Language and radical anthropocentrism: the view from the supercategory

Abstract

The article critically engages with the posthumanist discourse on anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism. It adopts an “integrational” approach to signs, language, and communication, as outlined in the works of Oxford linguist Roy Harris. Integrational linguistics is committed to a demythologized view of “language,” which it considers to exist only as part of the experience of human individuals and human collectivities. From an integrational point of view, language is not an “object” of scientific inquiry, but a complex of human activities that make such an inquiry possible in the first place. This paper argues that posthumanists falsely ascribe language to animals and to hypothetical extraterrestrials. Based on Harris’ concept of the supercategory, it is shown that the worldviews encapsulated in science, history, and religion only make sense because they are human worldviews. No other intelligent life could grasp the various supercategorical discourses, and how they relate to each other, the main reason being that language is a uniquely integrated mode of human communication. The article thus supports a radical anthropocentrism as the only intellectually viable philosophy on which to draw in our reflections on, and inquiries into both intraspecies and interspecies communication.