Human Species Research Paper

A human, according to TheFreeDictionary.com, is “a member of the primate genus Homo, especially a member of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other apes by a large brain and the capacity for speech. Because homo sapiens have larger brains and the capacity for speech, we see ourselves as superior - and in many ways we are. We, as a species, have created all that the material world has to offer and have constantly proven, to ourselves, that there is not much that we aren’t capable of doing. However, one thing that we - as a species- with our large brains and language, have not been able to do, is see each other as equals. This has been a problem since the dawn of time - our inability to accept each other’s differences as additions …show more content…
Somehow, the human species has found a way to separate our differences into two categories: “normal” and “other”, and have used that method to paint a negative narrative of the “other.” How is this possible? In my opinion, the only way humans are able to see other humans as “lesser” is if they are able to strip them of their human card, so to speak. When a human being is able to literally dehumanize another human being, then - and only then - are they able to see that human being as less than. Before discussing the power of dehumanization, I think it’s important that we acknowledge, more extensively, what does and does not qualify as a human being, at least from a philosophical standpoint. In “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” by Mary Anne Warren, Warren suggests “that the traits which are most central to the concept of personhood” are consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-concepts or self-awareness. This does not lend any room for computers or other inanimate objects, like Searle argues in “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” In Searle’s Chinese Room argument, he argues that …show more content…
We are guilty. Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits.” In this statement, Einstein argues that - at least to a point - our ethical and moral misconduct is fueled by dehumanization. When humans are able to see other human beings as less than human, they are able to treat them as less than human. This is, more or less, argued in Soren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love. In this essay, Kierkegaard discusses the concept of loving your neighbor as you love yourself. Based off of the assumption that every person loves themselves and would therefore treat themselves with the utmost virtue, this concept relies on the Bible to prove its point. Kierkegaard argues that “If there are only two people, the other person is the neighbor; if there are millions everyone of these in the neighbor, who in turn is closer than the friend and the beloved. Inasmuch as they, as the objects of preference, more or less hold together with the self-love in one.” With this concept, loving your neighbor does not only extend to your friends and family or your actual next door neighbor - there is a connection there that makes you want to care for them. Instead, truly loving your neighbor comes when you