Why Are Dogs Human: Another Take on the Nature of Humanity
Why Are Dogs Human: Another Take on the Nature of Humanity
Professor Liah Greenfield, University Professor and Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Anthropology
A comparison between human ways of life and ways of life characteristic of all animal species reveals one startling difference: while all animal ways of life are transmitted biologically (genetically), like life itself, all human ways of life are transmitted via symbols. This allows us, by way of the analysis of symbolic transmission, to arrive at a view of humanity as an emergent phenomenon, analogous in its relationship to life to the relationship of life to its material/physical substratum and similarly irreducible to it. Thus separated logically from the biological species which represents its main carrier, humanity becomes an autonomous (though, obviously, not independent) characteristic accidentally bestowed on the “human species” and, as such, may be, under specific conditions, shared by animals of other species. It will be argued that dogs, in particular, have been consistently placed in such conditions and, therefore, are in fact human.
Friday, February 3
1:15 pm
African Studies Seminar Room (232 Bay State Rd. Room 505)
