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Articles

Carpal Knowledge

Raymond Tallis on the natural philosophy of the caress. It’s gripping stuff!

We humans are unique and cannot be fully explained in biological terms. So, at least, I have argued in several books, against various brands of quasi-scientific reductionism. We are explicit animals who do things deliberately, in a way that no other animal does. Our actions, however concrete, typically make sense only with respect to a framework which incorporates many layers of abstraction. Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, which advance biological explanations of human behaviour and society, are barking up the wrong tree.

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