Is curiosity what makes us human?

No. Many other animals have curiosity.

Curiosity killed the cat… ;-)

@Zaku
It also killed many humans.

None of the things listed are exclusive to humans nor definitive to human psychology.

I think probably existential angst and the awareness of our own mortality is what separates us more from other animals, and what drives many of our behaviours.

I used to think it was abstract reasoning. Humans have the ability to imagine themselves as an animal. Then Terrence McKenna spoke of how animal predators are successful by imagining themselves as their prey. Be that true or not, it leveled my previous thinking on the matter.

I used to think humans were exclusive because of our ability to evolve and expand language. Bumble bees will never evolve their language beyond the waggle dance. There are no new words available to wolf howls or whale song. But here’s a story of a chimp who learned sign language. Whether or not the chimp could create new words on his own remains unresolved. But the fact remains that he could learn new words.

Now I think humans are exclusive simply upon the merit of being capable of creating non material objects such as unicorns and believing they have an existence in reality. I don’t know if that’s to be considered as advanced or psychotic.

”Now I think humans are exclusive simply upon the merit of being capable of creating non material objects such as unicorns and believing they have an existence in reality. I don’t know if that’s to be considered as advanced or psychotic.”
Unless you can peek into the minds of animals, you have no grounds to reach that conclusion.

We consistently and confidently peek into the minds of animals based upon our observations of their actions. When an animals actions are contrary to their nature, that animal is deemed retarded, injured, or sick. I don’t have any basis for speculating imagination beyond its known reality of past history.

No, the fact that some of us are embarrassed when we fart in public, that is what makes us human

Even animals have cultural norms. Those which don’t conform to them are killed or outcast from their community.

Brunch.

This is what separates us from the animals.

@ragingloli

What if you have sex in a simulated animals skin?

No. It is our ability to reason.

I don’t know if curiosity is a driver of intelligence or if it is intelligence that generates curiosity. But I do know that you rarely find either absent the other.

@ragingloli Sure, but it’s basic logic that any question in the form:

Is A what makes B be C?

The question can be proved false by showing a known example of something that is not C, which also has property A.