Persons as Animals: Understanding the Animal Bases of Agency, Perceptual Knowledge and Thought

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What is the relevance to our self-understanding of the fact that we human beings are animals? Philosophical enquiry has often focused its attention on those aspects of ourselves which *differentiate* (or are alleged to differentiate) human beings from the other animals - for example, language, rationality, morality, self-consciousness, aesthetic sensibility. In more recent years, however, there has been increasing recognition, in a number of related areas, of the interest to be had in investigations which take more seriously our *commonality* with other animals. In particular, it is coming to seem apparent that even the capacities we cherish most highly, and which we regard as most distinctive of humanity - such as free will and conceptual abilities - are importantly conditioned by our nature as animal beings. This research will explore three areas in which there is reason to think that substantial philosophical progress can be made by considering the ways in which specifically human powers are rooted and grounded in our animality. One is the philosophy of free will and agency, where I shall explore the suggestion that it is not only we human agents that act in ways which can be regarded as in some respects revelatory of a certain freedom. A second is the philosophy of perception. Vision has long dominated philosophical discussions of perception; but it is a sense which emphasises more than any other the separateness of subject from world. I should like to consider the benefits of focusing more on bodily forms of perception which are arguably more fundamental, and more widespread throughout the animal world, such as proprioception (perception of one's own body), kinaesthetic perception (perception of motion); and haptic (touch) perception, all of which tend to involve a much greater degree of embeddedness of the subject in the world. The third and final area is the philosophy of thought. Recent exciting work has suggested that the very structure of reasoning and thinking emerges from the detail of our embodiment. I aim to explore the consequences of these findings for our conception of the sorts of beings we are. The overall aim is to show, via detailed consideration of these three specific areas, how important it is, if we wish to know the truth about ourselves, to understand our humanity as a version of animality. However, it is equally important to avoid a reductive tendency which has thus far often dominated discussion of our animal nature. Thus, for example, it is sometimes suggested that since we are 'just' animals, we must find our basic motivations to be amongst the drives and instincts, lusts, power struggles, territorial disputes, and so on, in terms of which animal behaviour is often understood. By trying to show how some of our most distinctively human capacities are shaped by the fact that we are animals, but remain nevertheless unique to us, I hope to provide a different way of understanding what it might mean to insist that human beings are animals.