I begin with a rather unpromising dispute that Nozick once had with Ian Hacking in the pages of the London Review of Books, in which both vied with one another in their enthusiasm to repudiate the thesis that some human people or peoples are closer than others to animality. I shall attempt to show that one can build, on the basis of Nozick’s discussion of rationality, a defense of the view that the capacity tor language places human rationality out of (...) reach of a comparison with animals. The difference rests, paradoxically, on the human capacity tor irratianality. Irrationality depends on the capacity tor language, which allows the detachment of explicit thoughts from their underlying dynamic implementation; these, in turn, condition the essential disputability of principles of rationality. That is what places every human potentially -- if not actually -- on the other side of an unbridgeable gulf that separates us from other animals. (shrink)

To what extent can animal behaviour be described as rational? What does it even mean to describe behaviour as rational? -/- This book focuses on one of the major debates in science today - how closely does mental processing in animals resemble mental processing in humans. It addresses the question of whether and to what extent non-human animals are rational, that is, whether any animal behaviour can be regarded as the result of a rational (...) thought processes. It does this with attention to three key questions, which recur throughout the book and which have both empirical and philosophical aspects: What kinds of behavioural tasks can animals successfully perform? What if any mental processes must be postulated to explain their performance at these tasks? What properties must processes have to count as rational? The book is distinctive in pursuing these questions not only in relation to our closest relatives, the primates, whose intelligence usually gets the most attention, but also in relation to birds and dolphins, where striking results are also being obtained. -/- Some chapters focus on a particular species. They describe some of the extraordinary and complex behaviour of these species - using tools in novel ways to solve foraging problems, for example, or behaving in novel ways to solve complex social problems - and ask whether such behaviour should be explained in rational or merely mechanistic terms. Other chapters address more theoretical issues and ask, for example, what it means for behaviour to be rational, and whether rationality can be understood in the absence of language. -/- The book includes many of the world's leading figures doing empirical work on rationality in primates, dolphins, and birds, as well as distinguished philosophers of mind and science. The book includes an editors' introduction which summarises the philosophical and empirical work presented, and draws together the issues discussed by the contributors. (shrink)

Modern science has qualified human beings as homo sapiens. Is there a serious scientific theory backing this nomenclature? And can we proclaim ourselves as wise? The classical rational animals characterization has apparently the same syntactic form but it is not working exactly in the same way. Moreover the semantics behind is more appropriate, encompassing a pivotal ambiguity. In the second part of the paper, we further delve into this ambiguity, relating rationality with three fundamental features of these creatures: (...) ability to laugh, sexuality and transformation. (shrink)

_Rational Animals: The Teleological Roots of Intentionality_ offers an original account of the intentionality of human mental states, such as beliefs and desires. The account of intentionality in _Rational Animals_ is broadly biological in its basis, emphasizing the continuity between human intentionality and the levels of intentionality that should be attributed to animal actions and states. Establishing the goal-directed character of animal behavior, Mark Okrent argues that instrumentally rational action is a species of goal-directed behavior that is idiosyncratic (...) to individual agents and is distinguished by its novelty and flexibility. He also argues that some nonlinguistic animals are capable of instrumental rationality and that in the first instance, the contents of beliefs and desires are individuated by the explanatory role of those states in rationally accounting for such instrumentally rational behavior. The account of instrumental rationality offered in Rational Animals allows for understanding the practical rationality of linguistically competent human beings as a distinctive capacity of social animals capable of undertaking roles governed by socially sanctioned norms. Rational Animals will be of interest to cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind, philosophers of biology, philosophers of action, ethologists, and those interested in the debates concerning animal intelligence. (shrink)

SummaryNeither an infant one week old nor a snail is a rational creature. If the infant survives long enough, he will probably become rational, while this is not true of the snail. If we like, we may say of the infant from the start that he is a rational creature because he will probably become rational if he survives, or because he belongs to a species with this capacity. Whichever way we talk, there remains the difference, (...) with respect to rationality, between the infant and the snail on one hand, and the normal adult person on the other; this difference is discussed here.The difference consists, it is argued, in the having of propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, intention and shame. This raises the question how to tell when a creature has propositional attitudes; snails, we may agree, do not, but how about dogs or chimpanzees? The question is not empirical; the question is what sort of empirical evidence is relevant to deciding when a creature has propositional attitudes.It is next contended that language is a necessary concomitant of any of the propositional attitudes. This idea is not new, but there seem to be few arguments in its favor in the literature; one is attempted here.Crucial to the considerations advanced is the idea that belief depends on having the concept of objective truth, and that this comes only with language.RéuméNi un bébé d'une semaine, ni un serpent ne sont des créatures rationnelles. Si le bébé survit assez longtemps, il deviendra probablement rationnel, mais ce n'est pas vrai pour le serpent. Sil'on veut, on peut dire d'emblee du bébé qu'il est une créature rationnelle parce qu'il le deviendra s'il survit ou parce qu'il appartient à une espèce qui possède cette faculté. Quoi qu'on dise, la différence subsiste, en ce qui concerné la rationalité, entre le bébé et le serpent d'une part, la per‐sonne adulte normale de lcar;autre, et c'est cette différence qui sera discutée ici.La différence consiste, selon l'auteur, en une capacityé d'avoir des attitudes propositionnelles telles que la croyance, le désir, l'intention et la honte. Ceci pose la question de savoir quand on peut dire qu'une créature a des attitudes propositionnelles; on peut se mettre d'accord sur le fait que les serpents n'en ont pas, mais qu'en est‐il des chiens et des chimpanzés? La question n'est pas empirique, elle est de savoir quelle donnée empirique va décider si oui ou non une créature a des attitudes propositionnelles.L'auteur prétend que les attitudes propositionnelles s'accompagnent nécessairement du langage. Cette idèe n'est pas nouvelle, mais il semble qu'il y a peu d'arguments qui la soutiennent dans la littérature. On en trouvera un ici, où l'on montre qu'un élément crucial de a croyance dépend de l'acquisition du concept de vérité objective, qui ne se développe qu'avec le langage.ZusammenfassungWeder ein eine Woche altes Kind noch eine Schlange sind rationale Wesen. Wenn das Kind lange genug überlebt, wird es sich wahrscheinlich zu einem vernünftigen Wesen entwickeln, wäh‐rend das für die Schlange nicht zutrifft. Wenn wir wollen, können wir vom Kind sagen, dass es von Anfang an cin rationales Wesen ist, weil es im Fallc des Ubcrlebens vernünftig werden wird oder weil es zu einer Spezies mit dieser Fähigkeit gehört. Wie auch immer wir das ausdrücken, bleibt bezüglich der Rationalität der Unterschied zwischen dem Kind und der Schlange einerseits und der erwachsenen Person andererseits zurück. Dieser Unterschied wird hier diskutiert.Es wird argumentiert, dass der Unterschied in der Fähigkeit besteht, psychologische Haltun‐gen wie Glauben, Begierden, Absichten und Scham zu haben. Damit erhebt sich die Frage, wie man entscheiden kann, wann ein Wesen solchc Einstellungcn hat; Schlangen, wird man zugeben, haben keine; wie steht es aber mit Hunden Oder Schimpansen? Die Frage ist keine empirische, sondern betrifft die Frage, welche Art von empirischen Belegen für den Entscheid relevant ist, ob ein Wesen derartige Einstellungen hat.Es wird die These aufgestellt, dass Sprachen ein notwendiger Begleitumstand einer jeglichen propositionalen Haltung ist. Der Gedanke ist zwar nicht neu, aber es finden sich wenige Argu‐mente zu seiner Stützung in der Literatur; eines wird hier ausgeführt.Entscheidend für die vorgelegten Betrachtungen ist die Auffassung, wonach Glaube vom Begriff der objektiven Wahrheit abhängt, und dieser kommt erst mit der Sprache. (shrink)

Dependent Rational Animals consists of a revision of the three Paul Carus Lectures delivered by MacIntyre at the 1997 Pacific Division meeting of the APA. The book is rather different from MacIntyre's work since After Virtue in that it proceeds systematically rather than historically to develop a Thomistic-Aristotelian view of ethics that takes its departure from the continuities in human and nonhuman animal nature and the role of dependence in human life. These issues lead to a consideration of (...) the distinctive virtues required of us if we are to become independent practical reasoners able to acknowledge our dependence on others in arriving at that state of independence as well as continuing dependence on others with whom we participate in the relationships of giving and receiving through which we pursue the goods that constitute human flourishing. The argument proceeds in roughly three stages. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

According to a tradition reaching back at least as far as Aristotle, human beings are set apart from other terrestrial creatures by their rationality. Other animals, according to this tradition, are capable of sensation and appetite, but they are not capable of thought, the kind of activity characteristic of the rational part of the soul. Human beings, by contrast, are rational animals, and an understanding of our minds must begin from a recognition of this distinctiveness. For, (...) the tradition holds, the presence of rationality does not just add one more power to the human mind, or increase the scope and efficacy of mental powers already present in nonrational creatures. Rather, rationality transforms all of our principal mental powers, making our minds different in kind from the minds of nonrational animals. (shrink)

While growing empirical evidence suggests a continuity between human and non-human psychology, many philosophers still think that only humans can act and form beliefs rationally. In this paper, we challenge this claim. We first clarify the notion of rationality. We then focus on the rationality of beliefs and argue that, in the relevant sense, humans are not the only rational animals. We do so by first distinguishing between unreflective and reflective responsiveness to epistemic reasons in belief formation and (...) revision. We argue that unreflective responsiveness is clearly within the reach of many animals. We then defend that a key demonstration of reflective responsiveness would be the ability to respond to undermining defeaters. We end by presenting some empirical evidence that suggests that some animal species are capable of processing these defeaters, which would entail that even by the strictest standards, humans are not the only rational animals. (shrink)

According to the author of "After Virtue, " to flourish, humans need to develop virtues of independent thought and acknowledged social dependence. This book presents the moral philosopher's comparison of humans to other animals and his exploration of the impact of these virtues.

The essay "Rational Animals" is translated from the book: Donald Davidson: Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2001, pp. 95-105.

Martin Heidegger rejects the traditional definition of the human being as the “rational animal” in part because he thinks it fits us into a genus that obscures our difference in kind. Thomas Aquinas shares with Heidegger the concern about the human difference, and yet he appropriates the definition, “rational animal” by conceiving animality in terms of the specifically human power of understanding being. Humans are not just distinct in their openness to being, but, thanks to that openness, they (...) are distinct in their animality, a distinction that changes the very significance of animality itself. Heidegger also thinks the traditional definition closes us to the experience of our essence, but again Aquinas has resources for bringing out the experiential character of rational animality. Aquinas’ inclusion of animation has significance for what Heidegger calls fundamental ontology; by virtue of the human animate body, particular beings can be pointed out and designated as such. (shrink)

These 'philosophical' essays are related by a concern to develop and defend and Aristotelian view - that we are both essentially and entirely creatures of mortal flesh and blood, and uniquely rational animals.

Immanuel Kant, in a much-maligned view, thought that we could only have indirect duties to nonhuman animals who have no inherent moral value since they lack rationality. While there are various responses to this worrisome position, no one seems to consider that animals could conceivably qualify as having rationality, even on Kantian high standards. Animals engage in various activities that could be taken as indicators of the core aspects of rationality that Kant requires for having absolute worth. (...) While these animal behaviors will not prove that animals are rational, we must remember that we also cannot prove that other humans are rational. Instead, my goal is only to provide a basis for a precautionary moral principle that requires treating animals as minimally rational, given that they might be. On this basis, we ought to accept some direct Kantian duties for the respectful treatment of animals. (shrink)

MacIntyre’s latest volume ranks among his best works to date. Together with his last three books, Dependent Rational Animals forms a body of work unrivalled in contemporary social and ethical philosophy. In this short space I will consider both how the new book relates to MacIntyre’s earlier work and some new lines of argument.

The Cynic exhortation to live according to nature is far from transparent. I defend a traditional interpretation: to live in accordance with nature is to live in accordance with human nature, which is to live as a rational animal. After discussing methodological concerns, I consider the theriophilic proposal that the ideal Cynic lives like an animal. I marshal evidence against this view and in favor of the alternative of Cynics as rational animals. Finally, I anticipate and address (...) the concern that mine is an unduly idealized and Stoicized account. (shrink)

This challenging and refreshingly innovative book addresses certain fundamental questions concerning rational legitimacy of some widely held beliefs and provides argument-based answers to such questions, while at the same time encouraging the reader to actively engage with the views put forward and form his/her own judgement.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory presents a complex argument that spans numerous academic disciplines and combines empirical and theoretical analyses. Its radical conclusion has inspired activists and social critics from all sides of the ideological spectrum. Critics and commentators have questioned MacIntyre’s critique of modern moral philosophy and the plausibility of the concluding prescription, concerning the need to create new forms of community. But it has less often been asked in what sense the book presents a (...) unified perspective. In other words, how do the premises of MacIntyre’s argument, presented and defended throughout the text, warrant the conclusion? In this article, I partially formalize the main argument of After Virtue, discussing the grounds for each premise, and explaining how they ground the book’s radical conclusion. In doing this, I argue that economic sociology, specifically Karl Polanyi’s theory of the modern market economy, plays a large role in supporting MacIntyre’s claims. After presenting the main argument of the text, I draw upon the social theory elaborated in Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, specifically its theory of the relationship between vulnerability, dependence, and virtuous networks of giving and receiving, while briefly noting recent sociological criticisms of Polanyi, to argue that we have reason to be skeptical of MacIntyre’s empirical claims concerning the vicious character of modern social structures in After Virtue. (shrink)

In Book 3 of 'On Abstinence from Animal Food', Porphyry is traditionally taken to be arguing in favour of the belief that animals are rational. However, elsewhere in his corpus, he endorses the opposite view, declaring that man differs from other mortal animals because he is rational and they are irrational. Jonathan Barnes offers a way of understanding Porphyry’s logical theory which is intended to make it consistent with the traditional interpretation of 'On Abstinence'. He suggests (...) that the same predicate can be related to different subjects in different ways. Porphyry’s claim that man differs from other mortal animals with respect to the predicate ‘rational’, is best understood to mean that whereas ‘rational’ is specifically predicated of man, it is non-specifically predicated of animals. This explains how they differ from man with respect to this predicate, without failing to be rational. This paper argues that there are reasons for rejecting Barnes’ interpretation. Barnes must maintain, for example, that animals possess the apparently incompatible properties of being specifically irrational and non-specifically rational simultaneously. Since Barnes fails to resolve the conflict, Porphyry’s claims that animals are irrational in his logical works pose a significant problem for the traditional interpretation of 'On Abstinence'. (shrink)

Ethics for Rational Animals brings to light a novel account of akrasia, practical wisdom, and character virtue through an original and comprehensive study of the moral psychology at the basis of Aristotle's ethics. It argues that practical wisdom is a persuasive rational excellence, that virtue is a listening excellence, and that the ignorance involved in akrasia is in fact a failure of persuasion. Aristotle's moral psychology emerges from this reconstruction as a qualified intellectualism. The view is intellectualistic (...) because it describes practical wisdom as the sort of knowledge that can govern desire and action and akrasia as involving a form of ignorance. However, Aristotle's intellectualism is qualified because practical wisdom goes beyond grasping the truth about the human good, for it must also be able to convey the truth persuasively to non-rational cognition and desires. (shrink)

The distinction between personal level explanations and subpersonal ones has been subject to much debate in philosophy. We understand it as one between explanations that focus on an agent’s interaction with its environment, and explanations that focus on the physical or computational enabling conditions of such an interaction. The distinction, understood this way, is necessary for a complete account of any agent, rational or not, biological or artificial. In particular, we review some recent research in Artificial Life that pretends (...) to do completely without the distinction, while using agent-centred concepts all the way. It is argued that the rejection of agent level explanations in favour of mechanistic ones is due to an unmotivated need to choose among representationalism and eliminativism. The dilemma is a false one if the possibility of a radical form of externalism is considered. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a view of real definitions such that a difference of a species need not presuppose all of the differences that occur in the definition of the genus it qualifies. In such a case, two differences can be swapped in the definition of the species. Under this view, the correct diagrammatic representation of the subdivision of genera into species is a graph possibly containing cycles, rather than a tree as commonly assumed. Applying this theory, I respond (...) to Joseph Gredt’s claim that “rational animal” cannot be further specified except accidentally, as rationality does not admit further specification. I also tackle a different argument by David Oderberg to the effect that all possible rational animals, even merely possible ones, are of the same metaphysical species. (shrink)

The distinction between personal level explanations and subpersonal ones has been subject to much debate in philosophy. We understand it as one between explanations that focus on an agent’s interaction with its environment, and explanations that focus on the physical or computational enabling conditions of such an interaction. The distinction, understood this way, is necessary for a complete account of any agent, rational or not, biological or artificial. In particular, we review some recent research in Artificial Life that pretends (...) to do completely without the distinction, while using agent-centred concepts all the way. It is argued that the rejection of agent level explanations in favour of mechanistic ones is due to an unmotivated need to choose among representationalism and eliminativism. The dilemma is a false one if the possibility of a radical form of externalism is considered. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends a novel view of the strict distinction that Aristotle makes between human and non-human mental life. We examine two crucially relevant but overlooked arguments that turn on the human capacity for reasoning and inference (syl/logismos) to reconstruct his view of what makes some cognitive processes rational and how they differ from non-rational counterparts. A creature is rational just in case its occurrent cognitive states exhibit a sequential coherence wherein prior cognitive activity constrains (...) subsequent activity for the sake of attaining truth. Processes are rational, then, in virtue of how constituent states relate to each other, not whether any given state involves some peculiar content or grasps some distinct object. This study aids, but does not exhaust, a systematic examination of the rational soul in Aristotle’s writing, based on (a) the human/animal comparisons through which he often elucidates rational cognitive capacities and (b) the distinctions that he draws between elements of rational cognition and non-rational counterparts in terms of what minimally suffices to distinguish between them. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Alasdair MacIntyre’sAfter Virtuehas made a significant impact within business ethics. This impact has centered upon applications of the virtues-goods-practices-institutions schema (Moore & Beadle, 2006). In this article, I develop an extension of the practices-institutions schema (Moore, 2017), drawing upon MacIntyre’s later text,Dependent Rational Animals. Two key concepts drawn from this text are “networks of giving and receiving” and “the virtues of acknowledged dependence.” Networks of giving and receiving are non-calculative relationships that enable participants to cope with vulnerability. These (...) relationships are sustained by the virtues of acknowledged dependence, including just generosity,misericordia,and beneficence, virtues that direct participants to treat the needs of others as reasons for action. Drawing upon research in social network theory, I develop an example illustrating the application of these concepts within an organizational and interorganizational context. I then suggest a number of applications and research questions related to this extension of the practices-institutions schema. (shrink)