Raymond Tallis - How Humans Differ from Other Animals

Physically, humans and animals seem similar. Mentally, humans seem so superior. What's so special about human nature? Language? Culture? Compare brain structures and functions of humans and animals. Human brains have advantages, in complexity and capacity of association for example, but are they sufficient to account for the vast superiority of human mentality?



Raymond C. Tallis is a a retired physician and neuroscientist from Great Britain. His resume boasts titles like philosopher, poet and novelist. He is also a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal College of Physicians and Royal Society of Arts.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[MSniping]

Robert is such an incredible interviewer. I just cannot think of another interviewer ever who has such a broad and deep knowledge on so many topics. And he prepares so fantastically for these interviews, half the time you would think he knew better than they about the subject! He also does a wonderful job of challenging in a totally fair way and asking incredibly accurate and exciting questions that all the professionals seem to respect deeply. He guided the conversation very well here today as well.

[thebrightsideok]

Of course animals differ from humans. Animals are way better.

[johnbaker]

Professor Tallis is a seeker after Truth which keeps him on a journey towards ultimate reality. For this reason I highly value His insights into the human condition. I am also a seeker but embrace a spiritual dimension to my life and being. Without that I think that I would have given up a long time ago. In many ways I have experienced a deeply unhappy life but as I look back and reflect I am able to see that my life and experiences of unhappiness were balanced by a wide variety of very interesting experiences and the recognition that what I thought of as my unhappy Hell could easily be construed as someone else's heaven. Balance has become an important key word in my life. When I sit sometimes in a state of darkness (clinical depression); sometimes, when I am able, I reflect on the life of great men and women who have experienced a darkness which I consider to be far greater than my own. For example The 27 years That Nelson Mandela spent in prison on Robin Island and returned with no bitterness in his nature . Then went on to become President of South Africa. I recently discovered That Mother Teresa who worked with the poor particularly young children and babies which were discarded by society, suffered from depression much of her life. She was recently recognized by The Church as A Saint. Then my own darkness seems as nothing. There is, in my opinion, a clear distinction between the animal Kingdom and human beings in their capacity to understand love and kindness. Animals can, and often do, respond to human kindness. However they cannot spontaneously initiate love towards their own kind. They can only respond/ copy the kindness that human beings have extended towards them. Thank you Professor Tallis and Robert for journeying Closer to Truth John.B

[mikeofborg]

Loved this idea. Very interesting. The table kept trying to get a word in though. 🤪

[pedroroque]

Inteligent is relative.
This makes me remember this quote from Douglas Adams:
"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."

[MindVersusMisery]

A very relevant question, given the topic at hand is: What is our justification for our massive and perpetuated exploitation of non-humans?

I know that we can find a lot of differencies between humans and non-humans. But we can find differencies between different social groups of humans as well, and what we have seen when analyzing cruelty and oppression from humans onto humans is that: unproportional focus on differencies gives rise to a sense of us-and-other-ness, thus fertilizing the ground for oppressive ideas and actions. Nationality, skin colour, religious or political conviction, gender, sexual orientation, are some examples of oppressive justifications throughout history. But at the core you find a lot of very relevant similarities between these different groups of humans, and the relevance of these similarities outweigh the relevance of the differencies. And at the core I'd argue that you find relevant similarities between humans and many, if not all, species of animals that humans exploit for fur, entertainment, food and experiment as well.

Our collective anthropocentric narrative - which is substanstiated both in (certain) traditions of science and religious doctrines - has arguably setup a system which has created more violence, death, pain and suffering than no other system in the history of the world. But the victims of this system are non-human, so ethically it doesn't seem to matter to most supposedly civilized people.

[donnacabot]

Man takes more then he needs. Greed. Their eyes are bigger then their gut. Animals take only what they need and that's it.

[maryazaki]

Lol .. understanding the commonalities is very helpful actually .. it can actually help us get insight on how we behave .. when it comes to herd mentality especially. It’s just a window to understand oneself… it’s not a bad thing. Differences are good to note too.

[jimmybrice]

many comments about animals not having a sense of self. i dont think we know that to be true. especially with cats. they are way more human-like than dogs are. but you have to get real close to them. i had an amazingly close relationship to 2 cats. i disciplined them just as i would a child, because they exhibited very human-like behavior. one example - baby cat used to like to catch momma cat by surprise and pounce on her. he would sneak, sneak, sneak up on her. and usually she would look around at him, just to let him know that she wasnt fooled this time. and then as soon as she did that, he would stop sneaking and just walk by, like he wasnt really thinking of pouncing. it was absolutely hilarious. and it took me by surprise - i had no idea that cats could behave like that.

[Pdotta]

He’s so good at finding and interviewing these (usually) old guys who insist on these unsupported positions.

[BradHolkesvig]

As far as the created minds of animals and humans, there is no difference but the information that is processed by each created mind is different. However, the ONE that comes alive as a created mind begins processing information into visible images such as the visible body that the ONE sees itself in can look like a dog, cat, bird, fish, human, etc. In other words, it's all about what our Creator has planned for each created mind to experience along with how the ONE is programmed to experience life with that mind.

[TheTroofSayer]

My principle thesis, short-form book-title version, is that bodies wire brains - all bodies with brains, not just humans. The longer, more nuanced form is that the experiences intercepted by bodies wire neuroplastic, DNA-entangled brains, and this factors in bodily predispositions.

Beginning at 7:40 Raymond Tallis is right to mention human posture, dexterous hands and visual acuity. In the heat of the interview, he omitted one further crucial human ability - vocal chords for speech and language. Factoring in these aspects of human biology does indeed predispose humans to complex interactions in culture, as Tallis would appreciate. Meanwhile, Robert Kuhn is spot-on with his emphasis on accumulated cultural knowledge.

The clue to Tallis' perspective (human/animal distinction as difference in kind, not degree), however, lies in his references to Darwin (presumably, neo-Darwin). The neo-Darwinian metaphor, whether implied or expressed, understands the brain as somehow analogous to a computer with inputs and outputs, running instinct subroutines. That's the crux of the problem. If you're running a paradigm that is inconsistent with how life works, then you'll reach the wrong conclusions. You'll see culture as this amazing product of a superior human intellect (the bottom-up), and you won't see how culture wires the human brain (the top-down).

The bottom line, without getting all TLDR (easy to do, this is my 2nd attempt)... The role of the biology of humans (hands, vocal chords, etc) in the creation of language and cultural complexity is pivotal. In human culture, we have access to a vastly extended *horizon of options* that is not accessible to non-human animals. Contrast our horizon of options, in culture, with that of a frog in a pond, or a zebra on the savanna.

So how might the matter be settled? Perhaps by conducting the forbidden experiment - by raising a human among animals, or in isolation from human contact, to see what happens in the absence of culture. No need to, though, because there are some examples that have been recorded: Victor of Aveyron raised by wolves, Genie Wiley raised in isolation, Oxana Malaya raised by dogs, Kaspar Hauser raised in isolation, and so on. The topic of feral children relates. Their experiences wire their neuroplastic, DNA-entangled brains, and they become, for all intents and purposes, little different from our fellow animals.

In this brief outline, I thus counter Tallis' conclusion with the opposite. The difference between humans and animals is not a difference in kind, but a difference in degree. Human exceptionalism in religion and science has severely retarded progress in the life sciences. From man made in God's image, to man at the intellectual centre of the universe, there is much to undo. Human animals and non-human animals are governed by the exact same laws of nature across the board. Our culture (the top-down), not our brains, equips us with the narratives with which can explore the nature of being in ways that nonhuman animals cannot... so let's try a little harder to get our narratives right. Our life sciences are long overdue for the equivalent of a Copernican revolution.

[Elena-true]

I'm afraid that if academics promote the idea of kind difference, we will end up in a world where we will lose most of the species. Once the human being thinks about something as a separate entity, its importance devaluates. When it's a part of your genetic history and you are part of the cosmos, we start seeing things and how our actions affect life around us.

[josephsamalis]

What's the knocking in the background?

[hstanekovic]

"Embodied Self" is such a great term for a conscious being

[markstipulkoski]

I've read that the Sentinelese people have sex communally. I'm pretty sure that don't have three course meals either. Not sure that they require privacy when they use the bathroom. So, are they not human (rhetorical question). This is the problem with Oxford professors, even those who are from Manchester. They live in a sheltered environment.

[squarecircle]

Profound discussion... Creaky table... profound discussion... creaky table.

[cozyslor]

The clear difference is that humans aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners.

[rc]

Just the idea of a single zygote becoming a new organism is simply amazing...

[cookieDaXapper]

are designated animal only because it would be a mismatch to label them as plant, or mineral. Humanity is as much "above" the most intelligent "animal" as the moon is beyond the oceans. We as humanity are just failing in our responsibility in "care taking' those who are dependent upon our great "strengths". PEACE family of Earth.