Actual final paper

“The uncanny goodness of being edible to bears”

• What is uncanny about being edible to bears?

• What does uncanniness mean to Hatley?

  • Not exactly inhumane, but unsettling.

“For predation turns out to be not so much inhumane as uncanny. To look into the eyes of a creature plotting to feed itself upon me is to find myself claimed in a way that is quite unsettling.”

But what does inhumane mean?

“Not the violation of a moral law, but to the sustaining of a natural order, in which our moral laws are not rendered null and void but found to be inappropriate to the situation at hand.”

Predation by humans is seen as inhumane due to the animalistic characteristics of it, “we speak of humans who sexually assault others as sexual ‘predators’, as if their inhumanity were entirely of one kind with the inhumanity of animal predators.”

Bears do not follow a human code of ethics, but they are also not human, therefore there is an exception made for them, which can be discomforting.

Why don’t bears eating people create a feeling of inhumanity?

Inference: Bears do render moral laws null and void as they may not understand them, and go by the natural order and their own code of ethics.

• What does he mean by being edible to bears?

Bears are one of the few predators that will hunt and eat people, but

• How does this differentiate from being edible to other animals (predation), what makes this unique?

• What evidence does he have to support that it is uncanny not only to himself, but to others?

How does Hatley’s account of human experience and bear experience interact with the problem of other minds?

• What is Hatley’s account of human experience?

• What is Hatley’s account of bear experience?

• Hatley is a human though, not a bear? What experience does he have as a bear

How can this correlate with the problem of other minds?

• Hatley doesn’t know what a bear is thinking, nor can we control them

• Trying to control them is futile, as is trying to grasp a hold on nature

• Through multiple examples, Hatley demonstrates how people fear the predatory behavior of bears on people, so they immediately make assumptions for their own safety, when in reality,

• Nobody knows what a bear is thinking, or what anoher human other than themselves are thinking.

• The problem of other minds can create anxiety, as it is uncontrollable.

• Similar to how predation is a deeprooted fear in humanity, so much so to the point of religion becoming involved.