Status Updates From The Difference of Man and t...

Common or general names that function as designators of perceived objects, but have different connotative and denotative significance as designators, get their different meanings from the perceived objects according as these objects are differently conceived. If I couldnt understand the perceived object lying near me differently,as a poodle, dog, animal, I couldnt use different words to designate it🤯

The beliefs or disbeliefs of the learned eventually filter down and exert an influence upon the lives and conduct of their fellow men... the image that we hold of man cannot fail to affect attitudes that influence our behavior in the world of action, and beliefs that determine our commitments in the world of thought.

For those who understand free choice in terms of an immaterial mode of causality, the falsification of the immaterialist hypothesis about man must lead to the denial that man has the power of free choice.

[For those Catholics and Protestants,] who are fideists. The falsification of the immaterialist hypothesis would have little effect on them. For the Catholics "who not only are orthodox in their dogmatic commitments but who also try to be philosophical in their understanding of dogmas that they hold by religious faith." such a falsification would be devastating.

"How is it possible for us to withhold satisfaction from an instinct? What power in us enables us to do so?" - even Freud says its the intellect, and an immaterial one at that.

More than the power of conceptual thought is thus involved in the pursuit of happiness. Freedom of choice is also involved, and with it, a radical difference in kind between men and other animals that have no moral problems, no moral rights, and no moral responsibility.

the affirmation of free choice presupposes the truth of the immaterialist hypothesis, which posits in man the operation of a non-physical factor, needed not only to explain his power of conceptual thought, but also to explain his contra-causal freedom of choice.

If man only differs superficially in kind -> no free will -> (according to Kant) no moral rights and responsibilities

Combining this fact with the policy that men have pursued in their treatment of animals, we can discern the normative principle underlying the action. It is that an inferior kind ought to be ordered to a superior kind as a means to an end.

The negative edge of Occam's razor cuts away the grounds for attributing to non-linguistic animals anything beyond the power of perceptual [as opposed to conceptual] thought, in order to explain their behavior. (b) Its positive edge supplies the justification for attributing the power of conceptual thought to man and man alone...

causa cognoscendi -> causes something to be known to be the case
causa essendi -> causes something to be the case

"With animals," Dewey writes, "an experience perishes at it happens, and each new doing or suffering stands alone."

sentence-making, toolmaking and history-making -> the three big differences in kind exhibited by man

With respect to any statement about some performance that man and man alone exhibits... an apparently similar performance by another species of animal does not constitute an infirmative negative instance if the latter is instinctive or species-predictable, while the human performance is acquired or learned by its nonubiquitous distribution and by its wide range of variability within the human species

Those nations who seek a greater degree of cooperation with their neighbors around the world had better take a more active interest in what their children are being taught in school about nature and nurture… To move further toward genuine peace at any social level at any social level requires something more than pragmatic agreement about the purposes of human life.

The guarantee of an inalienable right to pursue happiness makes no sense, of course, if human beings are not free to seek it.

...if there is no actual difference in kind between animals and humans, if there is only a difference in degree, then we lack any justification for ascribing personhood to human beings and for bestowing upon one another the special moral and political respect of having rights.