Being aware of rational animals

Abstract

Modern science has qualified human beings as homo sapiens. Is there a serious scientific theory backing this nomenclature? And can we proclaim ourselves as wise (sapiens)? The classical rational animals characterization has apparently the same syntactic form (a qualificative applied to a substantive) but it is not working exactly in the same way. Moreover the semantics behind is more appropriate, encompassing a pivotal ambiguity. In the second part of the paper, we further delve into this ambiguity, relating rationality with three fundamental features of these creatures: ability to laugh, sexuality and transformation.