Are humans animals? Do animals have souls?

[Apparatchikstan]

The sig says it for me. I distinguish between human beings and homo sapiens sapiens, because "humanity" is a learned condition not universally applied across the species. Some of the most dangerous beasts I've ever had to contend with were abandoned children attempting to survive with nothing but vestigial instinct to go by. It's a toss up as to what's more dangerous, a herd of elephants who've lost their matriarch and are led astray by an adolescent male, or a pack of feral children led by a wily teenager.
As for the soul, I like the idea of some form of metaphysical transcendance, and like to think that like consciousness, a soul can be developed and refined through an emergent property if one is self-aware and disciplined enough to pursue it.

[Salandriagado]

As for consciousness, the closest thing to "souls" that really exist, most animals don't have it (remember, most animals aren't mammals or even birds, but insects and spiders), and it's being debated to which extend the "upper animals" (like apes, dolphins, elephants, ...) do have some amount of it.

Consciousness is an awful basis for... really anything, being as there is precisely one entity in the universe that you can be confident is conscious.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that humans have a "massive evolutionary advantage against everything." Humans have only existed for a short time, and you have a small population relative to many other species. Your brains are a liability as much as an advantage. They take so long to develop, and children are dependent on their parents for a long time because of it. It prevents humans from breeding like bacteria. (Is there a reason you usually say "breeding like rabbits"? I never thought of rabbits as breeding especially fast...)

3) Humans are the pinnacle of evolution considering we possess the ability to completely demolish the planet to such a degree that it might never even recover.

Even if that were true, it's not an achievement.

What makes you so sure that insects are not conscious?

Two reasons : first, they don't exhibit the slightest evidence of being anywhere close to being conscious, and second, we have a pretty good broad understanding on how consciousness works (even if we still don't understand all the fine details) and we know the cognitive architecture of insects is completely unable to contain that complicated process.

Erm, we really, really don't have a good understanding of consciousness. Like, at all.

[Free Detroit]

first, they don't exhibit the slightest evidence of being anywhere close to being conscious

As a matter of fact, they do, just in a very alien way...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... wrong-way/
http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/02/shhh ... re-talking
http://www.beeologics.com/bees-and-beek ... nd-memory/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... big-ideas/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/o ... g-problems

and second, we have a pretty good broad understanding on how consciousness works (even if we still don't understand all the fine details) and we know the cognitive architecture of insects is completely unable to contain that complicated process.

No, we don't... and no, we don't.

[The Red Veil]

I am going to take this from a science/atheism standpoint and say right out that in many religions and in science there is no such thing as a soul. Animals do, however, have brains comparable to ours, and therefore have thinking/learning power near equal to ours. Therefore, they have as much a right to live as we do. Case in point.

I'm not an atheist, but that's my general view of it as well.

[Kilobugya]

As for consciousness, the closest thing to "souls" that really exist, most animals don't have it (remember, most animals aren't mammals or even birds, but insects and spiders), and it's being debated to which extend the "upper animals" (like apes, dolphins, elephants, ...) do have some amount of it.

Consciousness is an awful basis for... really anything, being as there is precisely one entity in the universe that you can be confident is conscious.

Not if you have a sane epistemological framework. Then you can be pretty sure, with very high confidence, that other humans are conscious too, and pretty sure that stones and ants aren't. As sure as you can be of anything.

Erm, we really, really don't have a good understanding of consciousness. Like, at all.

We definitely do. Did you read Hoftsdadter's books ?

[Kilobugya]

first, they don't exhibit the slightest evidence of being anywhere close to being conscious

As a matter of fact, they do, just in a very alien way...

That's not anywhere close to being conscious. Or the duplo train I gave to my niece is close to it

and second, we have a pretty good broad understanding on how consciousness works (even if we still don't understand all the fine details) and we know the cognitive architecture of insects is completely unable to contain that complicated process.

No, we don't... and no, we don't.

As I said above, we definitely do - consciousness is a specific kind of Hofstadter strange loop in a (protein) computer able to contain high-fidelity map of the world and forge arbitrary complicated symbols. All that is pretty well understood on the rough picture, well enough to disqualify ants and lego trains from consciousness. Even the symbol grounding problem had been (in huge part) solved by recent cognitive science.

Cognitive science did massive progress in the last 50 years, our understanding of the brain and of cognition is not yet complete, but is way above what most people think.

[-Ebola-]

As a matter of fact, they do, just in a very alien way...

That's not anywhere close to being conscious. Or the duplo train I gave to my niece is close to it

No, we don't... and no, we don't.

As I said above, we definitely do - consciousness is a specific kind of Hofstadter strange loop in a (protein) computer able to contain high-fidelity map of the world and forge arbitrary complicated symbols. All that is pretty well understood on the rough picture, well enough to disqualify ants and lego trains from consciousness. Even the symbol grounding problem had been (in huge part) solved by recent cognitive science.

Cognitive science did massive progress in the last 50 years, our understanding of the brain and of cognition is not yet complete, but is way above what most people think.

Consciousness doesn't require the ability to forge symbols.

[Kilobugya]

Consciousness doesn't require the ability to forge symbols.

It does. It needs to be able to forge highly complicated symbols such as "me" and "you".

[Confederate Ramenia]

As a Buddhist, I do not believe in the existence of souls.

And yes, humans are animals according to the scientific definition of animals being multicelluar, eukaryotic organisms who are heterotrophic (requires organic food) and lack cell walls.

Pretty much. People exist, but not.