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Isn’t it what also (and presumably) separates us from other animals? Besides the advanced use of language and tools of course.
If you deconstruct any animal (let’s take mammals, so we can include ourselves), we’re really just a bundle of interconnected nerves and brain matter — this is where all our qualia is formed. The rest is just a calcium scaffolding (the skeleton) and a meat spacesuit evolved for life on this particular planet.
So if we are really just a qualia-experiencing neuronal system, what makes our species stand out is our unique ability to be meta about it, i.e., to observe our emotions as they form and dissipate, and to reflect upon that experience.
I don’t imagine any other mammal can have that insight that we are not those feelings, and that we are instead the apparatus or conduit experiencing them, and that we can detach ourselves from them (hence stoicism, meditation, and all related normative practices along those lines)
So, congratulations @july, you are human! 4 replies
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