What makes humans unique

Now everyone pretty well agrees that there is not one single thing that makes humans unique in the animal kingdom, but most people would agree that our cognitive abilities leave the most intelligent and social of species in our wake. I say ‘most’ because there are some, possibly many, who argue that humans are not as special as we like to think and there is really nothing we can do that other species can’t do. They would point out that other species, if not all advanced species, have language, and many produce art to attract a mate and build structures (like ants and beavers) and some even use tools (like apes and crows).

However, I find it hard to imagine that other species can think and conceptualise in a language the way we do or even communicate complex thoughts and intentions using oral utterances alone. To give other examples, I know of no other species that tells stories, keeps track of days by inventing a calendar based on heavenly constellations (like the Mayans) or even thinks about thinking. And as far as I know, we are the only species who literally invents a complex language that we teach our children (it’s not inherited) so that we can extend memories across generations. Even cultures without written scripts can do this using songs and dances and art. As someone said (John Hands in Cosmo Sapiens) we are the only species ‘who know that we know’. Or, as I said above, we are the only species that ‘thinks about thinking’.

Someone once pointed out to me that the only thing that separates us from all other species is the accumulation of knowledge, resulting in what we call civilization. He contended that over hundreds, even thousands of years, this had resulted in a huge gap between us and every other sentient creature on the planet. I pointed out to him that this only happened because we had invented the written word, based on languages, that allowed us to transfer memories across generations. Other species can teach their young certain skills, that may not be genetically inherited, but none can accumulate knowledge over hundreds of generations like we can. His very point demonstrated the difference he was trying to deny.

In a not-so-recent post, I delineated my philosophical ruminations into 23 succinct paragraphs, covering everything from science and mathematics to language, morality and religion.  My 16th point said:



Humans have the unique ability to nest concepts within concepts ad-infinitum, which mirror the physical world.

In another post from 2012, in answer to a Question of the Month in Philosophy  Now: How does language work?; I made the same point. (This is the only submission to Philosophy Now, out of 8 thus far, that didn’t get published.)

I attributed the above ‘philosophical point’ to Douglas Hofstadter, because he says something similar in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Godel Escher Bach, but in reality, I had reached this conclusion before reading it.

It’s my contention that it is this ability that separates us from other species and that has allowed all the intellectual endeavours we associate with humanity, including stories, music, art, architecture, mathematics, science and engineering.

I will illustrate with an example that we are all familiar with, yet many of us struggle to pursue at an advanced level. I’m talking about mathematics, and I choose it because I believe it also explains why many of us fail to achieve the degree of proficiency we might prefer.

With mathematics we learn modules which we then use as a subroutine in a larger calculation. To give a very esoteric example, Einstein’s general theory of relativity requires at least 4 modules: calculus, vectors, matrices and the Lorentz transformation. These all combine in a metric tensor that becomes the basis of his field equations. The thing is, if you don’t know how to deal with any one of these, you obviously can’t derive his field equations. But the point is that the human brain can turn all these ‘modules’ into black boxes and then the black boxes can be manipulated at another level.

It’s not hard to see that we do this with everything, including writing an essay like I’m doing now. I raise a number of ideas and then try to combine them into a coherent thesis. The ‘atoms’ are individual words but no one tries to comprehend it at that level. Instead they think in terms of the ideas that I’ve expressed in words.

We do the same with a story, which becomes like a surrogate life for the time that we are under its spell. I’ve pointed out in other posts that we only learn something new when we integrate it into what we already know. And, with a story, we are continually integrating new information into existing information. Without this unique cognitive skill, stories wouldn’t work.

But more relevant to the current topic, the medium for a story is not words but the reader’s imagination. In a movie, we short-circuit the process, which is why they are so popular.

Because a story works at the level of imagination, it’s like a dream in that it evokes images and emotions that can feel real. One could imagine that a dog or a cat could experience emotions if we gave them a virtual reality experience, but a human story has the same level of complexity that we find in everyday life and which we express in a language. The simple fact that we can use language alone to conjure up a world with characters, along with a plot that can be followed, gives some indication of how powerful language is for the human species.

In a post I wrote on storytelling back in 2012, I referenced a book by Kiwi academic, Brian Boyd, who points out that pretend play, which we all do as children (though I suspect it’s now more likely done using a videogame console) gives us cognitive skills and is the precursor to both telling and experiencing stories. The success of streaming services indicates how stories are an essential part of the human experience.

While it’s self-evident that both mathematics and storytelling are two human endeavours that no other species can do (even at a rudimentary level) it’s hard to see how they are related.

People who are involved in computer programming or writing code, are aware of the value, even necessity, of subroutines. Our own brain does this when we learn to do something without having to think about it, like walking. But we can do the same thing with more complex tasks like driving a car or playing a musical instrument. The key point here is that they are all ‘motor tasks’, and we call the result ‘muscle memory’, as distinct from cognitive tasks. However, I expect it relates to cognitive tasks as well. For example, every time you say something it’s like the sentence has been pre-formed in your brain. We use particular phrases, all the time, which are analogous to ‘subroutines.’

I should point out that this doesn’t mean that computers ‘think’, which is a whole other topic. I’m just relating how the brain delegates tasks so it can ‘think’ about more important things. If we had to concentrate every time we took a step, we would lose the train of thought of whatever it was we were engaged in at the time; a conversation being the most obvious example.

The mathematics example I gave is not dissimilar to the idea of a ‘subroutine’. In fact, one can employ mathematical ‘modules’ into software, so it’s more than an analogy. So with mathematics we’ve effectively achieved cognitively what the brain achieves with motor skills at the subconscious level. And look where it has got us: Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which is the basis of all current theories of the Universe.

We can also think of a story in terms of modules. They are the individual scenes, which join together to form an episode, which form together to create an overarching narrative that we can follow even when it’s interrupted.

What mathematics and storytelling have in common is that they are both examples where the whole appears to be greater than the sum of its parts. Yet we know that in both cases, the whole is made up of the parts, because we ‘process’ the parts to get the whole. My point is that only humans are capable of this.

In both cases, we mentally build a structure that seems to have no limits. The same cognitive skill that allows us to follow a story in serial form also allows us to develop scientific theories. The brain breaks things down into components and then joins them back together to form a complex cognitive structure. Of course, we do this with physical objects as well, like when we manufacture a car or construct a building, or even a spacecraft. It’s called engineering.