Ruse - A Philosopher Looks at Human Beings

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Michael Ruse 2021

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For my son Oliver

and all the other first responders during the coronavirus pandemic

Over the years, many people have helped me to develop the ideas expressed in this essay. Edward O. Wilson, at Harvard University, has been both friend and support, and his enthusiasm for ideas has long been an inspiration. Robert J. Richards, at the University of Chicago, and I have long shared an interest in the development of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. Joe Cain, at University College London, and I have long shared an interest in the development of twentieth-century evolutionary thought. I often disagree with all three of these men. They have taught me what every philosopher comes to realize. You learn most from those who challenge your ideas. Mirroring the wonderful help and encouragement I got from older scholars when I was young, one of the greatest joys of my life has been passing on the torch from my generation to the next. I have been co-editing the Cambridge Elements series in the Philosophy of Biology with the much-younger Grant Ramsey, at Leuven University in Belgium. I am hugely grateful for his comments on this essay.

My editor at Cambridge University Press, Hilary Gaskin, is far more than just a professional acquaintance. I am much in her debt for all that she has done for me and for asking me to write this essay. I thank also my content manager Thomas Haynes and my copy-editor Steven Holt. As an author, I am always so grateful to the people who help turn my manuscript into a published book. Closer to home, I thank William and Lucyle Werkmeister for their endowment of my professorship at Florida State University and for the research funds that go with it. My love for my wife Lizzie, and my gratitude for her never-failing support, cannot be put into words.

The information in

I am a human being. What do I, as a philosopher, have to say about this? If I were a physiologist, I would be interested in what makes us tick how the various parts of the body interact and work together. If I were a sociologist, I would be interested in humans in groups why are there churches and priests and imams and that sort of thing? I am a philosopher, so what am I interested in and why do I have special authority or knowledge to speak about such things? Well pick up on the second part of the question as we go along the proof of the pudding is in the eating but Ill tell you what I am interested in. Why do we humans think we are so special? Do we have good reason for this, or is it just self-deception based on ignorance and arrogance or (perhaps) a fear that we are not so very special?

Let me speak for myself. I once spent a week in Zimbabwe, and I must confess that I came away with a liking for warthogs. They are certainly not the worlds most beautiful animals, but perhaps that was part of the attraction. Out on safari cameras not guns! you would see them trotting along in their families, quite content. As the father of five kids, that appealed to me right there. And they werent afraid. They would come right up to the Victoria Falls Hotel the one that King George and Queen Elizabeth stayed in during their trip to Southern Africa in 1947 and graze contentedly in the grounds. But my liking is accompanied with a kind of smugness. Truly, we humans are not as other animals, or rather there are no other animals comparable with us humans and we are at the top. Warthogs are just fine, but they should know their place. They do not belong at the high table in a comfortable armchair, looking out across at the Falls, sipping a gin and tonic, boring my wife to tears as I go on about the Royal Family. If you disapprove of them so much, why do you keep talking about them?

Am I justified in thinking this about my high status? Try to discount the fact that, like all philosophers, I think I am superior to all others. The brightest people on campus. Return to reality. I love my cairn terriers Scruffy McGruff and Duncan Donut more than a lot of humans. But truly, other than my late headmaster, of whom I am prepared to think any ill a sentiment fully reciprocated I dont think my dogs are the equals of other humans. Thats not just the prejudice of an Englishman against the Scots. Its a question of status, of value, of worth. So much so, that when I am confronted with an appallingly awful human being like Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer, who not only preferred to have (gay) sex with his victims after (rather than before) they were dead but who used to cut them up and eat them my first inclination is to say that such people are not real human beings. They are inhuman.