Natural species and cognitive anthropology. Conclusions

We have briefly touched on the beginnings of evolutionary anthropology, which sought to write the history of the human race since the emergence ofhomo sapiens, and the confusion that surrounded it: evolution (in the Darwinian sense of natural selection) understood as progress, and the conviction that the events of human history, including inventions, are merely the continuation of selection - an obvious category error with far-reaching repercussions, since it contributed to discrediting for a long time afterwards any naturalistic approaches that might have been undertaken in anthropology. But also the quarrel between "monogenists" (heirs of the Enlightenment, insisting on the psychic unity of the human race and anxious to show that the different human groups, present and past, share the same origin and therefore constitute a single species) and "polygenists" (ready to argue that certain peoples, such as the Australian aborigines, for example, are not, in essence, human in the same way as Europeans, arguments used at the time to justify the enslavement or elimination of indigenous populations). Then came the "culturalist" reaction of anthropology: the "diffusionism" of F. Boas, justified at the time in the fight against racialist ideas, which, instead of classifying the different cultures into a general system, proposed treating each culture as a unique conjuncture of historical events to be appreciated as such; or the analyses of M. Mead or R. Benedict, for example. Mead or R. Benedict and the Chicago School, refusing any generalization that would lead to talk of a human "nature", but giving greater weight to literary accounts and evocations than to works whose scientific reality could be guaranteed. It's worth noting in passing that those who were ready to embrace cultural relativism were also those who took for granted the bipartition between the sciences of the mind and the sciences of nature (following Dilthey), the former not being able to claim the same kind of scientificity as the latter. When, in the twentieth^century , certain philosophers (H. Putnam) questioned this bipartition, as well as the distinction between "explaining" and "understanding", we gradually shifted paradigms and tended to return to the validity of the divide between nature and culture. We then recalled the "structuralist" moment (Lévi-Strauss), when language was identified as the "common ground" that escaped a fundamentally constructionist reading of phenomena, the increasingly assertive abandonment of the sterile nature-culture opposition (Héritier, Descola), and the "cognitive" turn, with, on the one hand, Piaget's work on the cognitive development of the child (which reintroduces the mind, not just on the basis of its various illustrations in different cultures, but as a common denominator, understood on the basis of its general capacities), and on the other, N. Chomsky's work on the "modular" model of the mind. Chomsky's work on the "modularist" model of the mind, which serves as a reminder that we can't approach what is characteristic of the human species by leaving innate predispositions at the door. A number of fundamental misunderstandings have arisen from this history. The rejection of a cognitivist approach to the human species is linked, on the one hand, to the (well-founded) terrors inspired by sexist or racist "arguments" and, on the other, to the supposedly exceptional status of the human species, which would legitimize the special status of the social sciences vis-à-vis more typically natural sciences such as biology (Bloch, 24). The question, then, for a cognitive anthropologist - and the essentialist is faced with the same kind of difficulty - is "whether recognizing that genetic factors influence cognition necessarily opens the door to racist or sexist views" (Bloch, 25). With regard to the first source of "terror", we started from the distinction proposed by Appiah between racial theory, or racialism, and racism: "racialism is the doctrine that the physical, psychological and cultural characteristics of each race are interrelated and mutually determined by a distinct set of heritable traits and tendencies constituting a racial essence. A racialist doctrine may not be racist, as it is theoretically possible to argue that a racial essence exists without arguing that races constitute a hierarchy of moral status. On the other hand, any racist theory is racialist" (Bessone, 2013, 47). Then we recalled the reasons why racist "arguments" (focusing on differences between races) are not racist (Bloch, 2013, 25-27), that members of the species Homo sapiens are descended from a small group of genetically fairly homogeneous individuals, that we all resemble each other much more than we differ from each other, that the genetic differences that separate men and women are minute when compared to similarities ; that there is, to date, no uncontroversial evidence that sexual differences have psychological implications, and that, even if there were, there would still be significant differences within the sexes, and large areas of undifferentiation (Baron-Cohen, 2003 [39]). And it goes without saying that, as in the case of races, the existence of these differences cannot justify discrimination or differential treatment (Bloch, 28). Turning to the second and most important source of social and cultural anthropologists' hostility to anything that tends to suggest that cognition might have an innate basis, we first recalled what this stems from: a basic difference between humans and other animals, which would make them so dissimilar that it would be pernicious to speak of the animal nature of humans(Homo sapiens is unique). The transmission of information from parents to children (both bodily and mental characteristics), in almost all living species, is essentially carried by genetic and environmental elements. But the human species is the only one to have advanced forms of communication and cooperation - language, "culture", history - which transform human beings far more profoundly and rapidly than can the genetic differentiation of populations (Dawkins [40], Sperber [41] or Dennett [42]). Human cognition involves genetic inheritance, learning, contact with the environment and what individuals communicate to each other. The fact that what is passed on to us from other individuals plays such a large part in what we become makes our history a very different process from the history of other species. Similarly, the uniqueness of the human brain makes us in some fundamental respects quite different from other animals. But, on the one hand, this does not mean that the human species is the only one in the animal kingdom to be a species apart: all species (plants, animals) are in their own way. On the other hand, the development of the human brain certainly makes human history a different story within the history of species, and there is a differentiation between "cultures" that underpins the legitimacy of disciplines such as social and cultural anthropology, and justifies always appealing to the historical and social environment, the context in which people live; but the mistake (often made) would be to conclude that no genetic or environmental element shared by the whole species plays a relevant role in our cognition, that human beings have become non-biological beings, beyond the reach of natural processes. When it is said that essentialist arguments are merely a cover for racist and sexist intuitions or prejudices, there is an "implicit psychology underlying cultural and social anthropology, which remains unexamined" and requires close analysis (Bloch, 33). Doubts have therefore been cast on the ability of a culturalist and constructionist reading of human history to explain what makes the human species so special among other animal species, and why it also remains, in good times and bad, a natural species on a par with other animal or natural species. To the thesis that would see, for example, a blank slate in the child's mind on which to build a personality that would be the sole fruit of cultural learning, we have opposed the thesis (cf. Chomsky, Dehaene) in favor of the existence of certain innate modules or predispositions relating to certain characteristics in the brain (language areas). Recent neuroscientific research shows that very young children possess a sophisticated understanding of the world: the ability of newborn babies to recognize faces, abstract and identify people; knowledge of the mental laws of physics, which suggests the existence of a "naive physics" module (Spelke [43]) or "naive psychology", which would explain our ability to "read" the minds of our fellow human beings. This is further evidence that the human mind is much closer to that of other animals, and that humans may share some of these innate predispositions with other mammals. But just as, in the realm of natural species, there is no difference other than degrees between the mineral, the organic and the living, so, too, what the modularist hypothesis would highlight is the fact that what constitutes the identity of a species - and this does not apply to properties of physical nature alone - is indeed a set of dispositions. There are certainly capacities, such as the ability to understand another mind, that can be considered specific to the human species; but we mustn't overlook the way in which, on the very level at which cognitive mechanisms are set up in certain non-human animals, iteration (metacognitive) phenomena operate that can already manifest the presence of a certain form of normativity. Once again, we must be wary of strict and inoperative dualisms between nature/culture or norm/nature, and focus instead on the problems that link species to species, bearing in mind that the human species is also an animal species. At the end of this examination devoted to the metaphysics of natural species, we have proposed three conclusions and a few avenues for further investigation. To the first question - do the groupings we make between things correspond to real divisions in nature, or do they merely reflect classifications made, as Locke suggests, by the work of the understanding? - The answer, based on the model of dispositional aliquiditism, is that the situation is undoubtedly more complex than that which would force us to opt for a nominalist reading, let alone a radically constructionist one; but it's also more complex than the one that, by a backlash, would lead us to defend a form of metaphysical realism, whether in the form of a realism of universals, or in the form of a radically intrinsic essentialism, such as that which some advocates of the essentialism of natural species still wish to defend today. By emphasizing the importance we should attach to the dispositional character of nature, which can be read in the form of largely relational properties and causal powers, linked together according to mechanisms governed by laws understood as conditional necessities arising from these properties, we wanted to emphasize that the articulations of nature are not the purely arbitrary or random product of mere accidents or conventions, and that, for many of the species we observe, as soon as we simply open our eyes, they do indeed correspond to an objective foundation in nature, and that we discover them far more than we invent or stipulate them. So Leibniz has been vindicated rather than Locke. Thus, Kripke and Putnam are not wrong to remind us of the extent to which the semantics of natural species forces us, firstly, to take a fresh look at an overly descriptivist conception of the way in which we analyze the reference of these terms ("water", "lemon", "tiger", etc.), secondly, to understand that the semantics of natural species is not just a matter of discovering them.); secondly, to understand that the theoretical identifications we may make, for example, when we declare that "water is_H2O", although they presuppose an empirical discovery, a posteriori, may well be given the status of necessary truths. There's an important lesson here: the fact that truths are a posteriori is not, in itself, an admission of radical contingency, as we still too often tend to consider. The history of science no doubt teaches us that such theoretical identities are more complex than Kripke and Putnam invite us to believe, but this does not make them purely arbitrary statements subject to the Kuhnian knife and the accusation of incommensurability, if only because it is possible to give another reading to the concept of "molecular structure" or "internal structure" than the one to which they invite us, notably by reflecting on a form of extrinsic rather than intrinsic essentialism. This is a profound lesson to ponder, both semantically and metaphysically/epistemologically. Hence a second observation: the model proposed for achieving metaphysical knowledge of natural species presupposes that room is made for a certain essentialism, narrow or aliquidditist, fundamentally inspired by a conception of essence as irreducibly indeterminate and dispositional. This model is intended as a response to the inadequacies of both the overly static model still used by Duns Scotus, and the model used by essentialists such as Kripke, Putnam and Ellis, which, as we have seen, tends to reduce essence to a modality of the necessary. To give the essence of a thing is not simply to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions that make it a member of a species or group. It's about being able to give criteria for the thing's identity, the only criteria capable of guiding us towards what constitutes its intelligibility. Aristotle and Locke were not wrong to insist on this. Does this mean that, to be intelligible, natural species must have an essence? That's what the Aristotelians (Lowe, Oksenberg, Devitt) think. For our part, we'd like to point out two things: essentialism today, at least if we wish to put it to the test of empirical science, cannot be understood purely and simply as intrinsic essentialism. It is the great merit of the new biological essentialism to make us understand this, which insists so much, and rightly so, on the relevance of essentially extrinsic and relational properties and concepts for the definition of species and the constitution of models able to account for them. Relational aliquidistime can be part of such an approach, while retaining an explanatory value that relational essentialists do not carry to the end. Secondly, it is important to pay close attention to the important distinction between essentialism applied to the species and essentialism applied to the individual, particularly in the case of biological species and, a fortiori, species that involve the concept of "human species". As we've seen with the human species in particular, while it's true that there are more differences of degree than of kind between the species that populate our environment, it would be absurd to underestimate the specificities of each of them: while the human species in particular is indeed an animal species, it also differs from it in a number of ways, not least in its own mechanisms for transmitting knowledge. Thirdly, we need to be extremely cautious about the methods and models we use if we are to achieve a genuine metaphysical understanding of natural species. This vigilance must apply in particular to the prejudices surrounding the terms we use, to inoperative dualisms between nature and culture, but also to clichés about essentialism. All too often, this term is used as a scarecrow for sparrows, and as a vehicle for a necessarily reactionary and conservative ideology. It would be remiss of us not to make the necessary distinctions, especially when it comes to analyzing the driving forces behind "psychological essentialism [44] ". To put it another way, denouncing prejudices and biases is all well and good - indeed, it's essential - but taking the measure of a posture that is sometimes just as ideological as the one being denounced, through rigorous, methodical work, both conceptual (philosophical) and empirical (particularly in cognitive or developmental psychology), is not bad either. And we need both, rather than pitting them against each other in sterile battles. Methodological prudence therefore calls for an attitude that could be called "pluralist" - but there is pluralism and pluralism: a certain pluralist temptation today is often no more than the mirror image of a form of pyrrhonism and, to put it bluntly, cowardice: philosophy is commitment. Pluralism is a healthy method, but at some point you have to be able to say where you're going, otherwise epistemic virtue soon turns into epistemic vice. For our part, then, at least at this stage of the investigation, we are moving towards a form of nuanced realism concerning natural species.