First, there is evidence that the power of recursion posited by Hauser et al. as being distinctive of the human FLN is in fact not distinctive to humans, because it is not species specific.
FLN, on the other hand, is distinctive to humans and what is special about it is its power of recursion, that is, its ability to categorize linguistic objects into hierarchically organized classes, and (on the behavioral side) for the generation of infinitely many sentences out of finitely many words.
He talks continually of what is distinctive to the human species, as if only this could ground a notion of human dignity; but there is no reason the characteristics that ground our rights should not be shared with members of other species, and obviously many of those characteristics are shared -- like the capacity to feel pain, to enjoy family relations, to need food and drink.
Glucosinolates and their associated degradation products have long been recognized for their distinctive benefits to human nutrition and plant defense.
Don't be disappointed if you don't make an utterly distinctive contribution to human thought in your first attempts at philosophical writing.
When other philosophers claim that they still have something substantive and distinctive to say about human nature, their work is customarily categorized as "philosophical anthropology," thus avoiding the confusion that the old usage might cause.
Enhanced communication abilities, in particular the faculty of language are arguably the most distinctive trait attributed to humans.
Yet in a sequence like "Sympathy" (five pieces linking court cases to human dramas, touching variously on irony, guilt, pity, revenge, love and anger), Armitage is at his intriguing best, giving distinctive voices to diverse human experiences.
Hemispheric specialization has long believed to be a major contributing factor to such distinctive human characteristics as motor dominance, attentional control and language.
Similarly, it seems reasonable to suppose that the neural substrate underpinning symbolic cognition was initially acquired in the major developmental reorganization that gave rise to the distinctive modern human anatomy and that the new potential inherent in the reorganized brain remained unexpressed until it was "discovered" through the action of what was necessarily a cultural stimulus.
