Frans de Waal’s book Mama’s Last Hug (2019) is so far very good. It’s good not because I agree with him, but because he has the balls to take his viewpoint to its logical conclusions. Which is: if humans are just animals as he claims, then to attempt to differentiate ourselves is to engage in what he calls anthropodenial.
I like this word “anthropodenial” because it encapsulates what I’ve been referring to in earlier posts, only it’s the opposite side of the debate. His contention is that we derive scientific truth by assuming we are animals. My contention is that the scientific establishment has been running off a long-held fallacy, which I have called Copernican Fundamentalism (which is too pejorative and should probably be retitled to something like “Copernican Effect”) where one believes that the only way to scientific truth is by rejecting the privileged position of humans, the earth, etc. De Waal would probably agree, since this is called the Copernican Principle on his side, but my goal is to spell out its glaring faults: the Copernican Principle has led us on a wild goose chase trying to trace the origins of language and violence. It’s failed miserably at both. Now it’s driving the creation of AI. It will be even more miserable.
When I present my theory to most people, sometimes there’s a knee-jerk reaction against it, since I’m violating the Copernican Principle by drawing a strict difference between humans and all animals: humans have Recursive Object-Based Aggression (ROBA) which is a hardware feature that allows for a neural circuit loop that animals simply don’t have. This circuit generated by ROBA produces grammatical language (Merge), the use of which self-domesticates us over time (via NCC inhibition) to help us better use language. Very simple. I’ve just given you Synthesis II.
Chimps can only come close to Merge with object-based intimidation, but these neural axions can’t reach the combat zone of the brain. Close to Merge is like a battery terminal being close to the battery. It’s still not a circuit, no matter how close it is to closing. Teach a macaque to use a screwdriver and her axions will reach other parts of the brain, but they won’t reach “combat.” Perhaps the thumb allowed these axions to join object-usage and combat in our brains. Once these joined, ROBA resulted, which was the Unoptimized combat scene that spelled instant death for everyone, so the brain folded quickly to resolve this, like an ulcer or a sore that’s constantly under physiological repair. Language is the immediate and built-in result of ROBA.
This hardware difference between humans and animals is as clear-cut as it gets (and has never been announced in any science book I know of), but many will still grumble against it, attempting to find exceptions. The Copernican Effect can be seen here: even though there are no instances of ROBA in animals, and therefore no instances of grammatical language, adherents of the standard model will still reject my ROBA Hypothesis.
The Copernican Effect is, mechanically, the same thing as a divination scheme. We see such a scheme among the Azande. E. E. Evans-Pritchard wrote about how they would farm poison from a creeper which they turned into a paste and administered to chickens to determine whether one is guilty or innocent of witchcraft, adultery, etc.
Before the use of this poison oracle (which they call Benge), they used the rubbing board oracle, 3-sticks oracle, and other methods, but these can be manipulated with appropriate payments to the person administering them. Benge, however, cannot be manipulated. It has its own person, without gender. There are elaborate ways to test whether Benge is being “biased”, whether it’s too weak or strong, and whether it should be spoken to at all. If the poison is wrong, it is thrown away. But if the poison tests well, then the Benge can be used. All legal institutions among the Azande began to revolve around the Benge. The Benge cannot be wrong. One can use Benge to find out a witch, and he must pay with spears. The Benge was once used to pronounce death on witches, but the British stopped this. Still, this did not reflect negatively on Benge. The Benge remained true. The administrator of the Benge is the problem. If the adminstrator uses Benge to declare war, so be it, but the blood is on his hands, not on Benge. Benge cannot be at fault, because the oracle is god.
“Superstition!” we all say. But the divinatory scheme we have chosen in the western world is the Copernican Principle. It was confirmed with Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. Many great zoological and botanical theories emerged, but many human theories that sprung from it were disastrous. Galton used it to create Eugenics. Hitler’s Aryan cosmology was toothless without it. Galton and Hitler were completionists who were unique in thier willingness to take the Copernican Principle to its logical extremes. But like any divination scheme, like any smart religion, the Copernican Oracle has a fail-safe mechanism which dictates that any problems with the system are due to the person administering the oracle. Because the oracle simply must be correct. Because the oracle is god.
If you fail to use the Copernican Principle to divine scientific truth, and if you assume humans have a unique or privileged perspective in the universe, then your findings are inaccurate at best, possibly illegal, or evil. If you do not use the correct oracle, then your findings, even if they are confirmed true by all logical and empirical standards, are illicit because you did not use the approved divinatory method.
I would love to see an end to the Copernican Oracle.