“The first lecture, I want to talk about the nature of man. Comparing men with animals and illuminating the major differences, and characterizing what one can call the human condition, the condition that mankind finds itself confronted with.”
“So with this, let me begin talk about the nature of man and the human condition. And speak in particular about three elements that are unique, so to speak, to mankind. One is language, the second one is property, and the third one is production or technology.”
"Now, you realize then, when we begin all of this here, we are already talking. We are already using some of our capabilities, some of our skills and achievements, that are the result of human evolution. That is, the reconstruction that I will offer you of human history, makes already use of some of the tools that have only gradually evolved in the course of time. Actually, the origin of language is dated back roughly 200,000-250,000 years ago. All of these estimates are of course as you can imagine rather vague estimates. Nobody was around at that time and recorded exactly when they started talking. But these are the numbers that some geneticists and biologists and anthropologists give us for the beginning.
And you notice something else from the fact that we begin all this enterprise from talking to each other, that somehow humans are social animals. We are aware of the fact that there exists people who are interested in game theory, for instance, who seem to have problems sometimes explaining why do people cooperate at all and do not fight each other all the time. But the funny thing is, that this debate takes already place using language. Which in a way, from the outset explains that there must be something wrong with this idea that man was at some point deciding whether they should fight each other or whether they should not fight each other. Obviously, as soon as mankind began to talk with each other, they must have already recognized that there are certain advantages to doing this, and to be social in one’s endeavor. And it is perfectly clear of course from the outset, what the great advantage of having a language available and communicating with other people is: we can convey knowledge to other people than would be possible if we simply had to just look what other people are doing and try to reconstruct so to speak the ideas that were behind what they were doing. Through language, we have the possibility of communicating directly what it was that led us to do this or led us to do something else.
Now, with language, two ideas so to speak emerge. I use here the ideas that were developed first by some Austrian psychologists, Carl Bruehler, who also had some influence on Karl Popper who uses some of his ideas. And Carl Bruehler makes the point that we can distinguish, when we look at language so to speak between four difference functions. Two of which we find already on the animal level, and two of which are unique to humans.
On the animal level we find use of symbols or sounds that express something. Like pain, for instance. That is an express function of language we can ascribe easily to animals and say in this sense they can express some internal feelings. They can do this.
On the other hand language has sometimes a signal function. That is we can produce sounds that indicate there is some danger coming, or warn people, warn other animals to run away. Both of these of course is also possible for humans to do. Language has an expressive function for us, and also has this signal function, to make other people aware of these.
What is not found in the animal kingdom is that language has a descriptive function. That is, language describes “this is such-and-such”. And with a descriptive function of language, for the first time the idea of truth emerges. That is, for expressions and signals, whether it is true or not is not really an issue. But when we say “this is such-and-such”, then it becomes possible to say “is that really the case?” So the idea of truth comes into being because language has a descriptive function.
And the most primitive descriptive propositions would be of the type “this is such-and-such”. That is, having a proper name or an identifying expression, and then a general term characterizing a particular object as having general characteristics.
And the second unique human function of language is the argumentative function. That we have complex statements, connected by ‘and’ and ‘or’, several statements combined to each other, that we in Language has an expressive function for us, and also has this signal function, to make other people aware of these."
"And you realize that it is precisely this last function, this argumentative function, that we must also use as a tool if we now want to make a more precise distinction between the abilities of man on the one hand and the different abilities of animals. And I want to follow here a philosopher Brand Blanshard, who has pointed out some important differences between animals and humans.
And I want to begin with a little quote from Blanshard, in a book called Reason and Analysis, where he says this about animals, and then draws a conclusion that this is somehow still very different from what mankind can do. He says: What does it mean to have human reason or human rationality? And he answers: it cannot be consiousness. Of course because no one can sensibly doubt that animals feel fear and hunger and pleasure and pain. Animals can also make mistakes, which we recognize as when for instance a dog drops a bone for a more inviting bone that he sees in the water. And since only judgements can be mistaken, animals must be also in some way able to make judgements. That is, come to the conclusion that I made a wrong judgement. And since judgement is thought, we can also say that animals think. But they do obviously not think in the same way that humans do.
Now, what is the difference between our way of thinking and their way of thinking? Now let me emphasize four points in this connection, which partly overlap.
The first thing to be noted is that animal thought is always tied to perception. Whereas human thought can wander around, go back to eternity, wander to the future, can think about objects that are far away, can even think about objects that have never existed. Animals cannot think in this way. Whatever their thinking is it requires so to speak some present cue, some observation from which their thinking arises. We can imagine for instance that animals can also think to a certain extent about things that are absent. As if a dog sits in front of a house because the house knows that his master has gone into the house, and waits there patiently until the master comes back out. But even there you can see that it is tied to perception. If he had not seen his master go in there, he would not do what he does sitting there waiting, and in any case he cannot think of things far away, or impossible, or things in the far distant future. So that is the first thing: animal thought is tied to perception, and human thought is in this way freed up of perception.
[To Q:] Yeah.
[Q: Is it possible that my dog is not waiting for me when I come back?]
Yes, we would make distinctions of course also between more intelligent animals and less intelligent animals, right? So the cockroach that you might have brought with you while you were just going into the house, might well not be waiting. So here I am talking, so to speak, about the most developed of animals.
[Q: But how do you know this? Because they do not report back?]
What?
[Q: Because there’s a language barrier, how do we know that they’re not thinking about the stars or infinity. They don’t report to us.]
That brings me exactly to the second point (laughter). You say, that’s one other fundamental difference between humans and animals, that they cannot do this. So even if you think that they might think about this sort of stuff, they have no way of conveying this sort of information to us.
Or, you can say: animals can’t abstract, in the way that humans can abstract. Certainly animals can see shapes, and colors, and they can perceive smells, and things like this. But it doesn’t seem to be the case that they have a concept of shapes, or triangles or whatever, or a concept of green or blue or yellow. Or a concept of different types of smells. Again this is an aspect of what I just mentioned. It is just tied to specific events, but they cannot abstract from the specific event and build a general concept.
If they could, then we would expect them to, yeah, to form a word for these things. And it is not that animals are not capable of producing sounds. Many animals do have the equipment to produce sounds. So this does not explain why they don’t have words. Obviously, despite the fact that they can form sounds, they cannot form what we refer to as words. Sounds to which we attach a certain abstract idea for which we find various instances in the real world.
The third thing that distinguishes mankind from animals are: that animals cannot make inferences explicitly. Again this has something intimately to do with the two points that I already made. Animals can of course make inferences, but these inferences are implicit. That is to say if you have a chicken and you give some food to the chicken that is too big, doesn’t fit into its mouth or so, and it is desperate that it can’t eat it, and then you throw another one of roughly the same size in front of it, then the chicken might refuse to even try to do the same with the second piece of material, because it recognizes that it didn’t work with the first it’s not going to likely work with the second. But again due to the lack of concepts, they cannot make explicit inferences. That is, infer from one concept to another, and thereby be able to say: why such-and-such caused such-and-such a problem, and why it would be in vain to try the same thing twice, that did not already work in the first case.
And the most important difference between animals and humans is the difference that animals do not have what we call self-consciousness. They do have consciousness but not self-consciousness, and what I mean by self-consciousness is: they cannot stand back, so to speak, and reflect about their own behavior. They cannot pause and criticize their own behavior, think about why their behavior was successful or unsuccessful. They do not have anything like norms or principles, against which they can judge their own behavior and criticise their own behavior."
"Let me on this point again quote Blanshard, on this most important of differences, that is the human ability of self-conscious reflection. There he says: finally human reason has added an extra dimension to the animal consciousness in the form of self-consciousness. An animal lacks the power which is the source in ourselves of so much achievement and so much rue, of standing off from itself and contemplating what it is doing. It eats, sleeps, and cavorts, but never pauses in the midst of a meal to take note that it is eating greedily. Never asks if it is not unseemly to sleep the hours away, (laughter) you see in some respects of course humans have not developed that far beyond animals (laughter). Apparently never reflects, as it leaps and runs, that it is a little off-form today. It makes mistakes, but having made one, it cannot sit down and consider what principle of right thinking is violated. Because it cannot contemplate its own behavior, it cannot criticise itself. Being below the level of self-criticism, it has no norms. And having no norms, it lacks one great obvious essential to the light of reason: that is, the power to be guided by principle.
And Blanshard then summarizes all of what I tried to convey up to this point by saying the following: when we say that man is a rational animal, then we seem to imply that he can command ideas independently of sense. Independently of perception. That he can abstract, that he can infer explicitly, and that he can sit in judgement of himself. The highest of animals can do none of these things. The stupidest of man, if not a pathological case, can to the light of reason: that is, the power to be guided by principle."
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Or you can listen to the audio: Nature of Man and the Human Condition: Language, Property, and Production (Hoppe)
