Naturalism = nature is all there is and humans are not special. Human consciousness, including reason, is an illusion.
From Joshua Mayo at First Things:
Take the burgeoning subfield of Animal Rhetorics, where theorists now use Aristotle and Derrida to study non-human communication. Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) collaborators are calling on scholars to recover “rhetorical theory in a cross-species context” and transcend “western religio-philosophical traditions that encourage anthropocentrism.” Say nothing of the helter-skelter philosophy that this enterprise represents. The academic agenda is explicit: The humanities ought to move in a non-human direction.
Most people who care about higher education have a handful of similar stories, projecting a dismal forecast for the liberal arts. There are certainly enough of them to go around. Whether it is Whitmanian web-surfing or canine elocutio, these anecdotes lend some dark humor to our present prospects. We laugh, but it is the pained laughter of a Samuel Beckett audience. Welcome to Endgame U, students. Your professors are Drs. Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell.More.
Of course animals communicate. But they don’t use reason (conveniently a dead category, right?).
You thought it was all a joke. Progressives didn’t. And you will be compelled to support any number of adventures that cannot in any sense be serious disciplines.
The main beneficiaries, apart from the profs fronting this stuff, are students who do not need to learn actual arts disciplines which, take it from someone who has been there, were – at one time – a lot of work. – O’Leary for News
See also: Mock at your peril! Naturalism is a jealous fraud
Are apes entering the Stone Age?
Nearly 50% Americans now think humans arenot special