Human Beings: What Sets Us Apart?
Lynne Rudder Baker
Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
This lecture made up for some of the bad choices I have been making on lectures to attend. This was a good lecture.
The press release states: "Philosophical investigations into the nature of persons have tended to
focus on features of our mental lives that set us apart from the rest of
the animal kingdom. Yet the modern synthesis in biology has made it
clear that we are biological beings, continuous with the rest of the
animal kingdom. Lynne Rudder Baker defends a view that recognizes our
uniqueness even as it tries to show how we are part of the world of
organisms."
Upon my entry to the auditorium, a handout was given to me. The speaker had outlined her lecture so that the audience could follow along. I did not read the outline until much later when I sat to review the lecture, and now I find it immensely helpful. My notes pale in comparison.
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| this is her outline. Heaven. |
Her introductory sentence pissed me off as she began to lay out
her case (differentiating 'persons' from 'animals' by 'animals' not
having souls). This got my back up and of course i wanted to argue immediately,
but as that was not going to happen, it piqued my interest further.
She reviewed immaterialism and animalism so as to dispose of both.
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| Portrait of George Berkeley (1685-1753) by artist John Smybert. | | |
[1]
Animalism is not a theory about personhood, that is, a theory about
what it means to be a person. An animalist could hold that robots or
angels were persons without that contradicting his animalism.[2]
Immaterialism is often associated with
another proposal discussing the mind-body problem is idealism, in which the 'material' (or physical) is sweepingly eliminated in favor of the mental. Idealists, such as George Berkeley, claim that material objects do not exist unless perceived and only as perceptions.
"to be is to be perceived" (Berkeley) is one of my favorite tee-shirt quotes. the material world does not exist, only the mind exists.
Subjective idealism adds empiricism, (which then adds me as an adherent. tee shirts for all my friends!).
She then went on to discuss Constitutionalism, which she believed solves the problems of the above concepts, gives us bodies, connects us to the material yet separates us form the animal world because we have 'first person perspectives' (I, me, mine) which can become 'robust', which animals do not. This 'robust' aspect is that which allows the conceptual, facilitated by language. Because we have language, we can perceive of ourselves (outside of ourselves) conceptually, which she claims animals cannot.
The lecture was really pretty fascinating, I have been thinking about it ever since, reading, wallowing and comforted by the trail that leads me back to George B. and Buddhism where perception, dances with experience to form reality. My teaching philosophy of late.
But I have to say that something nags, the ontological pursuit, the categorization and creation of hierarchies always seems to me to have a dark side, and her lecture brought this to mind. The desire to categorize and create hierarchies by default creates 'others', the creation of 'others' usually does not bode well for those 'others' in fact is often used as a rationale for their demise.
I was ready to enjoy high caliber photographic images of beautiful buildings and learn something along the way, but instead I once again left the lecture with more questions about the nature of ego and its positive/negative effect on the work, people and the planet.
