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[Yanlin]

Ugh. I've been preaching this forever. Humans ARE animals. Period. I SAID PERIOD!

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Well, scientifically we are all animals, we're also mammals, omnivores, and primate derivatives (some are more derived than others). But really, we are no more than biomachines, and from that perspective the definition of "animal" versus "human" is pretty distinct. Scientifically the raspberry and the watermelon have a lot more in common than one would think, but I only call watermelons "berries" when I want to amuse the listener. Think of us as the watermelons of berries - we stand out from the crowd, so we call ourselves humans and differentiate ourselves from primates regardless of who we scientifically are.

That'd be all well and good if you're guiding the discussion and you decided to talk about animals and mean non-human animals, but people talk about humans as animals (and as primates, and as mammals) quite frequently, and they mean it literally. You can't just butt into their conversations and tell them they're wrong for saying humans are animals. Well, really, you CAN, but you'll look really silly for doing so.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I don't like words with multiple meanings. The definition of "animal" is basically any complex biochemical mechanism of a certain composition, as opposed to, say, plants. In that sense, humans are animals. But with our society being what it is, there has to be a word for all animals that aren't in the Homo genus. Since we're all lazy bastards, we kept the term as is and invented a word for ourselves instead. On the scientific level, you can say humans are animals, but I avoid using this statement in everyday speech because of the difference between the non-scientific definitions of humans and animals in the society.

[Jim Groovester]

Humans are rational animals. They have the same basic functions that all other animals do, with the exceptional characteristic of intelligence and self awareness, as well as the ability to curtail their animalistic tendencies.

As for the OP,

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to retire somewhere that people don't eat my exhibits.

Me thinks you think far too highly of yourself and your opinions.

[Sean Mirrsen]

We can't say that no "animals" are capable of self-awareness or rational thought until we have a way to communicate with animals at their own level. And don't judge intelligence by brain size.

[Jim Groovester]

We can't say that no "animals" are capable of self-awareness or rational thought until we have a way to communicate with animals at their own level. And don't judge intelligence by brain size.

So, you agree with me then that humans are indeed rational animals, with the condition that perhaps we aren't the only ones, or that other animals are self-aware and rational to some degree?

And I never made any comparison between brain size and intelligence.

[Sean Mirrsen]

We humans are just an evolved part of the Homo genus, and that's about the only thing special about us as far as "animals" go. That and we were the first ones to form a pack large enought to oppress all other animals. Yes, I think there are other animals that posess a degree of self-awareness and rationality, there is just no way to tell without a means of communication. I suppose other animals are happy enough as they are and don't have the ridiculous desire to "go beyond". I still stand by my classification of human versus animal, at least until there is another word for nonhuman animals.

[Jude]

We can't say that no "animals" are capable of self-awareness or rational thought until we have a way to communicate with animals at their own level. And don't judge intelligence by brain size.

Just so you guys know, brain size has a whole lot to do with intelligence. Brains are greedy organs and suck up a huge amount of energy. They generally don't grow any bigger than they have to be in order to reach whatever cognitive capacities they generate. That's why physical anthropologists can draw inferences about the cognitive abilities of human ancestors based on brain size...it's how we figure that homo habilis was smarter than australopithecus afarensis.

[Bromor Neckbeard]

I'm of the opinion that octopi are rational beings.  Look at this behavior:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmDTtkZlMwM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juj5XyHiwDs&feature=related

Maybe that's conscious, maybe it's instinctual.  I don't know.  But, I've seen things that make me believe that it's conscious.

See, my dad used to have a saltwater aquarium on a table in his living room with various fish and crabs that he collected from work.  (He worked at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute)  One day when I was down visiting him, he brought home an octopus (which we named Octavio) that he'd found in a tide pool.  This little guy was fascinating to watch.  He managed to depopulate that entire tank, killing fish and crabs that were five times his size.

To keep a steady supply of food on hand for the little dude, my dad set up a freshwater aquarium with a population of guppies on a desk a few feet away from Octavio's home.  We figured that he could see them, but not get at them, until me or my dad put them in his tank.

But as it turned out, the guppies kept disappearing.  We figured that they were fighting or that one of the neighborhood cats or a raccoon was getting them.  However, after five days of the guppy population steadily declining, my dad saw this octopus squeeze out of his tank, down the table, across the floor, and up the desk to get at the guppy tank, and then return to his own tank.

Now, in my opinion, that would require rational thought.  From the floor or the side of the desk, a creature two inches long could not see either the guppy tank or his home tank.  He would have to plan in advance how to get to the other tank, and remember both where his home tank was and where the guppy tank was, in an environment that would slowly kill him and stop most of his senses from working.

Sadly, his intellect did not save him from my misjudgement.  Since he killed anything and everything that we put in his tank, I wanted something else in his tank that he wouldn't kill.  We got a sea anemone from one of the tide pools where my dad found Octavio and put it in the tank.  Surprisingly, Octavio almost immediately attacked it, but a wrestling match with something his size that was coated with a billion poisonous stingers proved fatal for that poor little octopus.  I still have Octavio in a jar of alcohol on my windowsill.

[codezero]

That's a cool story about the octopus, but are you sure your dad wasn't telling fibs to a kid? Pretty wacked, but then again, i suppose they don't have gills do they?

To the human debate, if you believe in global warming, water crisis and such you'll see we're up there with the dumbest of animals. Putting laziness before self preservation for as long as possible, like a fly that sees the opening in a window but continues to fly into the window.

[Osmosis Jones]

Similar behaviour has been observed in lab experiments, so I doubt it was a made up story :p

[Jude]

I'm not at all surprised at accounts of "intelligent" behavior in animals; there's no doubt that many/most animals experience some kind of consciousness like what humans do - including in many cases some of the same emotions - and it calls into question what "intelligence" is.

While I don't think anyone would be ready to argue that octopi (or whatever) have "rationality" in the sense of manipulating abstract ideas and constructing syllogisms, animals absolutely have intelligence after their own kind, as needed to deal with the niche they evolved into. The human brain is a work of many, many millions of years of evolution, during which many other species have evolved which thus share some of the basic cognitive architecture of humans.

Intelligence is probably best defined as ability to adaptively interact with the environment anyway. Of course when the environment is manipulated or changes drastically, the gaps in intelligence can be revealed - such as in humans, demonstrated in many many psychology experiments. Intelligence is certainly not a monolithic trait; more a collection of numerous mental mechanisms, some of which in animals are probably the same or similar to some in humans.

[Iituem]

But really, we are no more than biomachines, and from that perspective the definition of "animal" versus "human" is pretty distinct.

This is a bit like saying that a clock is no more than a handy collection of bits of oddly shaped metal that move.  We know that a clock is more than just gears and motion, despite consisting only of gears and motion.  This is true in the same way that Dwarf Fortress is more than just an oodleplex of silicon bits flicking back and forth and an electron gun making a screen light up in pretty colours.  While a dog consists of nothing further than a varied selection of meat and bone, given the choice between a terrier and a smorgasboard of offal and bonemeal, which would you rather have lick your hand and bring you your slippers?

The human brain is a rather large mass of specialised meat.  The mind that arises from that is what makes it distinct from glorified sausage.

Steve Grand puts this viewpoint forward a lot more eloquently than I can in his book Creation: Life and How to Make It, an excellent guide for anyone planning to build an AI from scratch or just understand why it is we are distinct from sea anemonae.

[Jude]

We're distinct from animals in our own eyes because we're chauvinistic about human intelligence. Steven Pinker uses the excellent analogy of elephants' trunks in ridiculing SETI. He takes some quote from a proponent of searching for alien intelligence and replaces all references to the mind with references to elephant trunks, attributing it to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Trunks on a planet populated by elephants. The point being, an elephant's trunk is an organ every bit as complex, fascinating and remarkable as the human mind, but because we are not chauvinistic about trunks, the notion that trunks would necessarily evolve on other worlds - or are qualitatively different from other traits evolved in the animal kingdom - seems laughable.

[Idiom]

Looks like I missed this while I was gone.

OP: In my own words, you want us to find merit in ideas we oppose? I'm not quite sure what he meant, but that's what I was just sarcastically said not too long ago, so it's kind of on my mind.

To the current discussion:
I agree completely that we are animals, very complex ones, but are inherently subjective to whatever subconscious motives being an animal involves. Freud? Seeing as the only difference between us and monkeys that affects intelligence is brain size and complexity, I'd assume that less complex and/or large brains can do slightly less complex and large cognitive behavior. So that Octopus was driven by instinct to cross to the other tank, but his consciousness is what allowed him to figure out a way?

the notion that trunks would necessarily evolve on other worlds - or are qualitatively different from other traits evolved in the animal kingdom - seems laughable.

That didn't make sense to me. The notion that minds like ours would develop on alien worlds laughable. Hell yes. Laughable that they would NOT have traits like our animals? What? It sounds like you just said that a specific trait would not develop (trunks), but the trunks would not be different from ours at all? The notion that minds like ours would not develop I immediately said "laughable" because they WOULD have different traits from ours.