Which makes human's very different and special.

Just how Animals are more valuable then plants do to their far superior cognitive functions.

Given the choice between being forced to kill a dog and a cat, your choice is just going to be base on which animal you like more. 

Given the choice between killing a dog and a human like creature with human like intellegence.  You're going Dog every time.

ehh, depends on the dog. Any random dog, probably, but if you were forced to kill your dog or that jerk that just cut you off on the highway, it's probably the driver that's going down

Hitler liked dogs, though i regret invoking Godwin's law here, it does drive the point home.

Not really, i mean your making an emotional arguement to sway the situation, and even then, i think MOST people would kill their own dog over someone who cut them off when faced with both.

Is "valuable" really the right word? Considering that plants produce oxigen, plus they're the chief source of food for herbivores (who are the main source of food for carnivores), I'm sure that plants are actually more "valuable" than most lifeforms on Earth.

Also, you can't really deny the subjectivity of the claim that humans are more "special" than any other lifeforms on Earth. Not as if humans would ever admit to the contrary.

In an individule sense yes.

And how can't I deny the subjectivity of it?

Name an animal more special.

What trait is more rare or unique then man's higher levels of consiousness.

not likely.

If I were a walking zoology encyclopedia, I'm sure I could find some sort of an example of a trait that's as rare, if not rarer. And what's so unique about it? It's only the result of being more intelligent. This seems like it's turning into something similar to the console wars, where people are calling superior horesepower "innovative" and "special". Plus, humans saying that humans are the most "special" life forms... not only can this opninion be nothing short of subjective, but it seems oddly similar to people who would say that their race/culture etc. is the most "special".

Well the thing is, the metric is intelligence. We are on a whole other platform in comparison to any other animal. In fact Kasz is saying that the difference in intelligence between us and other animals is comparable to the difference in intelligence between other animals and plants. Now that is IMO a pretty arguable claim, but I agree with the general idea he is trying to get across.

If he said we are that special in eyesight compared to other animals, you would be right to object.

If you object to his judging the value of human life vs. that of animals or plants by intelligence rather than eyesight or whatever, that's a completely different debate and maybe an interesting one. But you should make it clear if that's what you're doing.

...

Oh wait, in your last post that is exactly what you did. OK, well first of all you are wrong that there is anything out there which has a trait rarer than our intelligence that is completely unique to our species (on Earth, to a reasonable degree of certainty).

Next, I am interested in what you think would be more special than such intelligence. Natural radar? I guess that would be more remarkable because it is not just a "stepped-up" version of something other species have, no matter how dramatically stepped-up it is. But ultimately, why would that make it more special? Why would anything be more valuable or "special" than intelligence? I could talk about all the interesting things intelligent life could do, but you could say with some justification that a completely arbitrary standard might think it didn't matter as much as a being that could fart rainbows. But even by a totally uncaring viewpoint, human intelligence is the direct cause of spectacular biological changes. Aside from our own sudden spread and dominance and city-building, all the stuff we've done to biospheres across the planet is just amazing -- not necessarily good, but very, very special and (off the top of my head) simply unprecedented. The only things that even come close, I think, are oxygen-giving microbes, and maybe grass.

Anyway, to address your point comparing it to the console wars or cultures thinking they are far superior, both of those can be debunked by the fact that none of those consoles are on a completely different level from what they are claiming they are superior to. Unless the console war you refer to is the Atari 2600 vs. the PS3.

It's hard not to take it with a grain of salt when someone says that they themselves (or the group they're part of) is better/more special/more valauble than other individuals (or groups).

Your comparison between animals and plants is quite ridiculous. Plants and animals are totally different lifeforms, and they evolved simoltaneously, animals did not evolve from plants. When you compare the two, you cannot judge plants based on the the criteria that would make an animal "superior". Why would plants even require "intelligence"? Plants and animals are on "completely different levels", however in their particular case you can't use a vertical hierarchy. Plants and animals are categories (in other words they're possitioned vertically next to eachother), each with it's own "hierarchies".

And why wouldn't natural radar be more "special"? The problem with this kinds of comparisons (as made evident in your plants vs. animals example), is that they're highly subjective, because the person making the comparison is itself subjected to it. And no one would ever admit to not being superior (and sometimes may not even be able to comprehend such a thing). Humans by default consider themselves to be special and superior, thus they consider their characteristics to be superior. They will thus use those characteristcs as criteria when judging whether something is or isn't "superior". Thus "human" becomes the standard to which everything is compared. Even aliens would have to mee this standard in order to be considered "superior" creatures (but even then humans would probably find some fault in them, because ultimately, they're not human which is the biggest "sin" a lifeform can commit in the face of a human). Just look sci fi movies. Aliens that are considered "superior" creatures are (almost) always humanoid. Same with fantasy movies. Humans cannot envision something "superior" that is not similar to themselves (and even if these creatures are presented as being more intelligent, humans are presented as being superior due to their "emotional intelligence", which end up being more important - see Star Trek).

Regarding what you said about cultures, are cultures really on similar levels? Every single culture that has ever exited has considered itself to be the most advanced culture that has ever been. Cultures thake their own characteristcs (which they deem to be the sings of a "superior" culture), and establish them as criteria for comparison. For example culture X can consider itself more advanced than culture than culture Y, because it performs a certain ritual which it labels as being something a "civilized" person would do, despite the fact that culture Y does not have such a standard (for example the differences in bathing rituals in the West vs. Japan). Now, there are spaces where cultures have interacted with eachother, borrowed from eachother (such as Europe or Asia), meaning that these cultures have similar standards. But what about isolated cultures? These cultures (that Europeans labeled as "primitive") were unique, they developed totally different ways to view the world. You cannot really compare such a culture with Western culture (for example), despite what many tend to do (Europeans would consider native African cultures to be "primitive" because they didn't wear clothes, or wore very little, but since when is wearing clothes an universal sign of being "civilized"?). This is the inability to imagone the "other".

Back to what Kasz said. What bothered me most wasn't the "special" part, but the "valuable" part (him giving being more "special" as a justification). Are humans really more "valauble" than other creatures? Obviously a human would say "yes", but that's just a subjective opinion (and an undertsandable one at that). Humans automatically consider themselves to be more "valauble" than other lifeforms, and "human" is the standard to determine the value of another living being (the closer a creature is to the "human" standard, the more valauble it is). Ultimately, the most objectively "valuable" living beings on Earth are plants, because without them there would be no life on Earth (us humans would disappear also). Humans are at the very top of the food chain, which objectively makes us the least valuable and most useless of Earth's inhabitants.