{"id":1031,"date":"2019-01-06T01:11:15","date_gmt":"2019-01-06T01:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=1031"},"modified":"2019-01-06T01:11:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-06T01:11:15","slug":"descartes-error-and-animal-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/06\/descartes-error-and-animal-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Descartes&#8217; Error and Animal Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stevan Harnad: <b>&#8220;Descartes&#8217; Error and Animal Identity<\/b>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/humanities\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/95\/humanities_publiclife_conf_2016_program-UPDATE.pdf\">4pm, Thursday 22 September, Dawson College<\/a>, Montreal <\/p>\n<p>(part of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/humanities\/humanities-and-public-life-conference\/&#65279;\"><b>Humanities &amp; Public Life Conference: <i>Thinking About Identity<\/b><\/i><\/a> 19-23 September)<\/p>\n<p><img width='279' height='200' border='0' hspace='5' align='right' src='\/~totl\/skywritings\/uploads\/eyes1.jpg' alt='' \/><a href=\"http:\/\/192.168.62.113\/~totl\/skywritings\/index.php?serendipity%5Baction%5D=search&amp;serendipity%5BsearchTerm%5D=descartes\">Descartes<\/a>\u2019 Cogito \u2014 \u201cI think therefore I am\u201d \u2014 was supposed to guarantee that humans exist: \u201cI must exist because I am thinking.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>But how do I know I\u2019m thinking? Because it <i>feels like something<\/i> to think. And I know I\u2019m feeling something when I\u2019m feeling something. <\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s <i>feeling<\/i>, not thinking, that matters. In fact, it\u2019s the only thing that matters. There is no right or wrong in a feelingless world. Things just happen. No joy, no sorrow, no mind\/body problem, no self or other, no identity, or identity crises. <\/p>\n<p>Descartes also thought that (nonhuman) animals don\u2019t think: that they are just feelingless robots. They have no identity. <\/p>\n<p>I will try to show how very wrong he was about that, and how very much Descartes\u2019 error matters \u2014 for the animal victims&#8230; as well as for every decent human being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stevan Harnad: &#8220;Descartes&#8217; Error and Animal Identity&#8221; 4pm, Thursday 22 September, Dawson College, Montreal (part of Humanities &amp; Public Life Conference: Thinking About Identity 19-23 September) Descartes\u2019 Cogito \u2014 \u201cI think therefore I am\u201d \u2014 was supposed to guarantee that humans exist: \u201cI must exist because I am thinking.\u201d But how do I know I\u2019m &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/06\/descartes-error-and-animal-identity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Descartes&#8217; Error and Animal Identity&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}