Horses with Four Legs

There is a logic that some people use that I find strange. It goes something like this: If everything is or has X, then X is unimportant. So for example if, as some scientists claim, everything is or has consciousness, then consciousness is unimportant; that is, you cannot use it to make any claim about an entity, such as what it is like or to which category it belongs.

I have a standard response to such complaints, so when a student recently protested that my claim that everything has agency was irrelevant because the ubiquity of the characteristic made it useless for any kind of taxonomic sorting, I replied: All horses have four legs. Does that mean the fact that a horse has four legs is unimportant to understanding its nature?

My point is that we should focus on our similarities as well as our differences. Such is the politics of our times, however, that it is difference that is celebrated over similarity. So while I see clear differences among human beings, nonhuman animals, plants and stones, I also see clear similarities. And if this blog is about anything it is about noting and celebrating those similarities.