Humans and Other Animals

by John Dupré

John Dupré explores the ways in which we categorize animals, including humans, and comes to refreshingly radical conclusions. It is a mistake to think that each organism has an essence that determines its necessary place in a unique hierarchy. We should reject the misguided concepts of a universal human nature and normality in human behavior. He shows that we must take a pluralistic view of biology and the human sciences.

Genres: Philosophy

284 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2002

Reviews

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not really a book in the sense that it has a beginning a middle and and end. It's really a series of essays or papers that the author has published previously. Yes, there is a bit of a consistent theme running through the essays but it's a bit repetitive and, in a way, I found it slightly naive. I guess it was in about 2nd year university (where I was studying agricultural science, with a healthy dose of a range of biological subjects ...from microbiology, to zoology, entomology and botany) that I realised that "species" was a rather arbitrary cut-off point and the very concept of evolution required it to be so. Whenever you tried to draw a line you would find examples of life forms that were rather fuzzy: were they x or were they Y because they had characteristics of both. The ideas about species have a long history ...dating back to, at least, Aristotle about the essence of a being or body.
Anyway, this is the thrust of Dupré's book. More or less that there are no firm cuts-off points and hence the idea of a natural kind (like "fish") breaks down. He says:
Traditionally natural kinds were generally assumed to satisfy all or most of the following conditions:
1. Membership of the kind was determined by possession of an essential property or properties.
2. Members of a natural kind were the appropriate subjects of scientific laws, or laws of nature.
3. By virtue of condition 2, the properties or behaviour of the members of a natural kind were to be explained by identifying the kind to which a thing belonged, and referring to the laws governing things of that kind.
4. The conformity of members of a natural kind to laws of nature was ultimately to be explained by appeal to their essential property or properties.
5. If a thing belongs to more than one natural kind, it must be the case that the kinds to which it belongs are part of a hierarchy in which lower-level members are wholly included in higher-level members.
Dupré suggests that "species do not form a natural kind, and there is no such thing to be discovered. 'Clade' perhaps names an important natural kind (in my weak sense) for phylogenetic analysis but that is the most that it does".
Regarding the difference between humans and animals: Dupré's view expounded in Chapter 10, is that there are good reasons for applying most of our mental language to some animals, though no doubt the kinds of beliefs, desires, and suchlike that any non-humans are capable of entertaining are very different from our own.
He suggests that the trend to postulate evolutionary pressures on early man thus leading to current behaviour is flawed: "Evolutionary psychology, then, I take to be deeply flowed both epistemologically and conceptually. If this is indeed is the best attempt that can be made at connecting human nature with evolution, it proves to be a very disappointing project".
Regarding gender descriptions he suggests that the differentiation between man and woman is more or less harmless but: "there is a very powerful tendency to extend the relevance of explanatory calegories beyond their empirically determined limits..... a tendency, I am suggesting, that derives philosophical nourishment from the idea that when one has distinguished a kind, one has discovered an essence. If, in fact, the empirical significance of the kinds man and woman does not go beyond some systematic, if quite variable, physiological differences and the observation that men appear to have achieved a dominant position in all or most societies, the kinds distinguished seem of very modest significance".
Dupré seems to come down on the idea that we can go a level higher than the "individual" in terms of grouping animals but it's only in some fuzzy sense. He makes the very good point that some definitions are good for some purposes and some for other purposes. For example if you call creatures with backbones that live in the sea "Fish" then a whale is a fish....and that's the way most people saw them until it was discovered that they shared characteristics with land based mammals.
Overall, a bit hard-going in reading. Lots of the philosophical overtones about refuting "essences" but some interesting distinctions and points made. I give it 3.5 stars.

[mpacer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: If you've not read much philosophy of biology, this is a good book to start with. It dips its toe into the too deep waters of philosophy, while keeping its argumentative and writing styles nice and buoyant so that the reader will be sure to keep his head above water even shortly after the deep dives. No need to worry about drowning in impenetrability (unlike, say, Kripke's or Dummett's work, which admittedly is not philosophy of biology, but they are excellent examples of diving headfirst into the deepest trenches of philosophical arguments).

If you are a novice in Phil Bio: 4 ★s
If you are a intermediate in Phil Bio: 3.5 ★s
If you are an expert in Phil Bio: 3 ★s


Comments on the publishing quality: I found the paper to be mostly reliable and my pen when writing in it had minimal bleedthrough. It is not the best book I've ever written in in terms of its typography(that would have to be The Elements of Typographic Style, but it was manageable. I found the cover to be comfortable to hold, and the binding seemed to be fine (no stenches, or feelings of looseness in the pages). The index however, (if I remember correctly) left much to be desired. And citations could have been more extensive, but it seems to be the author's style to cite less than I would like him to.


Detailed comments:

I will not be reading the last few chapters of this book as they're not as interesting to me. They mostly concern comparisons between various primates and human cognition. The other issues that were discussed were more generally relevant to my research interests, but even then the coverage wasn't what I had really hoped.

I thought he did a good job of pointing out central issues that arise from incorporating something like putnamian natural kinds with our intuitive notions of species, and some of the fall out from that, but beyond that I didn't gain too much from this book. Or at least, I don't remember it since I had finished reading it so long ago. And to be fair, though I read a lot of books few are as unmemorable as this.

I think part of the problem is that I've read much more recent work that seems to have incorporated much of the lessons learned and surveyed in this text (since it goes all the way back to the 80s when some of the first chapters were originally written.

Thus, while I wouldn't look to teach a course out of the essays in this volume I am overall happy that I have read it, and if you need a good introduction to the philosophy of biology that does not rely on a background in either philosophy or biology, this could well be the book for you (especially if you can find it on sale).

[Eric Daryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong, very tightly argued book. This is a collection of essays originally published separately, which in this case means that there is considerable redundancy and repetition. But the arguments are dense enough that the repetition tends toward clarity rather than boredom. His famous and oft-cited essay "Are Whales Fish?" is likely the highlight of the book, though the essays on human nature (particularly the one on gender and sexual difference) toward the end of the book are also excellent.