Authentic
Anthropocentricity Yields Sustainability in Application
Seven years before The Origin of Species, Darwin's ideological presumption, the sheer
anthropocentricity of his stance, are mocked in advance.
The heavenly song Gloria in excelsis Deo, heard on the night of the Nativity and chorused down the ages at Mass, provides a twofold criterion: theocentricity - "Glory to God in the highest" - as well as
anthropocentricity - "Peace on earth to men of goodwill" - the latter being subordinate to the former.
It is true that one can avoid reference to the experimental arrangement and the touch of
anthropocentricity connected with it by taking refuge in an abstract 'natural' environment composed of objects describable by quantum mechanics.
This approach is intended to minimize
anthropocentricity and supplement rather than replace existing conceptions of consciousness.
It is probably due to the salience of the two domains (the first one through the egocentricity principle and the second through the
anthropocentricity principle--the good/bad dichotomy characterizing human existence) that the greatest number of compound verbs have been retained and are still used.
Through a certain
anthropocentricity of interests we are likely to choose an organism as similar to man as is consistent with experimental convenience and control.
Although I have already rejected action-guidingness and
anthropocentricity as marks of a blend concept, on grounds of both underinclusiveness and overinclusiveness, I do not deny connections between blend concepts and behavior and between blend concepts and sentiment.
However, there is a more sophisticated form in which the anthropocentricity objection may be pressed.
To exhibit the basis of this difference, let us go back to the non-trivial form of the anthropocentricity objection, namely the claim that the agency approach implies that in possible worlds in which agents have different powers from those they possess in the actual world, different causal relations will obtain.