by Mary Midgley

 

“. . . Neither ecological nor social engineering will lead us to a conflict-free, simple path . . . Utilitarians and others who simply advise us to be happy are unhelpful, because we almost always have to make a choice either between different kinds of happiness--different things to be happy _about_--or between these and other things we want, which nothing to do with happiness.

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"(..), any explanation [of human behavior] that invoked culture, however vague, abstract, far-fetched, infertile and implausible, tended to be readily accepted, while any explanation in terms of innate tendencies, however careful, rigorous, well-documented, limited and specific tended to be ignored.

In animal psychology, however, the opposite situation reigned. Here, what was taboo was the range of concepts that describes the conscious, cognitive side of experience.

The preferred, safe kind of explanation here derived from ideas of innate programming and mechanical conditioning. If anything cognitive was mentioned, standards of rigour at once soared into a stratosphere where few arguments could hope to follow."

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My present purpose, however, is the distinct and supplementary one of asking how this unique thing, rationality, is possible in being that is not just a disembodied intellect, but also and among other things some kind of animal, how it fits into such a life. (...)

But the chief difficulty about accepting continuity between man and other species, or between the human intellect and the rest of man, now comes not from traditional religion, but from those who do amputate the soul. It stems from the deep reverence people now feel for human success, and particularly for success in science.

by Mary Midgley