What is it to be human?
Debate presented by the Institute of Ideas
at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature,
Cheltenham, UK, 11th October 2002.

and

What is it to be Human? What Science can and cannot tell us
By Kenan Malik
London, Academy of Ideas, 2001
ISBN 1-904025-00-5, paper, 53 pp.

Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
School of Art, Media and Design
University of Wales College, Newport
Caerleon, Newport NP18 3YH, UK

pepperell@ntlworld.com

This panel discussion, chaired by Tony Gilland of the London-based Institute of Ideas, brought together four writers to discuss aspects of "What is it to be human?" – the same question that titles a collection of essays published by the Institute in 2001. The publicity blurb for the event couched the question of our indeterminate humanity in terms of genetic science and posthumanism, and the various panel members responded, at least initially, by addressing our biological nature.

Steve Jones, the eminent geneticist and author of The Language of Genes, pointed out with his usual good humour that it was not useful to define humans in terms of their genetic makeup. Besides the fact that humans and mice both have approximately 30,000 genes, we share 40% of our genes with bananas. Launching an immediate attack on the discipline of sociobiology, which understands current human behaviour as a consequence of our evolutionary past, he dismisses the enterprise as "the ponderous affirmation of the bleedin’ obvious". At best it’s able to tell us that older men are often attracted to younger women, or at worst it introduces the concept of "duck rape" to account for certain sexual behaviour among ducks. In fact, he went on, biology, and genetics in particular, can tell us very little about what it is to be human, concluding "what makes us humans is that we’re not animals".

Sue Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine, addressed the question of what makes humans unique by reaffirming her thesis of imitation. For her, what defines us is our "copying machinery"; that is, our capacity to imitate the behaviour of others, which allows behavioural practices to spread amongst communities or species. As is well known, she regards such imitative behaviour in ‘memetic’ terms, as quasi-evolutionary replicating units, following the introduction of the concept by Richard Dawkins. Humans, she said, are unique in being able to harbour and spread memes, and our complex social organisations are a consequence. She then went on to expound the other thesis for which she is well known, the "illusion of self", which follows from the ideas of Daniel Dennett. For Blackmore, the idea that we have a specific, centralised sense of our own existence, or even a consciousness, is a delusion, partly caused by our acquisition of memes. These delusions do not mean, she went on when challenged later, that we do not have a Self or a conscious life, but simply that these things are "not what they seem". She concluded with the admission that she is "utterly baffled" by what it means to be human.

Kenan Malik, who wrote "Man, Beast and Zombie" as well as making the major contribution the "What is it to be human?" book, offered a more humanitarian and philosophical view. He rejected what he saw as the recent conceptual shift which stresses the continuities between humans and the natural world. He argued that the rejection of the idea of humans as something special made for bad science and bad politics. Humans are in the special position of being able to make moral decisions; in effect we are "self-conscious moral agents". Further, we are uniquely subjects and objects who can shape our own destiny. If we follow the pessimism inherent in "anti-humanism" (by which he may have meant posthumanism) we will lose many of the valuable social impulses that drive progressive science and politics.

Novelist Maggie Gee disagreed with Steve Jones’ assertion that we are not animals. She was keen to insist on the primacy of our animal nature, and was then led to ask, "What is the nature of the human animal?" For her, humans are "intelligent, dexterous and dangerous". We are inherently dissatisfied with the limitations of our physical bodies, and this causes us, with our capacity for intelligence, to act on the world so as to make lasting changes. She characterised the human condition as an on-going and ever-repeating banana skin joke — we are always tripping up. She pointed to the vulnerability of humankind; we are apt to get things wrong and make mistakes on a global scale. We specialise in "mad, blinkered obsessions", the example of US policy of pre-emptive self-defence being a case of "mad reason".

During questions from the audience, Sue Blackmore’s memetic ideas came under scrutiny, not least because they imply a lack of personal responsibility if, as she claims, we are just "replicating machines" in which memes largely determine our behaviour. Steve Jones offered the most authoritative and damning indictment of the memetic thesis, at the same time pursuing one of his "few remaining pleasures", that of "annoying Richard Dawkins". He cited an occasion when he looked up the term "meme" on Google. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were a large number of hits. But when he did an equivalent search on the Web of Science, the global index of scientific papers, it revealed just 37 hits, of which only two referred directly to the "biological meme" theory.

"What is it to be human?" was one in a series of debates staged by the Institute of Ideas in response to the eponymous publication, which includes contributions from Matt Ridley, Kevin Warwick, Maggie Gee, and Anthony O’Hear. A previous event at Institute of Education in London, called "A Posthuman Future" featured Francis Fukuyama and Gregory Stock discussing the implications of Fukuyama’s recent publication of a similar title, "Our Posthuman Future". But despite the event’s title, and the publicity blurb for the event in Cheltenham, there was virtually no mention of the word posthuman from the panel members, the chair or the audience at either debate. One suspects that, regrettably, posthumanism may be being employed by some as a sexy promotional tag without much serious consideration of its ramifications. I, for one, regret this appropriation, and hope that posthumanism will not be reduced to a general anxiety about one aspect of biological research.