Reviewing and extending thoughts from "A comparative perspective on animal cultures" by Masashi TANAKA

20 Feb 2025

The review article was about comparing human culture and non-human culture. First of all, the concept of “culture” was not strictly defined, rather each time an instance of culture is darawed on it was accepted.

My understanding aka impression on the article was that by far human culture is the most collective set of cultural characteristics possessed by non-human animal cultures. However, if the assumption of Darwin’s evolution is true and human is also a product of that process, the collectiveness is not deemed to be any superiority. This way, the feeling that sometimes we (roughly saying homo sapiens) have about ourselves being somewhat more advanced might be some kind of illusions. It is true that the human is advanced in its own way, but so as the other organisms.

I had a subseqent thought naturally. The characteristics humans have been developing such as scientific enlightenment, industrial revolutions, artificial intelligence, etc. are all as developed as any other characteristics non-human animals let alone organisms in general have. In other words, humans are generalists on the earth while each type of non-human animals is a specialist of each environment. It has to be true that mimicing those adaptation by human tecnology does not outcompete the original adaptation.

It sounds like an analogy of a safety net where human technology cannot outcompete those evolved in nature by non-human organisms. Intuitively however a thought conjured up as if human technology can only develop without drawing back. So, it may be possible that humans outcompete other animals by mimicing using such an endlessly sharpened knife. I think this is why the article mentions about the imitation abilities of animals. Birds can learn songs from other individuals even from man-made songs, whales make some kind of entertaining ticks, and more (not mentioned in the article but should be more…).

One significant weakness of human technology would be needs of resources. Thus, there is a limit even if it seems like humans are capable of conquring the earth’s environment by developing technology at least theoretically. When the limit is exceeded, there is no longer a place to exist, therefore, no competitions occur, then a life emerges somehow again to continue the cycle.

If a new cycle begins then that is what that is, but humans right now are trying to protect environments around the world to do something to the cycle. Nobody is probably sure what the “something” is. In my opinion, that “something” is on one hand very immortal and virtually impossible - explicitly saying that is to diminish ourselves from the earth with any source of pollutions stopped. On the other hand, if we were courage enough to exploit our intelligence inteligently, it would be possible to realise concepts of unity of knowledge or another level of revolutions or something else we have not even imagined, so that humans can still live on the earth. In short, it is about whether humans go extinct or not.

Fixing a bit drifted discussion, though it is inevitably connected, one of the ways if not the only way we proove that human culture is fundamentally different from others is a principle of natural selection. Natural selection is about a certain environment selecting a certain types of organisms’ characteristics. Here is a thought experiment.

Comparative cultures

Premise 1: The environment selects the characteristics of organisms, so the organisms with only those characteristics are supposed to exist, meaning adapted.

Premise 2: Some human characteristics make the environment inhabitable, so humans with those characteristics are not supposed to exist, meaning not adapted.

Premise 3: Humans with those not adapted characteristics can still exist in another environment by making the environment inhabitable.

Argument: As the organisms with only those adapted characteristics are supposed to exist, the fact that humans exist with those not adapted characteristics is what makes humans fundamentally different from others.

Evaluating the assumptions and premises by taking the opposite of each component:

何かを主張するときは，その主張の根拠となる要素たちそれぞれの逆が成り立たないことを一つ一つ潰していく．要素たちの逆がどれか一つでも成り立つ可能性があると思ったら，それは追って考察する必要がある．だからそんな性質を持った主張は完全に成り立っているものではないです．たぶん．

The premise of which opposite was not rejected was “the organisms with those ‘enough’ but not the ‘only’ adapted characteristics are supposed to exist -> sure spossible.”

The opposite of the premise being possible is also in line with the concept of evolution by natural selection, where organisms must have variations to be selected.

As one of the premises for the argument that humans have fundamentally different characteristics from other organisms turned to be false, we cannot accept that argument. The alternative argument to accept is that humans and the other organisms have fundamentally the same characteristics.

Reference: