Animals think, therefore...
economist.com
economist.com
While we shouldn't simply assume animals have minds, what we have tended to do instead is just as bad: assume they do not. In the West, Descartes famously declared animals are automata. Safina shares this quote from Voltaire in response:
``` Voltaire disdainfully called out Descartes’s contradictions of logic, even referring to him and his followers as “barbarians”: “What a pitiful, what a sorry thing to have said that animals are machines bereft of understanding and feeling,” wrote Voltaire. He continued: Is it because I speak to you, that you judge that I have feeling, memory, ideas? Well, I do not speak to you; you see me going home looking disconsolate, seeking a paper anxiously, opening the desk where I remember having shut it, finding it, reading it joyfully. You judge that I have experienced the feeling of distress and that of pleasure, that I have memory and understanding. Bring the same judgment to bear on this dog which has lost its master, which has sought him on every road with sorrowful cries, which enters the house agitated, uneasy, which goes down the stairs, up the stairs, from room to room, which at last finds in his study the master it loves, and which shows him its joy by its cries of delight, by its leaps, by its caresses. Barbarians seize this dog, which in friendship surpasses man so prodigiously; they nail it on a table, and they dissect it alive in order to show the mesenteric veins. You discover in it all the same organs of feeling that are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the means of feeling in this animal, so that it may not feel? Has it nerves in order to be impassible? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature.
Safina, Carl (2015-07-14). Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (pp. 79-80). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition. ```
I would say that humanization is a prerequisite for treating anything humanely (and the inverse is true as well, see: dehumanization). IMO, the primary reason animals do not have a chance is because they are not universally (or sufficiently) humanized. This could be in large part due to our grossly insufficient or oversimplified understanding rather than intentional malice.
The fact that we don't treat actual humans humanely is an orthogonal issue.
Ultimately, it may not be that things that are sentient have inviolable rights; it may be that we simply draw a moral circle around ourselves and if you're close enough in the circle, you're protected; if not, you're not. There may be a good historical reason for that; there's anthropological evidence that our early ancestors shared the planet with creatures who were a lot closer to them in both look and behavior than anything living today and that were competing fiercely and in a zero-sum style for overlapping resources. It's not a large leap to imagine that our developed morality therefore accounts for creatures with every bit the cognitive capacity of your own that you cannot coexist peaceably with for risk that they'll end you and your entire bloodline by out-competing you.
Whether that's the way we should approach the world (in a modern era where our species dominates the planet's resource allocation and is threatened by functionally zero complex organisms) is a reasonable question; it may very well still be a framework that describes morality for a great deal of the planet's population.
So there's not much point to saying we should treat animals humanely by driving humans extinct.
If you didn't, why not?
Here's a more detailed breakdown for you: http://www.adaptt.org/killcounter.html
Also, is there a definition of 'level of cognition' that you can give which encompasses fish, rats, birds, etc. (everything on the link you provided), and does not include ants?
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism
The key is - "as far as is possible and practicable". It's entirely reasonable and quite easy to adhere to a plant-based diet, whereas avoiding stepping on ants is an impractical goal which detracts actual steps you could do to reduce harm.
Of course, there's no reason for veganism and your concern for ants to be mutually exclusive. Take Jain monks as an example.
> Jain monks and nuns represent the ideal of Jainism. These men and women try to separate themselves from the everyday world. They are not allowed to kill any living creature. They carry brooms to sweep all surfaces to avoid crushing insects accidentally. Monks may not own any property except a broom, simple robes, bowls for food, and walking sticks.
"…when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs: Then thought I, if you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you. So I din’d upon Cod very heartily and continu’d to eat with other People...”
It shouldn't matter. Whether 7 billion people all kill and prepare their own animals, or most of them outsource it to the few running the meat industry, it's more-less the same amount of animals killed, for the very same purpose.
I submit that we would be much less sanguine about meat if we were more involved in its consumption than, "purchase, remove shrink-wrap, heat."
To quote one of my favorite sci-fi books:
"The difference between raman (human-like aliens) and varelse (mere animals, with whom we cannot relate) is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have."
Let's not put our year 2015 Western ideas of 'right and wrong' on a pedestal as the objective moral truth. They may not have your understanding of right and wrong, but they do have an understanding of right and wrong.
To quote Nietzsche, morality is just herd instinct in the individual.
It's no coincidence that though human moralities have differed incredibly - you have everything from total pacifism to an obligation to perform ritual sacrifice on other human beings - it pretty much always reflects, to greater or lesser degree, the basic principle of in-group altrusim, which is probably genetically encoded at some level. (Interestingly, in the past few hundred years, Western societies have made the "in-group" increasingly inclusive. Perhaps we will one day include animals more than we do.)
Animals, particularly more social animals, certainly have 'moral' instincts (that is, a herd instinct.)
Instinct and thought are not opposites, they're just gradations on a scale.
Right, and I suppose I wasn't terribly clear in my wording, but I intended to communicate that all (or, most) animals have some sense of right and wrong, it's just that I believe we are capable of having a more "nuanced" one. Which, in my view, indicates that our actions should be held to a higher standard than that of animals. In the same sense that a person with mental disabilities that commits a crime might be held to a different standard than the average person, animals should be given some slack for similar reasons.
Anyway, I essentially agree with you, and I advocate for the idea you mentioned, of increasing the inclusivity of our ethics.
Secondly: our technology allow us a variety of diets and ways of life that the animal primitive way of living does not.
This does not mean you should be vegetarian. I am, and I would certainly not enforce it on anybody. But if you take the decision to be veggie or not, it should be from the perspective of a modern, educated human in the context of our science and society.
Oh, come on. The behavior of a hyena should totally be taken as normative for humans.
All too often people fall into the trap of viewing humans as distinctly separate from all other animals and not simply at one end of a continuum of development.
But industrial farming is just horrific.
Really? I grew up in the country and I had friends who raised pigs and cows. Those animals had it way better than the typical factory farm.
I hope that with progress on synthetic meat this whole industry will go away.
To be honest, that's a valid road, though fraught with the peril of declaring certain classifications of human non-person. There's evidence suggesting, though, that morals are a lot more about survival of our instinctual identification of "species" than they are about the inviolable rights of other sentient organisms (i.e. "Sure that cow has thoughts, but it's not a PERSON, so eat up").
The cannibalism question may become a bit more complicated in a future that holds the potential of carefully-monitored and maintained cloned muscle tissue from a donor cell culture that is itself never hooked up to a brain. ;)
Mind you, I'm not sure what the correct answers to some of these questions are. Maybe in a few hundred years we will find eating meat obnoxious after all. But I don't think the issue is as clear-cut as your comment implies.
By the way, now that you mention obligatory carnivores... another issue is that I don't think we can really sustain ourselves without killing animals one way or another. Agriculture starves animals by destroying natural habitats after all.
This is an appeal to nature logical fallacy. Animals in the wild also commit infanticide and practice cannibalism. As natural as these behaviors are, they're not an instruction manual for how we should behave.
> I don't think we can really sustain ourselves without killing animals one way or another.
This is technically true, but we can drastically reduce the number of other sentient animals which suffer and die for no good reason, by switching to a plant-based diet.
> Agriculture starves animals by destroying natural habitats after all.
Animal agriculture is especially egregious when it comes to destroying natural habitats. The leading causes of rainforest destruction are livestock and feedcrops (source: FAO Livestock's Long Shadow), for example.
From a physiological standpoint we are omnivores, and this is not a sin. Lots of other animals are omnivores also.
You would have to define self-awareness further for it to be useful as a rule.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language#Limitations...
Please correct me with a source if you find the above paragraph to be untrue.
PS: I still have a pipe dream that we will discover that orcas can ask questions.
Animals feel, communicate, imitate, take decisions, actions, play, eat, sleep, run from dangers, do all kind of stuff.
But thinking?
Before answering this question seriously, a definition of thinking should be in place. Dualists traditions such a christianity have attributed souls (although not immortal souls) to animals. Having a soul (the article goes the brain-is-the-mind path) clearly involves having mental states, no doubt about that. Being God's creations, animals deserve a good treatment, to touch on the ethical side of complex issue.
The simple fact the animals can see, hear, smell, etc. implies phenomenal experiences (as David Chalmers, among others, calls them). There is no science yet to explain them but there're there, for the simple reason that we experience them and they look familiar to what we do when we experience them.
But thinking? I believe a proper definition of rational thinking involves the ability of having articulate language. I don't know of any animal species capable of that. Sounds? Yes. But sentences with truth value? Anyone?
The danger here is to project our abilities into a small set of faculties animals have and say, look!, we're no better, we're no different.
Our thoughts are inextricably linked to and shaped by our senses. Sight and vocalization dominate for humans and your thoughts center around those sensations.
But what the hell do I know, I'm just a dog.
Well, Keller wasn't blind and deaf from birth. John McCrone wrote a popsci book on the subject of mind, The Myth of Irrationality, in which he proposes that conscious thought (as distinct from intelligence itself) is literally talking to yourself and essentially nothing more. Keller is a topic of one of his chapters, and he points out that she had some formative exposure to language pre-loss, while examples of humans born deaf and blind don't seem to have the same success.
Yes, there's a danger of personifying animals. But there's also a tendency for us to picture ourselves as special (Geocentrism being the obvious example).
>> But there's also a tendency for us to picture ourselves as special
I get this a lot. First, there is no reason to exclude the possibility that we are indeed special. There are arguments against our exceptionality, as there are in favour. We can't dismiss that from the beginning.
This isn't a very robust argument, because it can't handle the "I have no mouth, and I must scream" scenario.
"The danger here is to project our abilities into a small set of faculties animals have and say, look!, we're no better, we're no different."
I think the greater danger is to project our definition of what it means to "think" onto animals, and say, look! they're stupid, thoughtless creatures we can do with as we like.
What amazes me about cats is that they alter their method of communication to better fit humans. Cats don’t meow amongst each other or even with other types of animals; it’s something they do exclusively for our benefit. Not only do they realize that instinctual feline communication isn’t effective with humans, but also that humans are very dominantly vocal creatures and thus, if they are to successfully communicate they must be vocal. Perhaps I am too strongly projecting my human experience on these creatures, but this behavior reminds me of how a human might react if dropped into a society with entirely different modes of communication from his own, and as such suggests some level of cognition.
'Cats may be exploiting “innate tendencies in humans to respond to cry-like sounds in the context of nurturing offspring" ' ( https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17455-hungry-cats-tri... )
Anyway, whoever thinks that animals, specially mammals, don't think or have feelings need to interact with them more.
They coexist here with us, often treating us as peer beings in this world. It is remarkably like how I would imagine a human handling a similar scenario.
There is more to cats cognition than we often give them credit for. I suspect this is true of many animals. I just have an affinity and what I consider deep understanding of cats. This runs deep enough for me to see the persona in them, not just personify behavior they demonstrate.
We should refrain from ethical judgements before having a clear understanding of what we're talking about. To understand requires a clear definition for every term we're using, either if we're very generous with animal mental faculties or we're not.
A range of animals also have complex language skills, and or use tools which imply significant levels of cognition.
EX: http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/innovative-fema... , but chimps have also been known to make and use weapons and warfare.
PS: I would avoid redefining an existing word that with a similar meaning for what you’re describing as it muddles your argument. Replace your specific meaning with say 'Pogo Stick' and it becomes clear when you mean that specific thing vs the more commonly understood definition.
Anyway, I liked the article, it's a great overview of what is known.
Just because scientific findings disagree with the conceptual framework taught in philosophy degrees doesn't make them wrong.
> I believe a proper definition of rational thinking involves the ability of having articulate language
Counterargument: http://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html
The inability to think of a word , I think, is evidence that not all thought requires words.
But maybe that isn't entirely conclusive.
Animals do this too. They plan, and socialize, etc...
Heck, cows have been demonstrated to have besties!
My daughter collected plushie toys, which the cat liked to take and shread. One day, she had enough. The cat took one too many and she raged! I watched as the two of them went from room to room.
The cat totally understood she meant to do it some harm. And it knew why too.
I'll avoid too much detail, but the end game was in her room. Door closed, her and the cat matched up. She would go over the bed, cat under, she would go one side, the cat the other... perfect zero sum game, and it ended with her on the bed, the cat on the other end, both eye locked, intent!
She had that torn plushie, yelling, the cat watching intently, tail moving slowly...
Truth is, at her age, she could not actually get that cat, and he knew it. When they both arrived at that realization, there was "the talk" as described.
That cat never took another plushie, and they bonded closely over the next few months, having come to a basic understanding, I'll add as beings, people.
Of course, I observed this all with great interest and would have put a stop to any real harm, but for those two, it was as real as it gets!
She was maybe 7, the cat 2 or three.
In terms of basic intelligence, factoring out higher order language and other human capabilities, they were pretty well matched. The cat could totally read her, and she the cat. They both were planning, reading the other and responding.
This was one of the more interesting animal, human interactions I've ever seen. She was vocalizing and gesturing with that plushie. The cat was also vocalizing and using body language, its face and tail to carry out its end of the argument.
She later reported to me the result. The cat knows which plushies are OK. She would designate one or two, and the cat would not mess with the favorites.
A lot of social animals use complex languages. Do a mute person think? have feelings?
"The danger here is to project our abilities into a small set of faculties animals have and say, look!, we're no better, we're no different."
I want to argue the opposite. If your pet looks like have feelings and thoughts, if you see how its behaviour is congruent with curiosity for instance.
why do you decide to discard the most obvious hypothesis and decide to create a new category for them?
And whatever your reasons, why not to do the same for your neighbour? After all, how can you be sure that your are not projecting?