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Mead, Joint Attention, and the Human Difference

the struggle between the parties bent on inflating humanity’s selfconception and those bent on deflating it continues. Mind, consciousness, soul, reason, free will, language, culture, tool-use—all have been invoked as the unique character of the human, some deriving from Judeo-Christian religion, others from classical philosophy and modern anthropology. Opponents, sometimes motivated by ethical concerns about the treatment of animals, and buoyed by scientific advances in animal and especially primate studies, have either deconstructed these traits or ascribed them to nonhumans. Seeking to block human exploitation of nonhuman species, they argue that humans are not “exceptional” and possess no “cognitive module” separating human cognition from that of our closest nonhuman relatives (Booth; Fouts and McKenna; McKenna; Fesmire). The attempt to draw such a distinction is seen as the remnant of a Victorian mentality, its species-ism continuous with human social domination.1 In the opposite corner, any discussion of human animality or Darwinism is taken to be threatening. This is an example of a subtle, complex problem made more intractable by moral and political inflammation. Certainly our conception of nonhumans has implications for how we treat them, just as all our notions of political rights of and ethical obligations to humans rest on some distinction of humans from nonhumans. And concern for the value and ethical treatment of other animals, in reaction against their conception as value-neutral resources for our use, is certainly legitimate. But surely we can justify ethical treatment of nonhumans without accepting anthropomorphism on practical, ethical grounds; presumably we can treat a being decently without insisting on its likeness to ourselves.2 For a blanket denial of human distinctiveness is troubling. What would it mean practically for humans to treat other species “equally” or with “equal