Page 16 - Contribution To Phenomenology

REFLECTION ON THE CULTURAL DISCIPLINES 9

as "science of the human'' but as "science as done by humans," without,
however, going very far into the question of just which non-humans might
engage in the practice of science.) Those of competence and good will
can learn to express and comprehend any of the mentioned expressions
with the proper signification, but if the referent of the expression is
considered, then a broader qualifier is called for.
It has proven difficult to define the common subject matter of the
class of disciplines in question if they must be construed as addressing
aspects of specifically human life and the objects, the situations, and
indeed the worlds that life of that sort relates to. Efforts to define what
is specifically human have not been encouraging. The most popular
current view has humans as the language using animals. There are
problems with this. Studies of the great apes show a capacity for
language at least comparable with that of young humans. If language is
the difference, one must then deny that the latter are human or include
the former in the class thus defined. Going further, would human infants
less than a year old be not human if they had no genuine linguistic
comprehension? As prominent as language is, particularly in the lives of
intellectuals and academics, it appears not to differentiate the human.'
Other attempts concerning technology or equipment-using have also
not been successful in marking off the human from the non-human.
Many animate of non-human species use tools. Chimpanzees plainly make
tools. Actually, if the focus is removed from relatively small and movable
equipment, such as hand tools, then the fact is that birds and gophers
not only live and rear young in nests and holes but also construct them.
These can then be considered practice-specific equipments. (Whether
objects need to be artifactual in order to be equipment is an interesting
question, but regularly built objects are readily discerned.) Concerning the
building and using of nests, etc., one may then distinguish between
behavior that is learned and behavior that is instinctual. The latter
emerges in the same form regardless of the parents and group in which
an individual is raised and the former can vary enormously under such
conditions. A useful initial definition of "culture" is "learned behavior"

' In "Social Theory and the Second Biological Revolution" (Social Research,
Vol. 57 (1990)), Alan Wolfe appreciates a wealth of previously thought exclusively
human traits now recognized in subhumans but fails to clarify what "meaning" is or
how there is a difference in kind rather than degree regarding the meaning
producing, the meaning attributing, and the meaning interpretation in humans.