Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

human sciences grapple with questions
The
have profound social implications. These
that
are based on facts and assumptions
disciplines
the ways in which all humans are the
about
about our set of shared characteristics, and
same,
essential uniformity underlying all human
the
This is not a stable set, and over time
variation.
have been added to and taken off the list.
items
the assumption of human sameness on
Without
fundamental level, could there be a legitimate
a
for the human sciences to make universal
basis
about human nature? Based on this
claims
of human sameness, psychologists
assumption
economists make claims that apply to all
or
about how memory works or how we
humans
choices.
make
it is not uncommon for the set of
Interestingly,
similarities to be described as human
human
women animals?” This was the title of a
“Are
published in 1872, by an author we know
letter
by the name she signed off with: “An
only
Englishwoman”. She was protesting
Earnest
unequal treatment of women under British
the
women were not seen as fully human and
law;
not equal to nor part of “mankind”.
therefore
a few decades earlier, the legal system had
Just
protections for animals’ from cruelty,
increased
the same protections were not in place for
but
The Earnest Englishwoman’s plea was
women.
raise the status of women by subsuming
to
in the legislation protecting animals
them
fromcruelty.
letter was satirical, of course, but draws
The
attention to how scientific claims about
our
influence ideas about political
humanness
and equality. The boundary
personhood
the concepts “human” and “animal”
between
been affected by political as well as scientific
has
whereas the set of human differences is
biology,
described as human culture. Why do you
often
thinkers and researchers have insisted
Recently,
nature versus culture is a false dichotomy.
that
have been mostly unsuccessful at
Scientists
nature and culture, whether by
disentangling
nature from ideology and politics, or
extracting
guarding culture from claims about genes
by
neurotransmitters. Donna Haraway offers
and
term “natureculture”, signalling that these
the
domains, and therefore our knowledge
two
them, are inseparable. Box 8.2 explores
about
interconnected worlds of biology, culture,
the
and politics.
history
Earnest Englishwoman wrote at the
The
of one such debate, with Charles
height
“Expression of the Emotions in Man
Darwin’s
Animals” appearing in the same year.
and
(the capacity to feel) was receiving
Sentience
as a demarcation criterion for the
attention
question. The belief at the
human-animal
that not all humans are equally capable
time
suffering was influenced by the idea of a
of
chain of being”, a hierarchy ranking
“great
matter and life forms from highest to
all
which had been very influential for
lowest,
millennia of Western thought. The “chain
two
feeling” inspired by it was much shorter,
of
placed “civilized men” at the high end,
and
“savages slaves, and animals” at the
and
end. Before we continue with this story,
low
to keep in mind how these ideas
remember
theories were constructed, and what we
and
do to guard against believing modern-day
can
II. Perspectives
II. Perspectives
I I . P E R S P E C T I V E S
think this is the case?
Box 8.2: An unnatural history of the politics and science of pain
falsehoods.
ideas and debates.
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