The Human Animal (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, August 09, 2009, 20:14 (5376 days ago) @ John Clinch

I shall have to check it out.
> 
> In the same view, can I recommend "What makes us human?", a collection of really rather good essays, not all of them by scientists. - The book might seem anticlimactic... the first 2/3 sets up Adler's argument that the *present evidence* indicates man is radically different in kind, but the premises are deceptively simple. Because man has a propositional language that cannot be described by a material faculty alone is what it boils down to. His argument here is seated in the metaphysics of knowledge and the example he gives is pretty damn iron-clad in terms of the immaterial part of humanity. (The mind.) - But to someone who wasn't fully materialistic it didn't shake my foundations as much as I was expecting it to. I found I agreed much more often than disagreed, and disagreements were typically resolved in the subsequent chapter as he has a very rigid argumentative format. Some people might like that, but of course I'm used to German philosophy, heh.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"