Anthropo-decentralizations Nonhuman alterities and the post-human project

3rd EU ICAS CONFERENCE Technoscienfic Development and Critical Animal Studies

28th – 30th November Karlsruhe (Germany)

Anthropo-decentralizations Nonhuman alterities and the Posthuman project  

Roberto Marchesini Director of Centre of Study of Posthuman Philosophy

(Bologna, Italy) [email protected]

A tragically oppositional vision that considers:

1)  the nonhuman animal - Epimetheus’ son - slave of the functions to which it is conformed, that is to say slave of its predicates;

2)  the human being - Prometheus’ son - free from his functions for not being conformed, that is to say free through an absence of declined predicates.

WHICH IDEA OF THE NON-HUMAN HAS HUMANISM LEFT US?  

Credit: Roberto Kusterle – Pseudo Edipo

Therefore the distinction between the human being and nonhuman animals is not created by a “difference of predicates”, or a functional characterization.

All species are different from each other for peculiarities of functional features.

When the humanist says that the human being is different from nonhuman animals, he does not mean a difference of predicates, because also the cat, or the dog, are different from all other species.

Credit: Mosaic of colorful and unique animals by P. Bernardo)

BIODIVERSITY AS DIFFERENCE OF PREDICATES  

In the: • Pico della Mirandola’s idea of human being as rankless or • Martin Heidegger’s idea of human being as creator-of-worlds there is clearly expressed what I mean for Humanistic thought.

Following this paradigm, the difference does not lie in the predicates but in something up line of those:

the human being is not merely an animal and he cannot be diversified from nonhuman animals through predicates.

Credit: Raffaello –Saint George and the Dragon

FOR HUMANISM HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT ANIMALS  

Vice versa, for the humanist, the human being derives his peculiarity from the absence of those functional features.

So, the difference is meta-predicative.

Despite Darwin – and perhaps in order to disarm Darwinism – Humanism cannot accept the continuity between the human being and the other species

if it does not want to bring down the entire anthropocentric building.

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Credit: a scene form Matrix

THE META-PREDICATIVE DIFFERENCE

This anthropocentric building is composed and supported by:

1)  the anthropometric idea explained by the concept of the “human being as measure of the world”;

2)  the anthropoplastic vision which entrusts to technique the auto-poiesis and the concept of the “human being as subsumption of the world”.

ANTHROPOCENTRISM AS DISCONTINUITY

WHAT IS BEHIND LEONARDO DA VINCI’S VITRUVIUS MAN?

The idea that the human being should be:

1)  disjunctive and oppositional towards other animals;

2)  emancipated and raised up from nature;

3)  self-sufficient and autarchic in the construction of his own dimension;

4)  lacking of functional predicates thus able to measure and contain the world.

As long as the human being is res cogitans and the animal is res extensa it will not be possible to build continuity through predicates.  

In recent years we have witnessed several proposals aimed to neutralize the Darwinian continuity, in other words:

1)  von Uexkull’s idea of the animal as prisoner of its own umwelt;

2)  Gehlen’s theory of incompleteness of the human being;

3)  the explanations of animal behavior through automatisms, learned in Skinner and innate in Timbergen;

4)  the logos-centric conception in Chomsky;

5)  the denial of the character of intentionality in the nonhuman animal in Dennet;

6)  the charge of banal and anedoctal anthropomorphism addressed to Romanes.

Humanism has deep speciesist roots, with great resilience towards any antispeciesism critique.

Therefore each expression of antispeciesism that remains within the humanistic paradigm presents forms of what I define “crypto-speciesism”, which weakens every thinking and brings it to an inevitable cul-de-sac.

Humanism is a speciesist tautology that does not allow nothing else than a meta-predicative and essential discontinuity between humans and other species.

Credit: Dog and owner during Venice’s Carnival

If Darwin’s thought underlines continuity, the humanist resets the human functional declination through incompleteness and, doing so, endangers any sharing.

If the ethologist explains the perceptive awareness of nonhuman animals, the humanist denies the reflective one.

Furthermore, • if we prove the ability of nonhuman animals to build representations of “to-be-useful-to” or “to-be-functional-to”,

the philosopher distinguishes these two concepts from the “to-be-true” ones.

SO, OR THE NONHUMAN ANIMAL IS ALIKE TO HUMANS OR IT IS NOTHING.

Credit: Baboon and the mirror test

LET’S START FROM THE CONCEPT OF UMWELT

It is true that each species is immersed in its world-context.

Moreover, this immersion is not only sensorial but it is based on:

1)  motivations;

2)  emotions;

3)  knowledge;

4)  specific cognitive functions.

Credit: AVon Uexküll’s example of umwelt

If animals were totally different from us, we could not say anything about them.

But this is a Humanistic assumption, not a demonstration, and moreover it strongly clashes with Evolutionism.

WRONG IDEA OF NOT COMUNICABLE UMWELT

SPECIES’  UNWELT  A   SPECIES’  UMWELT  B  

We would be wrong believing that the different umwelt are separated (as expressed, for example, by Nagel with the famous assertion What is it like to be a bat?).

The different umwelt are overlapping, in fact, there are large areas of sharing between species, which allow us a correct identification into another umwelt.

We agree that the projective anthropomorphism, that is to say the assignment of human features to other species, is wrong but, however, some similarities cannot be ignored or mystified.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT?  

Credit: Darwin’s The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals

CRITICAL ANTHROPOMORFISM

We speak of critical anthropomorphism when we admit:

1)The “universal” or common features which are basilar for all animals, as “sensitivity”, the amodal completion, the perspective, the simulation of trajectories;

2)The “homologies”, common characters for phylogenetic legacy;

3)the “analogies” or similarities for adaptive convergence, achieved by the same selective pressure and that are greater the more two species share the same lifestyle or environment.

FUNCTIONAL BIOCENTRISM

We have to understand the features of diversity starting from the requirement that every life experience derives from functional adaptive needs that have life as nutshell:

1)  The “taxonomic model”, so each species adheres at a life-project shared with a broader group (all mammals have the same project);

2)  the “same adaptive style”, so each species defines a life model which goes beyond relations between needs, problems or selective pressures;

3)  the “individual identity”, so each subject constructs a singular profile in order to adapt himself to specific conditions.

SHARED  SYMPATHETIC  AREA  

CORRECT IDEA OF CONNECTED UMWELT

From these shared and sympathetic areas between human and nonhuman animals – where anthropomorphism is applicable in a critical way – it is possible to move on in order to know the differences or specie-specific peculiarities.

So, starting from sympathy we can reach empathy by working on the analysis of functional biocentrism.

EMPATHY’S  AREA  A  

EMPATHY’S  AREA  B  

If we apply to animal intelligence the same investigative procedures normally used for the other animal apparatus (gastroenteric, immune or musculoskeletal system,

through the functional observation, we can identify the specie-specific features by lighting up those areas of diversity that allow us to integrate sympathy with empathy.

As we found out the perceptive world of other species, there is no impediment to know the cognitive one, above all if we avoid to consider nonhuman intelligence in terms of quantity.

Intelligence is an adaptive function like any other.  

PLURAL INTELLIGENCE

Clearly, as does not exist the most gastroenteric animal, neither exists the most intelligent one.

If intelligence is the ability to overtake problems and to find new solutions, it is consequent that each species has developed a specific intelligence because they have to face different problems.

Otherwise, if we use the human being as a unit of measurement, we fall back into the humanistic frame asserting that the most intelligent species are only those that most resemble us.

IS THERE A HIERARCHY IN INTELLIGENCE?

It is not possible to be humanist and evolutionist at the same time, neither to accept the idea expressed by the Vitruvius’ Man and, at the same time, the Darwinian theories.

TO LEAVE BEHIND HUMANISTIC THOUGHT

On the other hand, if the Darwinian theory is valid, it makes no sense to consider the human being as an incomplete entity, since:

1)  an ab-origine delation is not possible, as it would be incompatible with adaptation and furthermore it is not plausible that in few millions of years, starting from Primates, we arrive to the human being intended as the being most lacking of adaptative predicates;

2)  culture is never exonerative nor solves lacks but, vice versa, creates needs;

3)  the lack perception is an ex-post event not an ex-ante one;

4)  culture is always integrative and re-organizational;

5)  the technological externalization increases organs specialization.

The first argument is related to the meta-predicative difference.

All animals (including humans) – who, as we sais, can value through “biocentrism” - are different for functional characteristics, and not for the alleged categorization human/nonhuman animal.

Furthermore, animals show characters of similarity that can be evaluated by what we call “critical anthropomorphism”, which does not project but evaluates the level of contiguity and overlapping of related umwelt.

Credit: Lorenz’s Baby Schema (Kindchenschema)

FIRST ARGUMENT AGAINST HUMANISM  

Moreover the ‘umwelt’ term is not correct because it defines, in a static way, a perimeter of the nonhuman animal within his own context.

Actually each subject interprets its “here and now” moment under which it is related to the context (intentional character of “to-be-an-animal”) which makes the animal protagonist and inventor of its presence in the world.

We can speak of an animal-Dasein or animal as creator-of-worlds.

This supposes a subjectivity or rather a full ownership of its cognitive equipment.  

It is related to the cultural conception as emanation of human being and, thus, the iuxta propria principia foundation of human.

If this assertion were true, we should consider human development as a process of gravitational fall of human into man, that is to say inside his specific phylogenies.

Actually culture separates the human being from his phylogenetic nutshell, from which the anthropo-decentralizing path, proper of anthropopoiesis, emerges.

SECOND ARGUMENT AGAINST HUMANISM  

If culture causes a decentralizing process – also outlined in Plessner’s eccentrative idea – we have to admit that its emergence is a dialogic product and not a solipsistic one.

Culture is not autarchic but it relies on nonhuman referential contributions.

Humanism entrusts itself to an epimetheic lack, that is a total virtuosity which should lead humans to auto-poiesis.

But a lack never defines a virtuosity and nevertheless can produce a decentralization.

If there is a decentralization it is inevitable to admit the contribution of a decentralizing alterity.

Credit: African Crowned Crane courtship movements inspired Masai dance

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Regarding the human decentralizing dimension towards the human being, in my opinion the pre-humanistic theocentrism is more valid than Humanistic anthropocentrism: Lévinas’ concept of Autri would imply a divine alterity.

Otherwise we can rely on the alien travellers theory. Certainly we cannot think of a decentralization process not hetero-referred because it would be a contradiction in terms.

I am personally convinced that is more plausible to see other species as hetero-referred fly-wheels, which have allowed the human being to go beyond his phylogenetic legacy.

HOW TO CALL THIS ALTERITY?  

Credit: 2001 Space Odyssey

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 Dance reminds the courtship rituals of many animals;

 Music recalls the birds harmony;

 Techniques are always propositions of animal performativity;

 Make up and fashion have always been ways to dress up as animals;

 Architecture reproduces nests;

 Handcrafts from Neolithic recalled animal shapes (zoo-morphies).

SEVERAL EVIDENCES SUPPORT THIS HYPOTHESIS

These are just a few examples but throughout years I have been carrying out proofs that testify as culture was born from the relationship between humans and other species.

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The human being is ethologically predisposed to interject nonhuman characters because:

1)  he is strongly imitative and competitive, that is to say emulative;

2)  he adopts cubs from other species who entering his world become reference models for human puppies;

Credit: Interspecific maternage in Papua New Guinea

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3)  he gathers everything and he is predisposed to catalogue;

4)  he is explorative and inclined to make use of external references to broaden his own interpretative and operative space towards world.

Animals have always been our masters, thus culture is a product of a relationship and a hybridative process itself.  

In my opinion, to speak of an imitation process is simplistic and misleading.

They are inspiring entities even before being our masters. Nonhuman animals have acted just like parents:

1)  they have been “secure bases” allowing us to have experiences that otherwise we would not have done;

2)  they have built “areas of proximal growth” offering us evaluative paths which otherwise we would not have undertaken;

3)  they have operated evolutive differentials in our ontogenetic.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A HUMAN BEING MEETS A NONHUMAN ANIMAL?

4)  they have opened “existential dimensions” showing us that “YES, we can!”; 5)  they have conjugated us to the world in a different way;

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A HUMAN BEING MEETS A NONHUMAN ANIMAL?

Birds did not teach us “how-to-fly” but that “we-can-fly”!

THE ANIMAL EPIPHANY

Therefore, I speak of an “animal epiphany”, that is a presence and contribution which goes beyond the phenomenal event:

to assist to the expression/display of animal, for humans means either to project himself into another reality or to be possessed by nonhuman animals.

But if this is true, we have to admit – as opposed to Humanism – that the human being is not measure of the world neither measure of himself.

Moreover, if culture is the hybrid product of the dialogue with nonhuman, we have to recognize that within anthropo-poiesis the human being gets close to other species and he combines with nature.

THE ANIMAL EPIPHANY

Credit: The weaving

Through a Posthuman vision, the concept of techne changes too.

Whether within Humanism, it has a Prometeic function able to serve the world and to emancipate human beings from any contiguity,

in a posthumanistic perspective techne has an epimetheic role able to conjugate human to nonhuman animals creating new landscapes of co-feeling.

While the humanistic vision is an ontology which places the individual in first place, separating him from the world, the posthumanistic philosophy is an ontology of relationship,

a “dialogue ergo sum” philosophy which places the human being not behind the wall of his identity but within the structures that – quoting Gregory Bateson – conjugate us with alterity.

A DIALOGUE ERGO SUM PHILOSOPHY

Lastly, in a posthumanistic logic the relationship with other animals cannot be restricted to an instrumental use of the nonhuman animal but into the inter-subjective dialogue with him, passing from an enhancement of the perfomativity to a referential enhancement.

Nonhuman animal is a friend that can help us to see the world from another perspective and who lives with a cat or a dog knows very well what I am saying.

FROM PERFORMATIVITY TO RELATIONSHIP

Despite Nagel’s rhetorical query, we have many things in common with nonhuman animals as:

1)  we are sons of the same evolutional process, therefore we can move from sympathy to empathy under the sign of critical anthropomorphism;

2)  most of our cultural features – the ones recognized as human condition – are products of the relation with nonhuman animals, they are thus proof of our ontological need to relate with the nonhuman.

Thank you very much for your kind attention

Centre Study for Posthuman Philosophy Bologna, Italy

Mail to: [email protected]

Credit: Karin Andersen – Disposal h"p://www.karinandersen.com