This is an obviously debatable issue ... :-)
> >> ... fire is
> >> essential to human beings being human beings. It is (perhaps) the
> >> ONLY thing that sets human beings apart from other animals.
> >Judgement, Fire, logic/ratiocination/writing/words (ho logos and all
> >that jazz), ...
> Judgement is not the sole provence of human beings.
I dunno, here we're getting into the murky territory of good vs. bad & good vs. evil. I'd contend that no other animal on Earth has a conception of "evil", but of course that's hard to prove one way or the other (domestic & other trained animals tending to conform to human behaviour and desires, their particular behaviour therefore inconclusive re: this issue). I'd oppose Judgement and Aesthetics here, saying all animals have a sense of aesthetics, but that the semantic oppositions at the core of judgement are exactly those of the logos, and are genetically transmitted to human children, not to other animals ...
Maybe what I'm referring to here is gnosis, that men have and animals don't. Fire, logos, philosophy, stories, etc are all by-products/sources of that.
The Garden of Eden story illustrates this, among other things.
> Logic, rationality and words are part of that same mental package, and
> again, are not the sole provence of human beings. Writing might be,
> but is not one of the things that made us human, just a byproduct of
> the rest.
It's why I used the Greek : I think there's a whole package of interrelated techniques and knowledge (and therefore powers) that we inherit from our parents, making us human, not animals. Genetics, in the widest sense of the word ; ho logos is a cool, fuzzy word, appropriate for this sort of meta-understanding.
Not to suggest, of course, that members of primitive societies wouldn't agree with your idea ; it's most likely they would (at least some of them), and as far as Glorantha is concerned (not to mention useful RW conjecture) it's a damn good one.
2001 : A Space Odyssey implicitely suggested that it was Imagination & Invention that separates us from the Brutes : & the ability to turn fantasy into reality. Of course, we know that (at least some) animals also have a capacity for invention, so ...
In Linguistics this is a very easy question ; not so in philosophy ...
Julian Lord
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