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Paper short abstract

In the Anthropocene, humans are considered the sole intentional driving force of ecological change. Non-human animals, instead, remain driven by their DNA and subjected to natural selection. For understanding ecological change, this contribution argues, all animals should be granted intentionality.

Paper long abstract

In mainstream evolutionary biology, non-human animals are considered to be without intentions. Scholars like Richard Dawkins (2009) consider them to be driven by their DNA, which pre-inscribes their behavior from birth and determines all their actions. Humans, however, are exempted because – in contrast to other animals – they are assumed to behave intentionally. Human biological exceptionalism has a long tradition in evolutionary theory, going back to Alfred Wallace (1823–1913), who believed humans’ higher mental faculty enabled them to escape natural selection.

This paper argues that this reasoning – mistakenly! – informs current understanding of the Anthropocene. As the name suggests, it assumes humans to be the sole intentional driving force of ecological change. Unlike other animals, humans are not subjected to natural selection, can escape predestination, and are capable of altering the future shape of Earth. This reasoning bears a close resemblance to Kant’s Copernican revolution of the human mind as the epistemic center of the universe; yet, in the Anthropocene, it is the human body, its intentions and actions, that is at the center of universal change.

Drawing on insights from ethology and multispecies studies, this contribution argues that for understanding current ecological change and destruction, the Anthropocene poses a conceptual deception that amplifies human exceptionalism and reduces other animals to meaningless clumps of matter that passively react based on their genetic disposition. This contribution argues for a conceptual counter-Kantian revolution, by decentering humans as the radiating sun in the center and granting other animals intentionality, too.