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UBC : IS+H : Lecture 02 : Raymond Corbey

179 Views Length: 38:52 Raymond Corbey, "Human unicity: primate research as an arena for philosophical controversies" :

This paper compares and contrasts human-sciences with biological approaches to human behavior. The idea of the specialty or unicity, in nature, of… Raymond Corbey, "Human unicity: primate research as an arena for philosophical controversies" :

This paper compares and contrasts human-sciences with biological approaches to human behavior. The idea of the specialty or unicity, in nature, of "symbolic man" in ethnology has contributed a great deal to the disciplinary identity of ethnology and the human sciences in general. Human behavioural biology, in a reverse process, analyses the behaviour of humans in the same terms as that of animals; its disciplinary identity is the exact opposite of that of mainstream cultural anthropology. The application of insights from recent research on primate sociality and morality to the human primate has provoked sharp protests from ethnologists, and from many philosophers as well. The goings-on at this workshop will be contextualized as another chapter in the unwilling retreat from notions of human unicity in several disciplines since the eighteenth century. More