critical-realism message, RE: BHA: Epistemological relativism, human rights, culture

On the Discovery Channel I once saw a special on elephants. Apparently they have at least 37 separate "words" they use to communicate with each other.

I also think the whole emphasis on language has some rather large holes.

1. There are a host of other things that only humans do: fly airplanes, invest in the stock market, play sports, build cities, etc.

2. Many distinctly human characteristics, including language, are geo-historical. They are not invariant human characteristics.

3. Some people are deaf and dumb and illiterate. Language for them may not mean the same thing as it does for people who can hear and speak. Yet most of us would not even consider saying people who don't hear, speak, and read are not human. There's something else that we base this judgment on.

4. Up to a certain age, human children do not communicate via language. Again, this doesn't make them inhuman.

5. Young children and others communicate with non-linguistic means. To my mind, this demotes language per se as the medium for communication while simultaneously promoting other species to the status of communicative animals.

6. Our use of language may reflect a cognitive ability that also underpins other things we uniquely do. There would then be no justification for emphasizing language over these other things.

Marsh Feldman

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Marko Beljac
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 5:08 AM
To: bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: BHA: Epistemological relativism, human rights, culture

> Any conception of "human nature" which goes beyond trivial tautologies
> (humans need to eat, humans can run, etc.) is apt to be reactionary. As
> Hannah Arendt once pointed out, if humannature existed, we couldn't know
> what it was without being non-human. That is, the claim to "know" human
> nature is more or less a claim to divinity (or at leas divine
> inspiration). I think that in some ways Marx's most important work was
> one word in length -- his reply to a reporter's question very late in
> his life. The reporter asked, "What is?" and Marx replied "Struggle."
>
> Human rights are defined in struggle and change endlessly.

It is alleged that Arnedt once pointed out, therefore making the statement necessarily true, that we couldn't know what human nature is without being non-human. Humans, alone among all animals, are able to communicate via language. The study of language, it follows by logic, tells us something about "human nature". Note that if we take Cox (and Arendt's) claim seriously then it follows that we cannot know linguistics without being non-human and that linguists are making a claim to divinity.

As for struggle, one may well ask that if the need for freedom is not intrinsic to our natures then why should anybody risk their lives and their families future by struggling for it?

Marko.