"If the idea of treating chimps like people freaks you out, join the club. Creationists have been fighting this battle for a long time. They realized long ago that evolution threatened humanity's special status."

Maybe the myth is "humanity's special status."

How many human beings are really tool makers in a way greater than the great apes. (How many humans are tool users, but really couldn't be and are not tool makers.) And, maybe there is also a question about a difference between general human and ape cultural sensitivty and awareness.

I've often considered that any special human status is really a duty to care for our non-human co-inhabitants of this planet.

Dude, but what's the point of being the one creating the hierarchy if you don't put yourself at the top? Sheesh.

Oh, I so totally agree!

As conscious animals, we bear a burden that other animals do not have. For one, they know exactly how to be in the world. I've never met an elk pondering what it means to be an elk, or wondering how it should behave. It knows perfectly. We seem to know nothing. Imagine any other species, say the grizzlies, rampaging about the planet killing everything in sight including and especially its own kind, deliberately fouling every water source it comes upon and even those it can't see, spewing crap into the atmosphere so even it can't breathe, and all the while extolling itself as the most superior animal on the planet. It's a ridiculous image, yet that is who we are to the rest of the species out there.

We are the only part of the whole thing that knows it is part of the whole thing. We have the instincts of other animals, but they are run amuck because we have the ability to separate ourselves from the process and claim more than our share. Only by becoming conscious can we ascertain our useful role in nature. And that involves understanding how our behavior affects the other species on the planet. Since we are capable, and evidently quite willing, of eradicating them, then their well-being is in our hands. What else but our awareness and consciousness will inform our decisions?

Just because you haven't met an elk who pondered what it meant to be an elk (are you sure that you know what an elk is pondering), that doesn't mean that an elk, or a whole lot of elk, doesn't ponder that question. How would you know what an elk is pondering; or a cetacean or ape, or even a canine or feline?

I'm sure that I've met homo sapiens who haven't pondered what meant to be human. (Some because they assume their special status.)

I think that it would be more advantageous for us humans to think less about our special status and more about our being parat of the total ecology.

I'm almost sorry for taking your opinion.

"How many human beings are really tool makers in a way greater than the great apes."

How pitiful that you don't actually know the answer to this.

crowe:

I've never met an elk pondering what it means to be an elk, or wondering how it should behave.

I met a Taoist caribou once. Does that count?

But define "conscious" as you're using it. Are you referring to something transcendental, an elevated state of awareness that will grant us insight into everything (or at least most things?) You start out saying we're "conscious animals," but then later we must "become conscious," so you lost me in that paragraph.

You're using "awareness" and "consciousness" as two separate terms, though, so I'm not sure I follow you.

It's a ridiculous image, yet that is who we are to the rest of the species out there.

That, however, is only to any other species that is aware of the processes involved in manufacturing, internal combustion, or our other industrial processes. Most animals see us only intruders in their territory to be attacked or avoided. I think you may be reading too much into how the rest of the animal world views us, but I can agree that it's how many members of humanity view mankind.

I use a hammer; I didn't make it. I use a computer; I didn't make it. I use a spoon, fork, knife, pencil, toothbrush; but I didn't make any of them either. I'm a tool user; not a tool maker: and that was and is the essence of my comment. Most us homo sapians are "tool users", not "tool makers".