soccerchick wrote:To begin, there is no anthropological evidence to suggest that the human opposable thumb evolved before intelligence. At this point, anthropologists simply don't know which came first. Evidence points to these two features evolving side by side, so many think they developed around the same time.
Not true. The skeletons of many
Australopithecus afarensis show opposable thumbs. How else would it be possible to climb and grasp trees otherwise? Yet their brain size was a mere 413 ml (on average). Compare that to a modern human, with an average brain size of ~1430 ml. Thumbs and bipedalism came first.
Opposable thumbs are nice and all, but I'm just going to sit in a tree and use it to pick off my fleas until I think about picking up a rock and throwing it at the local gopher to produce supper.
Yes. My point exactly. The body came first, the brain followed. We became dominant in no small part because of how we were built, not how we thought.
As well, I don't see how emotion and objectivism/ libertarianism/ individualism are incompatible. Granted, I haven't read Rand much, but I have read Nozick, as well as Kane, and I think that rationalism is the very essence of emotions. Emotions are all about doing what we want (we things go the way we want them to, we get happy; when they don't we get sad/angry). Rationalism promotes the liberty of the self, and therefore the ability to do what we want, which should make us happy.
"Should" is a very important word here. If a person "wants" to stay with an abusive spouse, are they really acting rationally? I don't think so.
PS: I'm reviving this thread because doug is actually posting again, and I'd like to see some response from him.
You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage.
--Terry Pratchett
When it's cold I'd like to die
