many different "correct" answers and interpretations.

maybe you should consider it.

How do you know animals do not have theory of mind. I've spent my life with animals. Theory of mind can be described as 'Being able to attribute mental states to others and understanding them as causes of behavior' I know animals can do that. I've seen it over and over again.

The belief that animals lack theory of mind just built on Descartes belief that it was OK to experiment on animals and do awful things like live dissections on them because they do not have feeling and emotions like humans. It's just a continuation of that line of thinking. Living and working with animals has given me a very different perspective. They are more complex than we understand so we do not give them enough credit.

no, i don't think those two are correlated.


how can we know that our TOM and an animal's TOM is the same process?

What you said was animals lack ToM

I have heard tennis players referred to as "beasts," "animals," "cats," and the like. The best tennis players are quite catlike in terms of their movement.

It's only organized religion that is in denial that humans aren't animals and that we evolved.

Humans are often not considered to be animals much like people that aren't careful about what they eat are not said to be on a diet. Yes, the only way someone can not be on a diet is not to eat anything, but we typically consider only careful eaters to be on diets.