Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Anthropocentric
It seems as if it's impossible maintain a view that isn't in some way anthropocentric. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but more so just a fact of life. It is a view we can't escape simply can't escape because we can only see the world through our own eyes. But there have been studies with great apes of people teaching them sign language that have garnered quite a bit of information. Perhaps this is a step in the right direction. In a very small sense, we were using the same language and could understand each other . Experiments like these are a huge step in seeing the world through the eyes of other creatures, and moving away from an anthropocentric state of mind.
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I agree wholeheartedly that it's hard to have a view that isn't in some small way anthropocentric. Primarily because we are humans and we can only see from our point of view. Therefore, whether we like it or not, our basis for understanding the world will always begin with what we know best: our selves.
ReplyDeleteFair enough -- it BEGINS with ourselves. That doesn't mean it has to end there, though, and precisely what characterizes sapient beings like ourselves is the imaginative ability to see the world from other perspectives. This seems to me to be what's most useful about Naess, Rolston, et al.: they quite properly want us to think seriously about ecosystems from a wider point of view.
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