Chapter 1: The Myth of No Limits — Part 1 — Part 2
Chapter 2: The Myth of Randomness
Chapter 3: The Myth of Mass Extinctions
Chapter 4: The Myth of Missing Links
Chapter 5: The Myth of Animal Minds — Part 1 — Part 2
Chapter 1: The Myth of No Limits — Part 1 — Part 2
Chapter 2: The Myth of Randomness
Chapter 3: The Myth of Mass Extinctions
Chapter 4: The Myth of Missing Links
Chapter 5: The Myth of Animal Minds — Part 1 — Part 2
Before I explain the rot at the heart of this chapter (Chapter 5 of From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution, "The Myth of Animal Minds," by Simon Conway Morris), I'd like to show you my workspace as I sullenly trudge toward the end of this task.
That's my fun little Chromebook 2-in-1, and the barely-visible tartan mouse pad is from my dad. You'll see my toolkit of sticky notes and a stack of (some of) my books on consciousness and human cognition. Conway Morris' book is open to the pages (155-157, in a section called "An unbridgeable gulf?") that stopped me in my tracks.
That's how Chapter 5 of From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution, "The Myth of Animal Minds," felt to me. Simon Conway Morris is hellbent on digging a conceptual moat around human cognition, desperate to isolate it from non-human cognition so that it can receive metaphysical shipments from on high. If that sounds harsh, it is—and it is exactly what the chapter is about.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
—Hamlet, Act II, Scene II, The Oxford Shakespeare
Kemble in the role of Hamlet. Courtesy of Wellcome Images. |