thinker_jeff

No. From my statement, it cannot derive out you statement logically. Before human discovered the scientific methods we created lots of elements for scientific methods, such as language and math. I have not defined anything, instead, I used a short term "animal" to replace a long term "the animal not in human specise". If you don't mind the bothering by the long term, I can do that just for you. Same issue as Phi. Show me the evidence.

I don't think this is a scientific argument (we're discussing in science, aren't we?) , maybe is a philosophical one. Show me the evidence about "if they did".

Phi for All, you are still repeating the some argument: the line between animals and humans doesn't exist because there are too many shared characteristics and not enough truly distinguishing factors. Although you haven't mentioned the meaning of "animal", I assume that you mean animal as I do. I don't want to repeat my logic once more, instead, I want to give one of the factors distinguished human and animal. Human beings are scientifically studying animals; however, animals do not study humans scientifically.

I don't understand why you jump into a discussion but don't want to read what have been discussed. I said that the OP's animal means the animal not in human species, otherwise he shouldn't ask this question. For some reason we don't know, the OP hasn't clarified his concept. The animal not in human species is a different identity from human; therefore, by logic, there must be a line between these two identities. Do you agree with that?

If you have read every post before this, you should know it has been answered already. One knows that something exists, but may not know where it is exactly.

You don't because you are more literal with the question than I do. The OP's "animal" means the animal not in human species, otherwise he asked a wrong question.

Maybe I was. I thought that nobody would be interested even though he/she might not know where the distinction is. There may be still some elements attached with civilization. A man having multiple wives typically makes love with each of them privately. A person eating only raw meat still cares if it is clean. Anyway, I still don't know what the OP needs.

The line exists and every one knows that. Let's ask this question in another way - Does anyone believe that a human and an animal (not in human species) are the same? Even a first grader will say "no." If they are two different identities, there must be a line between them. One may not point out the line as precious as Phi for All does, but he may still point out that human is more intelligent or civilized, etc.

Yes.

It doesn't sound like an interesting documentary series. Everyone believes knowing where the line between human and animal exists (may or may not be precious enough), so that the most of people don't even bother to question it.

Following the failure of a wide range of attempts to solve the crystal structure of M-PMV retroviral protease by molecular replacement, we challenged players of the protein folding game Foldit to produce accurate models of the protein. Remarkably, Foldit players were able to generate models of sufficient quality for successful molecular replacement and subsequent structure determination. The refined structure provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs. http://www.nature.com/nsmb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nsmb.2119.html I don't kwon who are the game players though.

Here is the news: Longitudinal evidence that fatherhood decreases testosterone in human males In species in which males care for young, testosterone (T) is often high during mating periods but then declines to allow for caregiving of resulting offspring. This model may apply to human males, but past human studies of T and fatherhood have been cross-sectional, making it unclear whether fatherhood suppresses T or if men with lower T are more likely to become fathers. Here, we use a large representative study in the Philippines (n = 624) to show that among single nonfathers at baseline (2005) (21.5 ± 0.3 y), men with high waking T were more likely to become partnered fathers by the time of follow-up 4.5 y later (P < 0.05). Men who became partnered fathers then experienced large declines in waking (median: −26%) and evening (median: −34%) T, which were significantly greater than declines in single nonfathers (P < 0.001). Consistent with the hypothesis that child interaction suppresses T, fathers reporting 3 h or more of daily childcare had lower T at follow-up compared with fathers not involved in care (P < 0.05). Using longitudinal data, these findings show that T and reproductive strategy have bidirectional relationships in human males, with high T predicting subsequent mating success but then declining rapidly after men become fathers. Our findings suggest that T mediates tradeoffs between mating and parenting in humans, as seen in other species in which fathers care for young. They also highlight one likely explanation for previously observed health disparities between partnered fathers and single men. http://www.pnas.org/...9/02/1105403108 My question is - is this result related with the culture? Why they do this in Philippines?

No evidence being found doesn't mean no evidence in fact. The reality is that current brain scan technologies are still very low resolution in time and space. The true evidence may be too detailed to be detected. In this case, we should trust the clinical psychologist more than the brain scanner.

I think that philosophy can still be useful in the field where science hasn't been completely established yet. For example, in the field of Artificial Intelligence, a known thought experiment is Turing Test which was designed by philosophical method. In such experiment there are a human subject, a machine with artificial intelligence, and a human judge. All of them are separated from each other, say, in the separated rooms linked together with computers. The judge can only tell which the machine is by reading the emulating human response. If the judge cannot discriminate which is which, it means that the machine passed the test. The original test designer, Dr. Alan Turing, believed that the machine passed the test can think.

Thanks for reminding me about that. My original motivation is to feed this forum with some cutting-edge topics so that others can join in to discuss. It seems working for some topic but not working for others. Your reminding tells me one of the reasons why this method hasn't worked very well. Anyway, I have no problem to tell what I think about my thought, although the article has expressed a lot of great thought already. We knew that the sensory systems for visual input, the auditory input and touchy input (inclulding pain, temperature, etc.) are found to be coded as topographic segregation in cortex, or simply called "map" in brain. This study shows that the sensory system for taste input does the same way as the above sensory systems, too. Here is my guessing - The sensory system for olfaction input (smelling) should be followed the same principle, in which the inputs are coded as a map somewhere in cortex.