We Don’t Know, But We Can Learn

I have repeatedly written about how differences between humans and the rest of the animal world are far less than we anthropocentric critters would like to think. Many of the distinctions that we humans previously believed set us apart from animals are relentlessly disappearing—and many more of them are now being understood as not unique at all, just a matter of degree.

But what does make us different from animals—even those closely related to us, such as the great apes? I won’t to try to answer that monster question here. I’ll simply note one key difference: our ability to reason, to think rationally, to look back and ponder what happened. It gives us a great advantage over the sharpest chimpanzee.

What does reason do for us? Well, countless things, but I’ll just look at one example here, for illustration: our ability to ponder our actions, after we’ve done something and to learn from the process. Most of what we do is programmed deeply within us. We’re usually not even conscious of what we’ve done or why. For example, we don’t know why we eat what we do—millions of years have taught us what foods have kept us alive and healthy, long before we thought about it. It’s the same for animals.

Our sex lives are governed by habits that we developed over eons—habits that kept our species going. We mostly don’t know why we do as we do in the sexual arena; again just like animals. We’re just driven. It’s very much an instinctual thing; behaviors that are deeply ingrained in us. Animals do the same.

These and countless other behaviors of ours are done without conscious thinking or planning—just like the animals. One might be inclined to disagree; to feel that we take these and other actions after carefully pondering them, but that’s not the case. Many clever experiments have shown that we take action first and think later. We’re more automatically programmed than we’d want to believe. For one thing, fast action (without taking time to think) is often necessary. And the majority of our actions cannot require thinking; otherwise, we’d be lost in the minutia of details and never do anything.

So how do we differ from our animal cohorts? Unlike them, after we take action, we are able to ponder what happened and gain insight into why we did it. We can ruminate over events and learn from them. That’s something that all other animals—not possessing our elevated cognitive abilities—(pretty much) cannot do. It’s how we learn.

So what are the benefits of this ability of ours to reason? Once we understand why we do something, we can see the necessity of modifying or controlling our urges, if need be. We can understand that certain inherent behaviors that drive us to consume unhealthy foods (foods that a million years ago made sense) are not what we should any longer be doing. Similarly, certain sexual behaviors that long ago were useful (such as procreating endlessly) are no longer useful.

This learning process is one way in which we forge morals. For example, if we can learn from our violent behavior towards one another—that violence is foolish—we can come to see that tolerance makes sense. If I get into trouble by following my instincts in a given situation, I can grow from the experience, adapt, and become smarter—even develop a moral sense about it. It’s given Homo sapiens a huge advantage—an advantage most animals don’t have. What puzzles me is why we seem to refuse to heed some of our obvious lessons.