Archive for the ‘Beings and Gentlebeings’ Category
Our Brothers The Animals
Those of us who are still thinking along Cartesian lines, that we are uniquely sentient while animals are automata, and also those of us who hold the Christian belief that we are ensouled while animals are not, in short everybody who denies that we ourselves are animals, need to ask themselves whether they would save […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
An Essential Reduction
Philosophers have thought up ways to object to the idea that the concept of “mind” can be reduced to the activity and output of the brain, but to the best of my knowledge, they have never been slapped down on the grounds that they are holding the door open to a dangerous elitism. Mind-brain reductionism […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
Cats And Neanderthals
Palaeontological classification is more important than it looks. If the Neanderthals were human, whatever that means, then we and they are different subspecies of human; but if not, then the “slot” of subspecies is available to be filled by the various human “races”, and we all know where that leads. Were a community of live […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
Colour Me Gunga Din, Laurel
I have been busy beautifying the dirty strip of coarse grasses along the north wall of this African compound, by planting flowers and bushes. I have three kinds of plant there now, one flowering, one the local equivalent of the privet and a big one that looks somewhat like a variegated laurel; I have no […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
Personality In The Great Chain of Being
We tend to talk as if what we are pleased to call “personality” is something that sets us aside from the animals and – especially when considered in tandem with the very confused concept of “soul” – contrasts with the animal or bodily agenda. In fact animals have plenty of this thing called “personality” too; […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
No One At Home?
A good friend of mine, with artistic training, claims to be able to see in a person’s face whether there is anyone “at home” or not. For practical reasons I have never been able to conduct a clinical trial. To do this, one would need to be able objectively to identify who had nobody at […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
The Animal Of The Dative Case
Homo sapiens has been given many labels as a kind of animal: “Man is a political animal”, “Man is the tool-making animal”, “Man is the only animal that feels shame, or has reason to”, and so forth. My own contribution has been “Man is the Enslaving Mammal”, the only one that can make others do […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
The Ascent Of Tedium
Geoffrey Miller’s “Dionysian Effect” theory, namely that the evolution of the big human brain was driven by runaway sexual selection for interesting mates, implies that, however boring many moderns may be, our remote ancestors must have been even more boring people. Or even more boring apes, depending on how far back we go. But this […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
Why the English Talk About the Weather, and Other Stories
It is said that, when meeting the British royals, one should never talk about politics, religion or sex. Considering that the English chopped off the head of one of them during a century abounding in all three activities, this is quite understandable. But I have heard the same said about friends, that friends should never […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
Azi And Born-Men
The SF writer C.J. Cherryh hypothesised that any interstellar expansion would run up against an acute labour shortage. She therefore envisaged the grunt-work being done, not by robots, but by vat-grown humans, whom she called “azi” (for Artificial Zygote Insemination). Where most authors would have left it at that, or tried to gross us out […]
In: MONKEY BUSINESS, Beings and Gentlebeings
