I propose 3 topics, each with an exemplar:
- The elephant and her fallen calf (Q: does she later avoid that spot?)
- The macaque "aunties" and the fallen "old alpha" (Q: what was their behavior when the young tyrant died?)
- The bottle-nose dolphin and the camouflaged cuttlefish (Q: Do the dolphins look for "coral" which is not coral? Do they co-ordiante this search (lead and wingman) to detect cuttlefish fleeing/escaping the "deceived" predator? )
Additional topic: we are not the "naked ape" but the hominid who hides his pigment markings under mats and hides. Pigmented marks on the skin are the beginning of the human.
These topics seem to be more in the spirit of Jaspers and science than Heidegger and oracular obscurantism.
The fundamental question in instance 1) is whether we have only an observed object (the calf) and mere causally explained behavior (and not an emotion of distress and then loss and grief.)
The fundamental question in 2) is whether we are looking into an evolutionary appendix, a mere dead-end, and not a stage on the way towards culture.
The fundamental question in 3) is whether dolphins understand that some coral is in fact a cuttlefish disguised as coral (and only secondarily whether they are noting a mental representation of coral by the unlucky cephalopod - or if they are observing an inadequate misrepresentation - or if they are merely forming a belief - or merely handling inputs and producing output behavior? Can our understanding complement a causal explanation without undermining the marine science? [this as a response to Heidegger on the merely clever heliocentrism of the few astronomers]
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When Heidegger wants a "mere object" he invokes some Elefant in an Urwald of Indien and a complement of some chemical process on Mars. He does not cite some rare European Bison in the last pristine forests of Europe, east of what was then Poland nor the unseen workings of volcano or earthquake. Heidegger's forests are very German: free of productive deadwood, with forester trails and forester huts: he never cut his way through thick brush or portaged a canoe in wilderness (and there is no report of his ever being lost.) It was Celan who knew the botany. It was Husserl who kew the astronomy.
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