How ignorant have we become when we as humans no longer fit into our own catagory?

Question

What I mean by this is in ethics the question is asked "What is human?"

Another question is if "this" is human and "that" is not human what rights does one have as opposed to the other.

Ethics asks us what a person is, and even though someone may be a human they may not be a person by an ethical standard because a person is quote, "One capable of rational thought" There are other definitions, but my question rests on the idea that since ethics and science give so many definitions, whenever someone picks one it alienates another group of people and turns them into something other than human.

The main point is in this example that a black man was not considered human by most white people when these folks were shipped here to begin with. If this craziness held true to today then none of the black people would be classified as humans because of a crazy point of view that would follow it.

Space ranger, I disagree. You have just told me that if me and my society believes the Earth is flat than that is truth and cannot be challenged. But the facts are that the Earth is round.

I don't know if you were just offering a possability, but if you were I apologize for the refutation. There are certain truths that are truth regardless of whether or not someone believes it.

Ronin how ignorant are we indeed when we make the assumption that the being in the sky is mythical when we have no evidence to support such a claim?

Answer 1

have we "become ignorant" or was ignorance used to create the category, and we finally got past it? Maybe its always been so and you just woke up to it. I think that the definition changes as we change.

Answer 2

Darwin, still controversially, described how human beings were at the top of the evolutionary tree. The Victorian era morphed that idea into one in which human beings represented nature's perfection, an idea often perpetuated by the grandparents and parents of today's generations.

I am finding the opposite perspective in which humanity can be described by its "imperfections" or deviations from some ideal, to be more useful. Admitting to the intrinsic weaknesses of homo sapien promotes inclusion and permits forgiveness, the release of guilt and shame and the restart of learning.

Answer 3

This question has nothing to do with science. ANy halfway decent science would point to any ethnicity as being human since they can all interbreed and all have the same capabilities.

Humans are animals, we have always been ignorant. If you think that is ignorant, what about all the billions of people in the world who devote their lives to mythical beings in the sky?

Answer 4

That's why science and ethics should not be the sole source of teaching. True it's evolved over time but ethics used to say, like you mentioned, that black people or anyone of COLOR is not human. I've never been able to put much faith in these ideas or methods they are based on. Like you said its craziness. So if science and Ethics are wrong about this then who's to say they're not wrong about anything else.

Answer 5

I think the problem lies in the adaptation of relative truth or opinion as truth. What I believe to be true is true to me. If I say one ethnic group is not human then its not human to me. If I get enough consensus on my opinion, then it becomes excepted as truth within my society or people group. But as opinion changes so goes truth.

The unfortunate truth of the matter: As long as the consensus is Humanism then there can be no objective truth because there is no basis. We will continue to base truth on opinion and consensus and it will change and fluctuate with time.

Maybe Caucasians are next?