My understanding is that it is used collectively to describe the internal experiences of sentient beings.
This is not correct. It’s use, or rather misuse, covers non-sentient experiences of the human intellect, as well.
I mentioned them as indicating the possibility that human minds could possibly have followed a different evolutionary path than what they have done.
One of the fundamental problems here concerns the definition and nature of man as a “rational animal.” Darwin effectively re-defined man as a brute animal and thereby profoundly muddied the waters up to the present.
Indications of rationality or abstract thinking, properly understood, can be found with species other than Homo sapiens sapiens. The evidence includes certain kinds of tools. What I consider man, or properly human, i.e. rational animal, pre-dates the rise of modern man.
Metaphysically objective phenomena exist independently of experience…
The problem here, as I see it, is your use of the term “sentient minds.” Sentience properly refers to the capacity for sense knowledge. This capacity man has in common with other animals. However, not all knowledge is of the kind produced by the external and internal senses. Sense knowledge in man provides the material for conceptual thinking, which is of a completely different metaphysical order. One can label this types of knowledge as perceptual thinking and conceptual thinking.
A necessary supposition. The intellect understands things divested of an particular notes. This is the universal connotation of abstract concepts. For example, we know “triangleness” which applies to all triangles, regardless of their particular size, color, location, and so on.
If there is a natural moral law that exists independently of human subjectivity, it applies to all of nature.
The natural moral law is grounded in human nature. Hence it is specific to human nature and does not apply to all of nature. The natural world is bound by the physical laws that preside over nature. Nature acts according to these laws. In contrast, since man has an intellect and free will he chooses his acts. Man can act without his acts being pre-determined by antecedent events.
Man can reflect and determine the fundamental principles of what is good or evil according to his nature. For example, the law of man’s nature accounts for such facts that all societies have prohibited murder. Societies only disagree as to what types of situations are unjustified homicide.
Human acts that are contrary to the natural law are considered immoral because they are contrary to the objective good of the individual as a person. Animals, on the other hand, are not persons, they act from instinct and limited learning, and hence their acts do not have moral significance because they lack free-will. Human rights are based on the natural moral law, fundamental rights such as the right life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Animals do have inherent and unalienable rights such as the “right to life.” Otherwise, we could never eat animals, PETA arguments notwithstanding.
If human beings did not have inherent and inalienable rights grounded in the natural moral law we could never say that slavery is objectively wrong, or that aggressive wars are objectively immoral. We would only be expressing a personal preference much like individual tastes in music or art.
Was the Holocaust objectively immoral? If man differs only in degree from the apes and other animals then the Holocaust in no more “immoral” than is killing chickens. This is a logical conclusion from the extreme Darwinian perspective. Curiously, Darwinism seems to allow for the opposite conclusion as well.
That is, “ethicist” Peter Singer follows extreme Darwinism to its logical conclusion on the side of affording the same “rights” to animals as humans have. He even speculates that chickens might even be persons, also. This raises the prospect, as writer Newkirk pointed out in the Washington Post (June 2, 1986), that the greatest mass murderer in history was not Ghengis Khan, Stalin, or Hitler, but Colonel Sanders. “Six million people died in concentration camps, but 6 billion broiler chickens will die in slaughterhouses.” (See
50 Questions on the Natural Law by Charles Rice)
As to the differences between humans and other animals, this is an arbitrary distinction
It is one thing to consider how much man’s body differs from the anthropoid apes and higher animals, but it is quite another matter to distinguish how his intellectual capacities differ. Man is not his biology. He cannot be reduced to a completely physical being. In this latter sense, man (rational animal) differs so significantly from other animals that he should be classified in a kingdom by himself
…we must allow either that other animals are more intelligent and sophisticated than we supposed, or that humans are more subject to habit and instinct than many would like to admit.
Animal behavior exhibited under laboratory and experimental conditions is often merely an artifact. Nonetheless, animal intelligence in the wild always amazes me. However, the critical difference between man and other animals is a matter of the real difference between perceptual thinking and conceptual thinking. Non-human animals do not exhibit conceptual thinking. Conceptual thinking allows for propositional speech, which no animal possesses. Hence, placing man in strict continuum with other animals is only accomplished by glossing over the real differences. And this effort entails the dubious and sloppy use of the term “mind” by scientific researchers.
