 never lost sight of: for even though he was misled by the faulty biology of Aristotle into believing that the fetus did not become an animal until several weeks after conception, he nevertheless insisted that the fetus acquired rationality at the same time as it became an animal. Thus for Aquinas, our rationality is part and parcel of our animality.) But Professor Kemp cannot argue in this manner, because he believes that being biologically human does not entail having the capacity to reason. On his view, rationality is something which can be tacked onto an existing biologically human animal. Thus Kemp’s proposed distinction between three concepts of humanity (biological, philosophical and theological) severely hampers the pro-life case – needlessly, I might add, since the very unity of human nature attests to the fact that our rationality and our animality both spring from a common source. It is one and the same “I” who reasons, chooses, senses, desires and obtains nourishment.
Let us return to the three questions I posed at the beginning of this post. We can see now that the supposition that the first rational man, Adam, might have had an identical twin (Brad) who was non-rational is an absurd one. If Adam had any non-rational brothers, then they must have been physically different from himself in some important way, making them of a different nature, as I shall explain in my next post.
We can also see that Cain’s hypothetical choice between starting a family with Brad’s biologically attractive but non-rational daughter Diana, and starting one with his rational younger sister Flora, poses a real dilemma, if we adopt Kemp’s perspective. For if Kemp is correct, Diana would have shared a common biological nature with himself. But from a strictly biological standpoint, it would be very silly of Cain to start a family with his younger sister instead of choosing another, biologically fit female from his tribe: Cain could not make a worse choice than to marry Flora. And yet Professor Kemp feels bound to accept that this is what Cain should have done, for he writes that any relationship between a rational human male and a non-rational female “would be incapable of having any personal dimension” (p. 232). Even so, Kemp cannot quite bring himself to condemn Cain for bestiality, for he writes that “The sin involved would be more like promiscuity – impersonal sexual acts – than like bestiality” (p. 232). Kemp’s half-hearted condemnation of Cain’s behavior in my hypothetical scenario is a direct consequence of his failure to recognize that any rational beings who appeared in the ancestral population of hominids millions of years ago must have had a nature that was different from that of their non-rational relatives. They were no longer the same kind of animal. Their relatives were hominids, but they were something more: they were human animals. I shall argue in my next post that the first rational human beings would have also been physically marked out as different from their hominid relatives, making any couplings between Cain and the non-rational females in his tribe extremely unlikely. A far more likely scenario is that any rational human beings such as Cain would have been booted out of their tribe, when they reached the age of maturity.
In this post, I have been chiefly concerned to argue that the concept of humanity is one which we rend asunder at our philosophical peril. Human beings are rational animals, and our rationality is precisely what characterizes us as animals, for our whole way of life, as a species, requires us to be able to engage in reasoning, as I shall argue in my next post.
On your first question, I answer “no”. And I see that is also your answer. In the light of that answer, the other questions make no sense.
I also agree to a fair extent, but not completely, with your analysis.
Our rationality is part of our human biology, not something separate from it.
See also Professor David Oderberg’s article, Concepts, Dualism, and The Human Intellect. Enjoy!
Pope John Paul II saw Thomas’ definition of man—a rational animal—as not fully adequate. He wrote his book, translated into English as “The Acting Person”, to amplify that which man represents: to give a fuller meaning to what man is.
Pivotal in this fuller description is the idea of “person”. I think it is pertinent here to ask the question: Was Jesus biologically human? Was he a rational animal? Or was he much, much more?
Traditional theology speaks of the hypo-static union, a union of Jesus’ humanity with his divinity. So, we have two natures united in one “Person” in the Person of Jesus. I think it good to reflect on this a bit. If, in Jesus’ “Person”—as the eternally Begotten Son of God—two “natures” can be united, then is it possible that in the “person-hood” of mankind, the animal nature and the spiritual nature are united?
Looking at all this from a different angle, “biological” animals—apes, dolphins, dogs, etc—have a kind of intelligence. Dogs, for example, can find ways to get at food. They employ strategies. So, as part of their animality there is also found a type, limited though it is, of rationality. To put what I’m getting at more forcefully, let me just say that I believe what truly separates us from the entire animal and plant kingdoms is our consciousness—that we are aware that we are aware. This is the central focus of the first 100 pages of Pope John Paul’s “The Acting Person”.
In the Divine dispensation of things, wherein, Christ will become all in all, a kind of summing up of all of creation in his sacred humanity, it would make “sense” (if you will) that the entire animal kingdom should be “summed up” in our humanity. Hence, I favor a kind of continuity of the level of beings, with man above the animal in a real and distinct fashion, but, still, at the same time, united to it. In similar fashion, then, our humanity, assumed by Jesus Christ, is united in his Person, so that he can be “all in all”.
IOW, I think it is entirely possible that there is a union of “natures” in man—with the animal united to, but yet distinct from, his spiritual nature, a spiritual nature that makes him self-aware, and that bestows upon him the capacity for freedom.
The Butch Throat: A Roundtable

E. GLASBERG

This Field Notes offering has its origins in a 2010 blog post on Junebug vs. Hurricane on the Butch Throat, that, having lived the strange half-life of the internet, has been revived and enlivened as a Roundtable topic at the April 2018 Pop Conference. At the suggestion of the editors# concourse.js 

[![NPM Version](https://img.shields.io/npm/v/@infrablocks/concourse.svg)](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@infrablocks/concourse)
[![NPM Downloads](https://img.shields.io/npm/dm/@infrablocks/concourse.svg)](http://npm-stat.com/charts.html?package=@infrablocks/concourse)
[![Dependency Status](https://david-dm.org/infrablocks/concourse.js/status.svg)](https://david-dm.org/infrablocks/concourse.js#info=dependencies)
[![devDependency Status](https://david-dm.org/infrablocks/concourse.js/dev-status.svg)](https://david-dm.org/infrablocks/concourse.js#info=devDependencies)

A JavaScript SDK for the Concourse CI API.

## Installation

```bash
npm install --save @infrablocks/concourse
```

## Usage

### Construction

`concourse` provides a client for interaction with the Concourse CI API. The 
client expects to authenticate using basic authentication credentials for a
particular team. To construct a client:

```javascript
import { Client } from '@infrablocks/concourse'

const url = 'https://concourse.example.com'
const username = 'concourse-client'
const password = '<PASSWORD>'
const teamName ='main'

const client = Client.instanceFor(url, username, password, teamName)
```

Note, `teamName` only needs to be provided for a Concourse CI instance with a 
version less than `4.0.0`.

The client does not yet have full coverage of all available API endpoints, 
(currently at 53% coverage) however that is the eventual goal. The methods 
currently supported are detailed below.

### `Client` Methods 

* `async Client#getInfo()` - Returns an object with server version information.
* `async Client#listTeams()` - Returns an array of all teams.
* `async Client#setTeam(teamName, options)` - Creates or updates the team with 
  name `teamName` according to the provided `options`. `options` can contain:
  * `users`: an array of strings identifying users that have access to this 
    team, e.g., `local:fred` or `github:bob`.
  