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"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Animal Intelligence
8/16/2007 09:54:42
From the Chronicle, yet another sign of evidence that the consensus about the uniqueness of human intelligence is breaking down. Very soon we will be in a very different world from the Hegel and Descartes, who were able to take it as axiomatic that animals lives in utterly unconscious, unreflective, unreasoning worlds altogether.
The movement goes in two directions. First, it comes in what is being learned and surmised about human intelligence. The work of Antionio Demasio, for instance, has offered fresh demonstration of the integral relation between the "higher" reasoning functions of the brain and the "lower" emotive ones. The one cannot quite function without the other. Philosophically, Dan Dennett has been teaching us for some time (I just had a lovely time reading Consciousness Explained on a bus ride back from New York) that there is actually no necessary correspondence between how we perceive our minds to function subjectively (phenomenologically) and how they physically work on the scale of brain operations. That is (as science fiction works like The Matrix dramatize), consciousness may as well be an illusion, albeit a potentially self-justifying one. That is, Hegel, "reason" doesn't appear to be all its cracked up to be. We are just wired, at times, to think it is.
The second direction, of course, if from the study of animals themselves. Since the beginning of domestication, undoubtedly, people have had some inkling of animal intelligence. But as it has turned out, such intuitions have a high likelihood of being mere anthropomorphism - people imposing illusions of humanness on animals. As scientists have tried to be more careful about this, however, the results are actually quite remarkable. A number of animals, both in mammal and bird groups, have demonstrated clear, laboratory evidence of representational thinking, computation, visual memory, and rudimentary language. Not to mention, for instance, other formerly solo homo abilities like empathy, ritual, culture, murder, and peacemaking.
Philosopher Thomas Nagel has famously pointed out the important fact that just because animals are intelligent doesn't mean the intelligence is anything like what people experience (see his article "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"). And that, actually, is what makes the whole thing so interesting. Human "reason" is not a universal reason, but a particular inlet into processing activities. It seems to me still beyond doubt that humans have outdone other animals in our ability to comprehend and harness the more Platonic Reason (or natural laws) of the outside world. But this success by no means assures us that intrinsically we are any more reasonable than anybody else.
When I was a kid and learned about slavery, I would try to put my mind in the place of a slaveholder, a person who could think that slavery was an orderly and acceptable way of things. Then I was forced to ask myself: what in our world that we take for granted is like slavery, something that we will someday know to be abominable. Of course there are a few candidates that people offer: abortion, nuclear proliferation, the death penalty, and of course animal cruelty. But of course, think to the circumstances of slavery: the practice became abolishable only once the Industrial Revolution had occurred. Only then did substantial ideologies emerge that were willing to appreciate the full humanity of Africans in the United States.
Does a full willingness to confront the evidence of animal intelligence similarly rest on economic grounds? Must we wait, perhaps, until we have found a way to synthesize foods that answer our craving for meat? There seems to be a powerful Marxian system at work here, where the mode of production generates the ideologies we are willing to buy in to. (Marx, by the way, followed Hegel almost verbatim in his disregard of animal reason.)
re: - 8/19/2007 08:56:27
Posted by Eli
So so important, Nathan - about the role of technology and the mode of production to influence how we think (and how we eat). Just look at the number of vegetarians who say they'd be vegans if only it were easier to grab a quick slice of vegan pizza on the run.
Perhaps an unstated current in your thinking (as in mine) is that if animals are similar to people, then people of course must be similar to animals - which may have implication for how we view ourselves as over-and-above this world, or part of it.
re: - 8/21/2007 13:36:16
Posted by Eli
I'm back. I really like your slavery analogy. I think one day we may feel similarly about universal healthcare, i.e., that access to care lies at the very basis of freedom. We'll then shake our heads in bafflement at how long it took us to figure that out.
One more thought: The research you mention on animal intelligence may signify a break in the way that animal rights activists tend to think about "sentient" creatures. An animal's moral standing does not depend on rational ability, but on his/her/its capacity to experience suffering. For what it's worth, I recently saw that idea attributed to Jeremy Bentham’s 1789 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Chapter 17).
re:the roots of animal rights - 8/22/2007 09:59:45
Posted by nathan
I've seen the argument phrased in terms of suffering a bunch of times, and it seems like the most coherent out there, but I am kind of suspicious of it. It may be the way we end of phrasing the issue in the long run, but I don't think that factual recognition of animal suffering will do the trick. Anyone who has seen an animal die knows obviously that they suffer. This is nothing new, wherever we place consciousness. It seems to me that the grounds for agreement on issues like this (like slavery for instance) are a bit stranger and more convoluted. They are wrapped up in economics, sexuality, and the shared values of the community, not scientific recognition of moral imperative.
That's why I think that the only way for recognition of the suffering to occur will be when the economic and cultural dependence goes away. When meat-tasting food can be synthesized and becomes fashionable. Then the ethical explications of our decision will follow, grounded in the intuitive sense that needless, wasteful mass slaughter is pretty ridiculous.
For these reasons, actually, I would phrase the growing recognition of animal consciousness as, not a cause, but a symptom of a culture that in some segments (urbanized scientists unconnected from agriculture for generations?) is beginning to lessen its dependence on animal cruelty.
There is a great article on the absurdity of all this, by the way, in today's Washington Post.
animal morality - 8/23/2007 12:33:46
Posted by Fr. B
Can animals really commit murder? There is certainly behavior among chimpanzees that looks very much like gangland slayings among humans. But I would be reluctant to call it murder until I'm convinced that there is some kind of moral thinking among primates which would allow chimps, for example, to do that which chimps generally considered wrong.
Am I splitting hairs? I think you probably used the word murder as a synonym for killing.
re:murder - 8/23/2007 14:48:45
Posted by nathan
It is so good to hear from you.
Your comparison between gangland slayings and the chimps is interesting. Wouldn't we consider gangland slayings murder? (Or would we class them with that separate slippery category of "war"? "Eliminating enemy units," as the Army might say.) If the Turing Test on machine thinking can be applied rather metaphorically to the question of whether animals murder, it seems worthwhile to wonder whether something that looks like an immoral act might functionally be one. I'm not sure, though. It sort of reminds me of how translators of Augustine's City of God used to leave the Edenic sex scene in Latin, as if witnessing this perfectly "moral" act could be immoral for those who don't read Latin.
You could say, on the one hand, that apes are not humans and morality is from God for humans and that is that. If that were the case, I would use the less anthropomorphic "killing" instead. Maybe it is.
On the other, though, maybe it is enough to point out, as Eli would, that the other ape experiences suffering in being killed (by a fellow herbivore), and that suffering makes it murder.
Maybe we need to ask the apes whether they have morality or not. I'm not really satisfied with any of these approaches. One can see the appeal, however, of the divine fiat. It sure makes the question easy.
In any event, you can see I have no problem with splitting hairs. It is welcomed around here!
murder killing - 8/24/2007 12:59:45
Posted by Fr. B
Yes, gangland slayings are murder. My point is that using the word murder implies a moral judgment on an act of killing.
Killing in self-defense or by accident is not called murder. I was just wondering if we can make such a judgment on other mammals. If we're heading in the direction of according them rights that so far have been limited to humans, will we have to call the killing of a chimpanzee by its fellows, which does happen in the wild, murder, thus making a moral judgment on the act? Or can we just call it killing and limit morality to our own species?
re: - 9/04/2007 16:18:49
Posted by Eli
In a rush... but wanted to add that I gave this post a shout-out on my blog here!
Bodah's a blogger?! Who knew?!
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