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Paleoanthropology and the Foundation of Ethics: Methodological Remarks on the Problem of Criteriology by Mathias Gutmann; Michael Weingarten is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Paleoanthropology and the Foundation of Ethics: Methodological Remarks on the Problem of Criteriology about?

In scientific contexts, human beings are usually categorized as such based on certain stated or implicit membership criteria, i.e., a criteriological framework. Thus, reference to humans as such always raises the seemingly empirical question of which traits should be considered "typically human." Common approaches to this question reveal certain methodological shortcomings. First, the complex grammar of human activities is reduced to an impoverished system of traits, characteristics, and features of biological constitution, and second, the argumentation of criteriological approaches relies on potentially problematic animal-human comparisons. A methodologically sound alternative can be provided by developing a more adequate, semantically dense set of concepts in the first step, building on distinctive hallmarks of human existence, namely human work and other activities. From this perspective, the nonhuman-to-human transformation takes place not just within nature (viz. "first nature"), prior to culture (viz. "second nature"); instead it is accepted that we already need to apply our knowledge of human activities in order to explicate "natural transformations" toward a state of being

Author

Mathias Gutmann; Michael Weingarten

Publisher

Springer Berlin Heidelberg : Imprint: Springer

Published

2014

Language

EN

ISBN

9783642278006