Essay on Human Beings and Animals

I agree with the statement that human beings are just merely quantitatively different from other animals in that they have very impressive capacities in some areas for example language and reasoning. For many years human beings have been deceiving and lying to themselves that they are smarter and also superior to the rest of the species who are in the animal kingdom. Animals also have cognitive faculties that tend to outdo human beings. According to Aristotle who is a well-known philosopher, he argues that people are considered to be more superior than other animals because of their ability to reason. The animal world is more complex than even the credit we give to it. Our understanding and feelings as human beings towards the different species are mostly based on our cultural and as well as personal prejudices. Human beings will tend to have a great compassion for those species that we are related to in one way or another. Research on animal cognition can be classified into three categories that are foundational issues, methodological issues, and the more genuine issues, group.

The foundational issues include the issues that help determine whether the non-human animals should be considered as the proper subject to be used in the psychological investigation, the methodological issues involve how the animal minds are studied while the specific topics are those that tend to arise from the research programs which are specific. It helps to in showing that the human beings are not unique as compared to other animals of other specials and the difference between the two is so minimal.

Animals and human beings should not be considered to be different this is because the human cognition is similar to the perception that is found on animals. They include perception, memory, spatial cognition, communication, language, social cognition and casual learning. Animals have a mind just like the humans, and hence they should not be considered to be different from them. All animals have a mind. They have the capacity and ability to solve a given problem; they possess the mind theory and a brain activity or behavior. Human beings will tend to be more similar to each other as compared to the relationship that will exist between them and other species. Human beings should understand that they share some properties with the other animals and hence they should consider them as minded as well. Animals and humans all came from the same ancestor hence the animals are not so different from them. For example when a human plays with their pets either a cat or even a dog they see the animal mind companion just as the same way they would see their childrens minds when they play with them.

Humans and animals can be considered just to be slightly different from each other in that they both possess the ability to act rationally. Rational actions are those that are deemed to fit together with each other. They can create a behavior of avoidance and when they should take a given action or not which is a character that is also exhibited by the human beings. The action of animal rationality tends to show and portray the animals as engaging in casual reasoning instead of proportionality. The humans are considered to reason better than the animals since they cannot involve themselves in a situation of metacognition. This is whereby they will be needed to think a thought by a thought in a systematic manner. They do not have the ability to think logically as human beings do. They exhibit a reasoning that is considered to be casual in nature. For example, this is best seen in a situation where a gazelle sees a lion it will always tend to run without even giving a thought on the intention that the lion has towards it. The gazelle only understands that a lion causes it to move. Their ability to reason is limited as they generalize situations to a particular extent.

Humans and animals are both considered to have a language of thought which they tend to operate from. It makes them to both have a belief. Beliefs are regarded as imagistic representations of things in a simple manner which are related to the world and allows other people to think of someone elses goal and perception. There is no evidence that can be considered so as to show that non-human species do have abilities that are metacognitive but rather the behavior portrayed by the animals demonstrate that their beliefs like the desire to do or eat something will tend to come in a given degree. Some animals lack beliefs due to the lack of an external language like that of a human. Some of the beliefs are based on the representational systems that are imagistic for example through the use of maps and diagrams. It is evident in the social knowledge that is possessed by a baboon. According to Bermudez animal beliefs are not considered to have a given structure.

Human beings believe that the language they portray helps them to have a particular belief. According to Davidsons view, a belief should be categorized as either to be true or false. It is possible is there is communication and talking with each other, and hence all believers must be able to use language which is not the case in other animal species. Lack of language in some species tends to make them to lack beliefs.

The language that human beings possess makes them slightly different from other species since they can build up various concepts and also identify them. The animals despite not having a language they are also in a position to determine different ideas (Lents, 2017). They are in a position to sort out ideas and objects just as human beings. The possession of a concept allows different responses towards similar stimuli. Through comparing the various responses among the different individuals and specials, we can know how they conceptualize the world and the environment they live. For example, just like human beings, in fact, a monkey will tend to look longer at the outcomes that are considered to be impossible.

Mammals are seen to be more intelligence than the reptiles, insects and also the birds. Human beings intelligence can be measured by their ability to converse or even undertaking a written test. When it comes to animals, on the other hand, it is a bit difficult to measure their level of intelligence due to their lack of language and also opposable thumbs.

Animals tend to possess abilities that are often misunderstood and misinterpreted by the human beings. People misinterpret the fact that even if animals may at times fail to understand us and as well at times we do not manage to understand them does not mean that we have different intelligence level, but rather its our knowledge and understanding that are of different kinds. For example, this can be considered to be the same scenario to that of when a person who is not of your same language or a foreigner is trying to communicate to a person using a broken and imperfect language that you apparently know. We tend to conclude that such a person is not as intelligent as we would expect because of speaking the broken language but this is so different from the reality because they have their language that they understand better.

When it comes to animals, they tend to offer various levels of intelligence. This intelligence has been under-estimated due to the human language fixation as well as technology. They include both the social and kinesthetic intelligence. For example, a Gibbon which is a mammal just as a human being will tend to make over twenty different sounds and each sound has its meaning. These meaning are best understood by the other arboreal primates which help them to communicate with each other and hence this makes them no different with human beings as they are also in a position to communicate with each other (Aristotle, 1973).

Human beings are considered to have glands which facilitate tasting and also smelling this is no different from other species since they possess the same. Many of the quadrupeds tends to have olfactory marks that are very complex while in their environment. For example, the Koalas is a spice that has pectoral glands that are so special and help in the making of scent. Human beings, on the other hand, cant be in a position to even know the complexity of the information that is contained in an alfactory marking despite them having a sense of smell. This makes human beings to be merely considered as different from other species since of the possession of similar genes. Most genes in the human beings tend to give a similar result .Most animals have genes that help them in the pro-creation process that occurs after fertilization which is the same case as that of human beings.

According to Charles Darwin, the continuity of the mental across different species should be advocated for by everyone. We should be ready to expect similarities in behavioral and also psychological when it comes to species that live in a similar environment. Communication in animals is described as the process in which information is exchanged between a sender and receiver after the originator sends a given signal to the receiver. Both humans and animals are considered to exhibit the culture of communication. In other species rather than human beings, communication will occur when the behavior of one animal changes and is used to act as a stimulus which will, in turn, cause a change in the behavior of another whether it is intentional or unintentional. For example in the case of a chimpanzee when the male sees that the genitals of a female chimpanzee have swollen it will serve as a means of communication, and it will hence initiate courtship. We refer to that in biology as the functional communication. On the other hand, humans will use language to speak as a means of communication or also enforce actions as a way of communicating. For example just as an animal will use various actions to communicate is the same way that a dumb person uses actions and signs to communicate with their fellow human beings (Darwin, 2016).

Both man and animals will tend to express their emotions through signals. The signs tend to be specific in given species and are not used often. For example, a cat will tend to show its anger and fear of a dog through arching and hissing towards it. A signal from an animal can inform a receiver about its motivational condition as well as the external objects or events occurring near it. It tends to bridge the gap of communication that exists between a human being and the animals. For example, through the hissing and arching of the cat, a human being can tell that there is a dog that its around which is causing the cat to react in that particular way. The alarms can dictate the amount of urgency and concentration that should be offered to it .for example in the case of the African mongoose they tend to give alarm calls to the mammals, the reptilian predators and the avian differently. This is similar to the situation to when a human being uses his language to express their feelings or even when referring to external events that affect them. For example when they scream Fire when a house is burning up. That will make other humans to act quickly and consider such an event as a situation of emergency. Philosophical queries can be asked regarding the nature of an animal signal about the meaning they pass, how right the signs are and also the mechanisms that they use to give those signals. Empirical work can be done so as to be in a position to determine the various referential communication that different species tend to use and through that, we can be able to understand the various ways that subsume the human language (Painter & Lotz, 2007).

Human beings and animals possess the theory of the mind or mind reading. Just like humans, most species are animals that are social. The knowledge gotten from other minds a...