Humanity

I've been thinking about what it is that makes us human.

There's been a lot of ink spilled on the topic, and I'm not of the mindset that we're special in some fundamental/transcendent way, our differences from the rest of the animal kingdom are largely of degree rather than kind; nonetheless, it seems to me there's something about how we encounter the universe that warrants examination.

Language, culture, tool making, religion have all been posited as human activities that distinguish us; and all (with the possible exception of religion) have been found in some degree among other animal species.

What do all these things have in common? To my mind they all involve representation: the ability mentally to substitute one thing for another thing. This facility for abstraction is the foundation of most of our so called intelligence; including language, writing, mathematics, literature, art, philosophy, logic, science.

Of course, as the mystics warn, "The map is not the territory." Sometimes we get so caught up in manipulating our representations, that we forget that they are representations and forget that there was originally something that was represented.

This might be valuable in some disciplines (math comes to mind); but I think getting too far from experience creates many opportunities for self-delusion and waste.

Models/maps are always imperfect and incomplete, they fail to represent the reality entirely, which isn't a condemnation. Maps have "ends"; both in the sense of limits/edges as well as intended uses, it's when a model is pushed to serve beyond its ends that we can get into trouble.