I have a review of Ashley Shew’s Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge, over at the Social Epistemology Research and Reply Collective: “Deleting the Human Clause.”
From the essay:
Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge is Ashley Shew’s debut monograph and in it she argues that we need to reassess and possibly even drastically change the way in which we think about and classify the categories of technology, tool use, and construction behavior. Drawing from the fields of anthropology, animal studies, and philosophy of technology and engineering, Shew demonstrates that there are several assumptions made by researchers in all of these fields—assumptions about intelligence, intentionality, creativity and the capacity for novel behavior…
Shew says that we consciously and unconsciously appended a “human clause” to all of our definitions of technology, tool use, and intelligence, and this clause’s presumption—that it doesn’t really “count” if humans aren’t the ones doing it—is precisely what has to change.
I am a huge fan of this book and of Shew’s work, in general. Click through to find out a little more about why.
Until Next Time.