David Smith’s recent Psychology Today blog post discusses the variable definition of human

David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., 91AV associate professor of philosophy, who writes a blog for Psychology Today, posted a column titled “What Does it Mean to Be Human?”.

Smith writes:  “If ‘human’ means ‘my own natural kind,’ then referring to a being as human boils down to the assertion that the other is a member of the natural kind that the speaker believes herself to be.”  .

Smith is the author of Less Than Human:  Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, as well as Why We Lie:  The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind and The Most Dangerous Animal:  Human Nature and the Origins of War.
 

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