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ARE WE ALONE? HUMAN UNIQUENESS AND

PHILOSOPHY ABOUT LIFE “OUT THERE” By Dr.Mahboob Khan Phd

When we look to the night sky and ask “are we alone?” we imply two questions.

The first is the most basic: Is there anything out there that we could call

“life”? The second, and more interesting to those of us who study humans,

is: If there is life out there, is it anything like us?

But how would we know if life “out there” were like us?

Getting the general biology of extra-terrestrial life forms, how they look and the

basics of how they live, would not do it—if they looked a lot like us, they would

also look a lot like most primates. If they gave birth to live young with extended

childhoods, had large brains, and complex social lives, they still could be as much

like an ape, or even a whale, as a human.

It turns out that the best way to develop a litmus test for assessing whether alien

life (if it exists) would be human-like is to figure out not what is basic to humans,

but rather what is distinctive about humans. That is, what are the distinguishing

characteristics that help define humanity?

Humans evolved just like all life on earth. That means that we share most of what

we are with other organisms, especially those closest to us on the evolutionary tree.

But evolution is as much about discontinuities as it is about continuities….and the

discontinuities give us the most insight in to why, and how, any given species is

distinctive.

So what is distinctive about humanity?

There are three key capacities, and three outcomes from those capacities, that

distinguish humans from other forms of life on earth. The capacities are: shared

intentionality, pervasive hyper-cooperation, and our ability as master niche

constructors. The outcomes are: systematic compassion, ubiquitous use of symbols

and imagination, and the potential for immense cruelty.

Shared intentionality is when multiple minds get together to be jointly directed at

objects, contexts, goals, or values. This creates the opportunity for collaborative

interactions, working together, in ways where individuals share psychological

states with one another- how we feel, think, and hope. This is more the capacity to

reason strategically or to have a strong sense of what other individuals perceive--

many species of animal can do that well. As the psychologist Michael Tomasello

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says, what “makes human cognition different is not more individual brainpower,

but rather the ability of humans to learn through other persons and their artifacts,

and to collaborate with others in collective activities.” We can share beliefs,

conduct mutually planned and agreed upon collective action, have social and

instructed learning—and of course, we develop and use language.

Humans are wired to cooperate. Our brains, our hormone systems, and our

behavioral patterns are all interconnected and geared towards working with

others—more so than in nearly all other species. This enables humans to deploy

their biology and behavior to collaborate, and think together, in ways alien to other

life on earth.

All organisms react when the environment places them under stress-- this is how

much of evolutionary change happens. Some organisms react by reshaping the

pressures of the environment—like beavers building dams, birds constructing

nests, or earthworms changing the structure of the soil in which they live—and this

is called niche construction. But humans go further, working together we can (and

do) reshape ecosystems, and evolutionary pressures, as they are happening—and

on a major scale. Think about agriculture, houses, fire, clothing, tools…all

elements beyond our bodies, or even our immediate surroundings, that we take,

manipulate, and reshape to better serve us and alter the pressures the world puts on

us.

We know that cooperation, coordination, and niche construction are important in

human evolution and there is evidence that these patterns have resulted in the

emergence of a particular kind of compassion for others deep in our species’ past.

As much as 2-300,000 years ago (maybe even more) we see evidence of extended

care for injured and the elderly, and emotional investment (including burials) and

substantive effort in the well-being of others, likely at the expense to the self. The

emergence of commonplace deep caring for others, even beyond those who are

your offspring or your genetic kin, has become a core part of the human experience

and derives directly from our capacities for hyper cooperation and shared

intentionality.

Many species live in a world full of signs, but only humans populate their world

with symbols. For us symbols can maintain stability and meaning even in the

absence of their objects of reference—symbols and their associated meanings are a

fundamental part of human life. Think of our faiths, our nationalism, our art, our

use of myths and stories to teach and learn about morals and ethics, etc... We live

in a world where communication and action can potentially involve, and be

influenced by, both past and future behavior, perceptions, ideas, symbols, and

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history—we have an imagination. We can experience the world “off-line” from the

current moment and physical experience, and we can imagine ideas and concepts

and share them with others.

What we currently know about the fossil and archeological record, and modern

behavioral, neurological, and physiological systems provides a robust

understanding of how humans perceive and experience the world. If we think about

what humans do so well--cooperation, shared intentionality, teaching, learning,

extensive caring for others, niche-constructing, the creation and use of symbols and

imagination, we get a picture of what it is to be human: we are distinctively

collaborative, cooperative, imaginative, caring, and even metaphysical, creatures.

This has a down side--one that we need to be aware of if we discover that there are

indeed others “out there.” Especially if they turn out to be like us. All of the

elements that have enabled humans to beat the evolutionary odds and be such a

successful species also enable another truly distinctive facet of humanity: cruelty.

Other animals kill and eat one another, at times in the most gruesome of

fashion…sometimes with premeditation and even elation. However, nothing else

is capable of deploying hyper-cooperation, coordination and imagination towards

the end of making others suffer. We can, and sometimes do.

So what do we look for in those “out there” if they do exist? If they are like us,

then we can expect complex cooperative, collaborative and imaginative beings

who have amazing capacities for caring, understanding, and reshaping the world(s)

around them. But they would also have the same capacity we do for cruelty and

destruction.

In our quest to know if we are truly “alone” in the universe it behooves us to keep

at least part of our gaze right here on earth. We need to continue to develop better

understandings of why we do what we do, how we interact with one another, and

how we can predict, even alter, our trajectories/actions…just in case we encounter

someone “out there” and they really are like those right here.

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Author Dr.Mahboob ali khan MHA,CPHQ,HQM Harvard Phd

Email-mahboob804@yahoo.co.in