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These Truths: A History of the United States

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Jill Lepore
Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore is a distinguished professor of American history at Harvard University, known for her expertise in American history and literature. Born on August 27, 1966, she has made significant contributions to the field with her extensive research and publications. Lepore's work often focuses on the intersection of history, politics, and culture, offering insightful analyses of American society and its development. more

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“Reason is evolutionary, in that abstract reason builds on and makes use of forms of perceptual and motor inference present in "lower" animals. The result is a Darwinism of reason, a rational Darwinism: Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature. The discovery that reason is evolutionary utterly changes our relation to other animals and changes our conception of human beings as uniquely rational. Reason is thus not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.”

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“Eine zentrale ethische Idee ist die Forderung, möglichst viele unserer eigenen Thesen, Entscheidungen und Handlungen zu begründen und auch von unseren Mitmenschen Begründungen für deren Thesen, Entscheidungen und Handlungen einzufordern. Wir sollen in das Spiel des Gebens und Forderns von Gründen eintreten. Beispielsweise sollen wir nicht einfach je nach unseren unmittelbaren Präferenzen, Leidenschaften und Wünschen durch unser Leben trudeln, sondern uns Konzepte eines für uns guten Lebens machen, die wir vor uns selbst und vor anderen begründen können. Wenn wir uns fragen, welche Art von Person wir sein und welche Art von Leben wir führen wollen, dann muss die Antwort konsistent (= widerspruchsfrei) sein und argumentativ gut gestützt werden; denn sie sollte einer gründlichen Kritik standhalten können. Das ist der sokratische Standpunkt.”

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“Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding. In summary, reason is not, in any way, a transcendent feature of the universe or of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.”

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Book:Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
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“Reason is not "universal" in the transcendent sense; that is, it is not part of the structure of the universe. It is universal, however, in that it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way our minds are embodied.”

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Book:Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
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