How Animals Think
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I don't think the problem is not recognizing the complexity of the animal mind, especially mammals. The problem is that we can't stop. Nothing has stopped humans in the past, and now feeling sorry won't change anything either. We can just hope technology will outgrow the pace of our need to exploit animals, because I don't think it will stop otherwise if we're realistic. We'll quickly recognize animal minds, and eat them without a problem, unless we get some lab steak.
The article doesn't put forward the idea that we should think more of animals for their sake; it's just saying that our understanding is factually incorrect.
There are many different views on animals currently, I personally think we don't have anything they don't just more of it- more complexity and nuance. This gap exists between any two species being compared (human vs clam, human vs dog, dog vs clam).
I'd like to believe that most atheists with some background knowledge in evolutionary biology would agree with me. I also think that different animals have very different levels of spatial reasoning, emotional, social intelligence, etc. Its multidimensional.
In short I don't think its fair to assume all people have a one dimensional, human vs animal POV. Plenty of people consider humans to just be other animals.
For example say my border collie can reason about as well as a 2 year old, perhaps he has the emotional intelligence of a 6 year old.
We never need to stop. But we probably should.
Just pointing out.
Wolves are social mammals in the first place. The creation of dogs amounted to deliberately taming and selectively breeding wolves who would understand ever-more-slightly humanoid social structures in place of their previous wolf social structures. Even now, a dog does not carry a fully human sense of reciprocity and equality, merely a very nurturing and cooperative concept of pack-structure.
(Actually, even now, most humans don't carry a fully human sense of reciprocity and equality. Most humans are more like the dogs than we care to admit in terms of which social structures we've trained them to understand: hierarchy and one-way domination over reciprocity and equality remain the human norm when we leave our armchairs.)
Since many animals are not even social mammals, I think it would take radical measures to instill them with a humanoid moral sense capable of reciprocity, and that brings on its own ethical issues.
If the animals would rather stay away, then I think we should not approach them on purpose with the intention of taming them, with the exception where they or their homes being targeted by other humans, for example pandas, and they have nowhere to go.
I've seen bulls, and they wouldn't mind knocking my eyes out with their horns if I stood next to their grass.
But with, say, cats, even when I was messing with her petting her fur the wrong way, she'd retaliate by making a noise and scratching me only lightly and mostly unharmed. The same gesture is not extended to guests.
Once during a chess game, she was watching us moving chess pieces move by move, and my cat, with her paw, moved a pawn side ways one step, matching the squares and lines of the board perfectly, even if the pawn could not legally move there.
I'd look into her eyes pet her fur, and she'd look back into mine, and pet my cheeks back. I'd talk to her and she'd meow back at me, sentence for sentence.
Oh and sometimes when she was trapped inside the house, she takes her dump in the shower.
There was a mind behind her eyes.
Whose morality? Why is contemporary Western-elite morality the correct morality? How can we evaluate different moral systems? What is our reference? What does progress mean?
I deny that moral feelings about animal exploitation have anything whatsoever to do with moral progress or any kind of objective moral superiority. It's simply 21st century Western-elite social norms that many would like to impose on the population at large. Since I like meat and do not feel the slightest moral feeling about eating it, I will do whatever I can to prevent that imposition.
> To feel guilt, an animal would have to have a moral capacity.
Morality is just herd instinct in the individual. Ergo, any social animal has moral capacity, though of course they probably can't reason about it in an abstract way. Humans have no special responsibility above other animals.
You probably agree that exploitation is bad. I don't see what makes animals lesser beings because they happen to be a different species than me. The argument for animal rights is a sturdy edifice. I don't have time to delve into that now, a simple Google search would quench any curious person's thirst.
Do you not believe in morality? Your argument seems to be, "Western ethics are only one way of thinking, therefore it can't be true." I believe we can uncover moral truths. The Western philosophical project has made great strides in this arena.
I'm basically reading an unapologetic cynicism in your entire post. I can't convince you out of that position. IF you don't believe in morality, and you don't believe humans have responsibilities above and beyond animals, then our conversation can't go much further.
Perhaps. Why is it wrong?
If your answer is "because I overwhelmingly feel that it is so", that is an acceptable answer, but it isn't something on which to provide a universally applicable truth, since many people now and throughout history have clearly not felt that to be so. It is, however, a fine example of the power of socialization.
> Do you not believe in morality?
I do not believe that there are moral truths.
There are descriptions of human social norms, of course, and any member of any society would be well-advised to follow the norms of that society if they value their own lives, freedom, or happiness, since social groups generally do not smile upon norm-breakers. I also suspect that some degree of in-group altruism is genetic.
> Your argument seems to be, "Western ethics are only one way of thinking, therefore it can't be true."
You are starting with the position "Western ethics are True. What is the evidence they are not True?"
I am starting with the position "I am skeptical of Western ethics. What is the evidence they are True?"
So for me, the fact that many moral systems (defined here as 'set of norms') exist now, and many, many more have existed throughout human history, and that each moral system was wholly believed as divine and irrefutable Truth by its adherents, who laid all kinds of logic on top of different unprovable and un-evaluatable (as Truth) axioms, is strong evidence that I should not privilege modern Western ethics as the special truth in the absence of other evidence.
> Those big questions you're putting up have never had universally satisfactory answers.
I am puzzled how you can make this statement, with which I agree, and then go on the say things like:
> I believe we can uncover moral truths. The Western philosophical project has made great strides in this arena.
One thing is true, or the other. From my analysis the Western philosophical project has made exactly zero strides in this direction, unless you count the discovery that there are no moral truths as such (which is not unique to the Western tradition, but has perhaps been best explained by it); moral truths are not like integers.
If we set up arbitrary values as axioms, we of course can introduce logic from that point onward. For example, if we set as an axioms "happiness is Good" and "suffering is Evil", we can arrive at something like the moral opinions you prefer:
1. Suffering is evil. 2. The exploitation of animals causes suffering (of animals). 3. Therefore the exploitation of animals is evil.
Unfortunately, because even our contemporary Western morality, as a messy product of genetics and millions of year of history, is inconsistent and fuzzy, we end up with moral "problems" under this system such as whether it is justifiable to redirect a train which will imminently kill ten people to a track where it will kill a single person and save the ten.
(Most) moral philosophers identify these areas of fuzziness and inconsistency by holding moral feelings as moral truth. That's why you can read a ten thousand word essay describing the logical reasons why it would be justifiable to kill the single person (generally it would minimize suffering, or maybe you throw in the sanctity of human life as an axiom) which makes a fine show of sound reason and then ends by saying "but it feels wrong, so never mind."
> I don't see what makes animals lesser beings because they happen to be a different species than me.
I don't believe animals are lesser beings. Humans are animals. I find no objective basis on which to grade animals by superiority. As far as we know, humans are the best at abstract reasoning, language skills, and tool-making, and many other things. That's well and good, but being smarter doesn't make you better. It makes you smarter.
That's exactly why I discount the idea that humans have "responsibilities above and beyond animals." They are animals, no better or worse than other animals. The idea that humans somehow have responsibilities beyond other animals seems to me to be incredible, egoistic arrogance, the implicit assumption that humans are better than (other) animals and therefore their social norms (one modern set of which ascend to the rank of Universal Truths) must rule the world.
Of course, humans would be probably well-advised to maintain things like biodiversity if they want to survive in the long-term, but that's a practical argument, not a moral one.
> I'm basically reading an unapologetic cynicism in your entire post. I can't convince you out of that position.
You absolutely can, if you can show me an example of an uncovered moral truth on which we can hinge the allegedly sturdy edifice animal rights.
We do this between ourselves. Everything we do to animals we do to humans, I guess except eating.
I'll have to read the book to see if De Waal addresses this issue differently - but there is one glaring omission here that seems to destroy the entire argument. Human language and internal thought (the infinite use of finite means) appears to be entirely unprecedented in nature. This ability appears to gives rise to our heightened creativity and ability to model and understand the world. It is usually the first thing mentioned when psychologists talk about a "special cognitive ability" or "secret sauce", so you would have to address it if you want to make a reasonable point here.
...a better way to think about other creatures would be to ask ourselves how different species have developed different kinds of minds to solve different adaptive problems. Surely the important question is not whether an octopus or a crow can do the same things a human can, but how those animals solve the cognitive problems they face
Humans can solve problems beyond those faced in their immediate environment for survival purposes - that is the key mystery that causes us to compare other animals to ourselves. Sure, we should strive to understand the ways in which an octopus solves the problems it faces, but there is nothing wrong with asking how close it is to our own abilities in this regard.
The other day, the theory that dolphins might have an evolved language was discussed - a highlight was the fact that word frequency in dolphin whistles follows zipf's law [1].
I'm not saying they do, but I'm curious. If it turned out that they actually possess the ability to use language, and can even think in it, do you think would you be willing to accept that we are not inherently special?
Is coherent thought magically human, or does it simply emerge from high level abstraction and complexity?
As far as thought emerging solely from high abstraction/complexity, I think that is probably wishful thinking. It seems more likely that a specific kind of brain architecture is required for these abilities to arise. Complexity/abstraction may be a part of that architecture, but our brains do not seem to be much more complex than chimpanzee brains, so there is likely some sort of wiring or other structural component that gives rise to our unique capabilities. The anthropologist Ian Tattersall has written about some of these issues extensively.
Although it is clear that human language is unique and appears much more developed than any animal communication system observed in nature, no one knows what exactly property of language makes it unique. Indeed, infinite use of finite means, or syntactic structure are often put forward as candidates but syntax and generativity have also been observed in bird song. We simply don't know what the defining feature is that sets language apart from animal communication systems.
Similarly, we can't identify the unique cognitive ability that differentiates us from other animals. Since, as De Waal points out, humans are genetically speaking very close to our nearest sibling species, and we simply don't understand what precisely makes us cognitively different from, say Bonobos, the standard assumption should not be that we're somehow gifted with very special cognitive abilities, but that animal cognition is much more similar to our own cognition than is often assumed. Rather than studying where animal cognition, especially in genetically related species, resembles human cognition, we should be studying where it differs from human cognition.
Keep in mind that anatomically modern humans have only been around for two hundred thousand years, and the explosion of human culture only happened around ten thousand years ago. Not a lot of time for massive evolutionary changes.
We can point to behaviors that are unique to us. Since these behaviors must have some cognitive basis, they can serve to tell us how different we are. There is clearly a reason that no other animals understand abstract math or build rockets that fly into space. We simply haven't seen any evidence of other animals creating new knowledge and explanations using internal, rational thought in the way that humans do.
The original point of my post was simply to suggest that there is, in fact, a "psychological secret sauce" that makes humans different from other animals. We don't yet understand the nature of this secret sauce, but this should not preclude us from doing the things that De Waal wants to do: to understand animals on their own terms and avoid treating them like "defective adult humans" simply because their brains are different.
> Rather than studying where animal cognition, especially in genetically related species, resembles human cognition, we should be studying where it differs from human cognition.
I am unaware of any scientists that think we shouldn't study where animal cognition differs from human cognition. There is no reason to favor differences over similarities, they can both give insights.
The book Adam's Tongue delves into this. The author distinguishes "Animal Communication Systems" from languages by their linguistics. There are several things that you can isolate in human languages that you never see in animals, though some animals, like bees, come close.
Finally, he presents a hypothesis of how language might have evolved in humans in the context of savannah scavenging. The thinking goes that scavenging an elephant after it dies requires extremely rapid cooperation, because the window of opportunity is a few days at most.
My feeling is that you're never going to be able to find one thing that separates us from animals, that looking for that one thing is bound to fail.
http://www.amazon.com/Adams-Tongue-Humans-Made-Language/dp/0...
So when I got to this, "a psychological secret sauce—that makes humans different from other animals. The list of candidates is long: tool use, cultural transmission, the ability to imagine the future or to understand other minds, and so on. But every one of these abilities shows up in at least some other species in at least some form."
I had to bail out. No other species has a true persistent language. Yes, bits and pieces are here and there -- there's no doubt animals communicate, sometimes even about complex things. And there very well be some sort of oral history. But true language in the way we use it? (Insert long discussion here about what that means)
Nope. So this article comes down into the "modified booster" category: it's so amazing and special simply because we don't understand it all
I honestly believe that what our species needs is a sliding scale of sentience. You can call that a ladder if you want, but no matter how you do it? I'm not going to eat a monkey, but I'd eat a cow. Or a fish. Somehow we need to sort that all out, and whether that involves a complex web of indicators or not, the result is going to be a sliding scale, like it or not.
I really have no idea "what it's like to be a cow."
What fact, theory, or experience convinces you that a cow's life is significantly less sentient than a monkey? (I'm genuinely curious.)
Beats me. I've given it some thought, and I could speculate.
My point was to separate that part out, though. Acknowledging that there must be a scale is the first step. Once we go there, then we can start talking about what goes into producing one. Some folks don't even want to go there (as this article implies)
Being conscious, in my mind, is the ability to observe information and change your mental model of the world based on it. If that definition works, then animals are certainly conscious.
Perhaps sentience is the ability to do that as a community, over time, and about abstract concepts. Monkeys might be able to locate new sticks in their environment, use them to spear fish, and pass that to their offspring. But they couldn't formulate a theory of virtue over several generations. (At least I don't think so) Perhaps that definition is a starting point?
(Just trying to provide you with some kind of answer)
Or, maybe we can come up with a general ordering of sentience, such that we can say that a bumblebee is quite definitely below a baboon, but still, ethical questions will involve picking some cutoff—and that will be arbitrary, contentious, and creepy.
It seems somewhat likely to me that if we manage to quantify or understand sentience across species, we would find it unsettling. What if rats, cows, and pigs all turn out to be well past the hump of vivid awareness, such that killing them really is extinguishing a life quite similar to a human's?
Fortunately there's a lot of good vegan recipes out there...
Or what about the opposite? What if consciousness is very rare, and that just because something acts with complex behavior doesn't mean they are experiencing?
- Perhaps some humans aren't even conscious, being merely symbolic engines running on a large cultural dataset. It would certainly explain a segment of the population that has never made sense to me.
- Perhaps children aren't yet conscious. I know that I don't remember anything before the age of 4. Maybe I wasn't actually aware yet, being only a biological automaton until a flip was switched in my brain.
- Perhaps animals are conscious, but don't experience a joy sensation, only a hunger/need/pain sensation. In that case, nothing we could do would help them.
- Perhaps animals are conscious, but don't experience a pain sensation, only pleasure -- their reaction to pain being merely instinctual, without actually being felt by the animal's consciousness. In that case, nothing we could do would hurt them.
When you're dealing with consciousness there is no way to know. We can't move the locus of our awareness inside another creature to see if it is also experiencing., or in what ways.
If you believe that the future of any intelligent lifeform is to evolve into some form of machine intelligence, and it's obvious that machine intelligences can communicate complex ideas in blinding fast speed -- in parallel channels? Plus live tens or hundreds of thousands of years? Compared to that we're like mayflies, popping into existence and back out in a blink of the eye, doing nothing more than buzzing around. Hell, that's not just true of individual humans. Our entire species might look like that.
Want the answer to Fermi's Paradox? There it is. How much time are you going to spend today trying to observe and understand a individual gnat?
If we accept that animals are conscious, the amount of laws we'd have to put in place to protect them would very likely have lasting detrimental impacts on the quality of life for the world's poorest peoples.
Given that we know humans to be conscious, I think we must err on the side of protecting humans first and foremost, even if that means to the possible detriment of other potentially conscious entities.
Neural networks aren't conscious. Consciousness requires that a locus of ego experiences sensations of qualia.
Just because something is intelligent doesn't mean it is conscious.
I believe strong AI is going to solve this question over the next several decades.
Consciousness cannot be unaware.
Given only a limited set of inputs in a limited space, (e.g. r, g, b, a channels in a jpeg image, and a limited set of filters to separate cats from monkeys), modern neural networks are hardly aware, so they're hardly conscious.
I believe you are making the edge case here, simply because that's where our technology is.
The alternate position is that given a rather larger set of inputs, over a rather larger space, an intelligence could appear to outsiders as being as conscious ans sentient as they are, even though what we're talking about "under the hood" is some simulacrum of sentience, not sentience as we humans experience it.
This is the "if a computer plays chess as well as a human, is the computer really playing chess? Or just mechanically moving things around?"
My point is that with some larger solution space, the question doesn't matter anymore.
The question still matters ethically. If they're not aware, should we put their rights over the rights of humans? Probably not, no.
E.g., If AI is seemingly intelligent, but without consciousness, we wouldn't want to give them a right to self defense.
If I look at something and it has quality A, is it any different to me than if I look at another, fake thing, that also has quality A?
If every way I examine it, it is the same, is it not the same? At least to me?
We are entering the realm of the unknown, perhaps the Great Unknown. Here we cannot reason. It's not rational. It's not irrational. It's trans-rational.
Sidebar: I'll note that you mention consciousness. There is a strong reason why I attempted to define consciousness ahead of sentience. The latter is dependent on the former. Both definitions are controversial.
ADD: It occurs to me that some kind of religion and alien contact are intractably linked, both from our side and from the other side. Interesting.
What purpose would having this hierarchy serve? To justify which animals you can eat? Despite many of the other comments, eating animals is outside the scope of this article and should take into account more factors than animal sentience.
> I had to bail out.
If you had stuck with the article a little longer, the reviewer would place de Waal's argument as directly counter to yours, although too long to quote in entirety:
De Waal explicitly rejects the idea that there is some hierarchy of cognitive abilities. Nevertheless, an implicit tension in his book shows just how seductive the ladder-of-nature view remains. Simply saying that the “lower” creatures share abilities with creatures once considered more advanced still suggests something like a ladder—it’s just that chimps or crows or children are higher up than we thought. [...] As de Waal recognizes, a better way to think about other creatures would be to ask ourselves how different species have developed different kinds of minds to solve different adaptive problems.
But it may be that some particular evolutionary pressure or circumstance is required to get our kind of intelligence (ie the problem is demand, not supply). It's been argued that exchange (trade) supplied that pressure. It requires intelligence, and therefore amplifies the value of intelligence.
So, when corvids start to exchange, just wait a few million years, and we'll have some homegrown alien intelligences.
If this hypothesis is true, other species might not necessarily display 'our kind' of intelligence, even given time, because they are in different contexts than ourselves, and introducing a single phenomenon (say, trade), is then unlikely to produce beings who think similarly to ourselves.
It's hard to know how different or in what way without a decent sample size.
But the similarity I anticipate is our reflexivity, we can think about ourselves, our actions, our plans, others - even about thinking. We have an ability to abstract that is lacking in animals, and it would be pretty obvious if they had it because it's so useful, Though surely some species or individuals have its beginings or precursors - it just hasn't taken off yet.
This reflexivity/abstraction reminds me of the Chomsky formal language hierarchy. Regular expressions are very useful but less powerful than context free grammars. And once you get to recursively enumerable, anything is possible. A similarity is that each non-terminal in a CFG generates a language, and can be used to define other languages - each is a level of abstraction.
BTW I'm partial to the idea that spiders may be the next intelligence, as the brain-body ratio is off the chart (because they're small, yes...). But they aren't social.
tl;dr I disagree with the article that other animals' intelligences are not less, just different. We have something better. Though it won't always be so. Of course, there are many other facets of our intelligence - our long term memory, motor skill memory, working memory, language ability, visual processing etc - that we are very strong in; I think mostly the best. It's hard to know how important they are to "our kind of intelligence" (which I think there is a clear definition of, given above).
I buy that. It follows logically. Similarly the argument that we're the dumbest possible creatures that are still able to create science and that it doesn't mean our level is some kind of hard intelligence limit - it's just that at some point we've reached the necessary capabilities that allowed us to start a secondary, much faster evolutionary process - that of technological advances.
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/dennett_anim_csness.ht...