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continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim,

I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment.

Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift).

My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason.

The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His hands" of God; one might also say, "He's got the whole world in his mind." So there's a sense that in order for "my world" to make sense, so does yours: yours has to make sense too, because we all live in the same world (the "we" being all rational creatures).

Oh well, that's just a sketch, but here's some background.

As I composed this argument, I had in the back of my mind something a French Catholic philosopher named Jacques Maritain pointed out in The Person and the Common Good: that there is a kind of infinity to the human person. It's as if we take the whole cosmos w/n our thought. Add to that what some Rennaissance dude said about man as microcosm, and its almost as if we model, in our governance of our bodily movements, the divine governance.

Naming is part of this god-like way we imitate divine providence. For naming is disinguising forms of being in terms of their purpose, which purpose is related to the purpose of the whole, which whole can be thematized by us humans and not by chimps.

Oh well, that's my story an' I'm stickin' to it :)

Comments

Unknown said…
What we're both saying is very consonant. The question I'm trying to answer here is - if you start with purely empirical evidence, how could you tell that humans are different? Depending upon the circumstances, aliens might or might not be able to know if we're "reasoning" or "conscious". They could know even less about our desire upon quick observation. But the first thing to stand out is that we're saying "Blah, blah, blah" all the time. (By the way, I'm ripping off Walker Percy.)
10:29 PM
Leo White said…
I agree about the problematic nature of interspace communication: ET's way of gabbing might seem like flatulence to us. Come to think of it, maybe some folks I know are really aliens in disguise...

One point I should have made is that w/n a human being the lower level is instrumental to the higher level, but in a way that fulfills the instrument rather than just uses it (for this reason Aristotle said that matter longs for form: sounds crazy but w/n a human being something like this is true). When we see the equivalent of the lower and higher in the cosmos, we make an analogy with ourselves. In such a case, it would seem that the cosmos exists so that we can talk about it... I am making logical leaps here but that's because I'm between classes... more later.
9:53 AM
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