"The basic facts have come home at last. We are not the
only conscious
creatures on earth." Bernard Baars, cognitive psychologist.
"Bye, I'm gonna go eat dinner. I'll see you tomorrow."
Alex the Grey parrot
Koko the gorilla has a sign vocabulary of 500 words and
does internet chats. Alex the parrot knows the names of over 100
different objects, 7 colors, and 5 shapes; he can count objects up to 6
and speaks in meaningful sentences. Michael the gorilla loved Pavarotti
and refused to go outside when he was on TV. Hoku the dolphin grieved
when his companion, Kiko, died. Flint the chimp died of a broken heart
after the death of his mother, Flo.
While this account of the emotional and intellectual
richness of animals may touch the layperson, it offends the hard-nose
scientist. From the scientific perspective, it is nonsense to speak of
animal emotions and minds, since they can't be observed or measured. It
is anthropomorphic to ascribe human-like characteristics to animals. It
is unscientific to name them as if they were people. And such stories at
best are merely anecdotal.
Beginning in the seventeenth century, modern science
constructed a mechanistic paradigm which views animals as automata or
machines. From Descartes to sociobiology and behaviorism in the present,
the modern tradition cast animals in the role of brutes or machines who
can neither feel nor think. Students trained in this paradigm quickly
learn to avoid reference to the subjective life of animals unless they
desire ridicule. Under the spell of behaviorism, scientists redescribe
the love a chimpanzee might experience as "attachment formation," the
anger of an elephant as "aggression exhibition," and the aptitude of a
bird as a "conditioned reflex." Journals typically refuse to publish
papers that allude to animal thoughts or emotions. Jane Goodall reports
how extreme the mechanistic outlook can be: "The first paper I wrote for
`Nature,' the scientific periodical, they actually crossed out where I
put `he and she and who,' and put `it.'"
Today, this situation is changing decisively as science
undertakes an exciting paradigm shift that embraces the study of animal
emotions and minds. Until the last few decades, human beings have
languished in the Paleolithic Era of their knowledge about animals. As
evident in a spate of recent books and the new discipline of "cognitive
ethology" that studies animal intelligence, science finally is beginning
to fathom the depth of animal complexity. Only in the 1960s, for
instance, when Jane Goodall went to Gombe National Park in Tanzania,
Africa, did human beings learn that chimpanzees make and use tools. Not
until 1983 did researchers discover that elephants communicate with
ultrasound. New studies suggest that rats dream when they sleep and that
the great apes have "self-awareness neurons" responsible for
self-consciousness.
Having misled us for so long about animals, science is
initiating a revolution in our understanding. Through evolutionary
theory, genetics, neurophysiology, and experimental procedures, many
scientists are providing strong evidence that animals feel and think in
ways akin to us. The changes began with Charles Darwin. His theory of
natural selection informed us that human beings are in fact animals and,
as such, they evolve according to the same evolutionary dynamics as
nonhuman animals. Darwin argued that the difference between nonhuman and
human animals was one of degree, not form. Although evolution became the
dominant paradigm in biology, scientists failed to appreciate the
implications of his argument for evolutionary continuity. While Darwin
sketched our similarities with animals in The Expression of the Emotions
in Man and Animals, scientists found his argument repugnant. In a
profession that knows no limits to the cruelty it inflicts on animals,
mechanism has proved to be a most convenient worldview, allowing animal
experimenters to sleep at night.
Today we know that human DNA is over 98% identical to
chimpanzees and that they are closer to us genetically than to
orangutans. Mammals possess a limbic system and neocortex, the same
functions that enable human beings to experience emotions and have
abstract thoughts. The brain structures of humans and chimps are almost
identical. All mammals possess oxytocin, a hormone involved in the
experience of pleasure during sex and that plays a key role in
mother-infant bonding. If the emotions and thoughts of human beings have
a chemical and physiological basis, and animals have a similar make-up,
it is likely they too feel complex emotions like love and can think in
creative ways.
In Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in
Humans and Other Animals, Franz de Waal argues that "the great apes"
(chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas) laid the foundation for
many human behavioral and familial dynamics. Both he and Jane Goodall
conclude that chimpanzee societies demand complex social skills far
beyond that allowed by behaviorism. Their world is governed not only by
instincts and chemicals, but also through rules and norms. Like us, they
live in a culture of shared communication and learning that is passed
down from generation to generation.
Donald Griffin's work in Animal Thinking (1984) and
Animal Minds (1992) dealt powerful blows to the behaviorist tradition of
John Watson and B.F. Skinner. Considered to be the father of cognitive
ethology, and famous for discovering bats use echolocation to map their
terrain, Griffin took seriously the notion that animals can think and
made compelling arguments to that effect. Since Griffin's work, a rich
scientific literature has been assembled proving the sophistication and
flexibility of animal minds. Through countless instances of observation
and experimentation, a solid case for animal intelligence has been
established that is changing not only our view of animals, but
ourselves.
Given the tools of American Sign Language and lexigram
symbols, great apes are communicating to human beings and one another
their needs, desires, and thoughts. Dolphins understand and follow
simple commands like "Put the ball in the hoop." In a famous experiment,
birds -- who also are tool makers and users -- have solved the problem
of how to eat food dangling from a line by looping the string and
holding it with their feet. Beavers exhibit great flexibility in
building their dams and solve problems posed to them on a case-by-case
basis. Various tests with mirrors and hidden objects suggest that
chimpanzees and bonobos might have self-consciousness and awareness of
other minds. Thousands of experiments in the field and laboratory have
demonstrated that animals such as prairie dogs, squirrels, and even
chickens convey not only emotion but also information in their complexly
differentiated alarm cries for the presence of predators. Recent studies
suggest birds, primates, and whales may use a grammar-like structure in
their communication.
George Page's book Inside the Animal Mind cites
experiments where adult chimps use analogical reasoning better than
children and some adults. One researcher found cases where pigeons
performed better on categorization tests than his own undergraduates. In
his book Wild Minds, Marc Hauser adopts the stance of a "healthy
skeptic" toward many claims about animal emotions and intelligence. From
an evolutionary perspective, he argues that all animal brains have to
cope with similar problems, and therefore each species has its own
special "mental toolkits" for processing information about objects,
number, and space. Variations lead to differences among species, with
homo sapiens evolving toward an unprecedented complexity. Still, he
concludes, "We share the planet with thinking animals ... Although the
human mind leaves a characteristically different imprint on the planet,
we are certainly not alone in this process."
In a review of Griffin's Animal Thinking, E. A.
Wasserman concluded, "No statement concerning consciousness in animals
is open to verification and experimentation." This is simply false, for
the ethological literature abounds with examples of ingenious
experiments which have been designed to test the emotional sensitivities
and intelligence of animals. Hauser's book in particular discusses
experimental designs where hypotheses about animal emotions and minds
are confirmed, refuted, or left uncertain.
Clearly, results can be interpreted in different ways,
and staunch defenders of behaviorism remain unconvinced. In 1984, C.
Lloyd Morgan formulated the "law of parsimony," a variation on Ockham's
razor, which states that one should not appeal to a "higher" function
intelligence) of organisms when a "lower" function (instinct) will
adequately explain a behavior. Behaviorists used his principle in an
aggressively reductionistic manner, subsuming all behaviors to crude
instincts and learning mechanisms. But Morgan himself admitted animal
intelligence and his principle establishes just the opposite. When
confronted by the overwhelming evidence of animal intelligence, the
lower functions do not explain the behaviors; rather, they make sense
only through reference to higher level principles. In other words, the
simplest explanation, the one not saddled with ad hoc qualifications, is
an appeal to the flexible and thinking qualities of animal minds.
Believing animals to be devoid of feeling and thought is
an interesting case of projection, for all along it has been scientists
who lack these characteristics, burdened by irrational prejudices and
ill-equipped to understand human similarities and differences with
animals. In Rattling the Cage, Wise shows that animal intelligence
varies according to the degree researchers nurture it with proper social
environments. It should be no surprise that Professor Herbert Terrace,
who concluded chimpanzees only mimic their trainers and don't sign
creatively on their own, confined them in a stultifying laboratory
setting. Nim Chimpsky (a hilarious pun on linguist Noam Chompsky who
argued only human beings have grammar) flourished in his linguistic
facility once freed from Terrace's punishing hands.
Acknowledging only one model of intelligence and
communication -- that of homo sapiens -- scientists have argued since
animals don't speak or reason like we do, they don't have minds at all.
In expecting animals to satisfy human criteria of language and
intelligence, scientists have, after all, succumbed to the dreaded sin
of anthropomorphism. But anthropomorphism need not be a scientific sin.
Clearly we don't want to project onto animals characteristics they don't
have. But if there are core commonalities between nonhuman and human
animals, what Griffin calls "critical anthropomorphism" is our best
access to understanding animals, and "objective detachment" will block
insight every time.
The argument of cognitive ethology is not that animal
emotions and consciousness are as complex as ours, but that they exist
in remarkably rich forms. Human beings are unique in the degree to which
they possess intelligence; no other species, to my knowledge, has
written sonnets or sonatas, solved algebraic equations, or meditated on
the structure of the universe. But humans are not unique in their
possession of a neocortex; of complex emotions like love, loneliness,
empathy, and shame; of sophisticated languages, behaviors, and
communities; and perhaps even of aesthetic and moral sensibilities.
The paradigm shift from seeing animals as subjects of a
life instead of objects of a gaze has important implications. The
genetic, behavioral, and emotional continuities between humans and great
apes, for example, is the philosophical basis of "The Great Ape" project
co-founded by Peter Singer, which aims to establish our kinship and
secure basic rights for our biological relatives. Similarly, scientific
findings about animal intelligence are crucial to the legal rights for
animals movement as described by Harvard law professor Steven Wise in
Rattling the Cage.
Feeling the winds of change from science, philosophy,
and law, it seems that American culture itself is in the midst of a
paradigm shift. As we learn to appreciate the complexity of animals and
the deep continuities between their world and ours, we begin to respect
them more and accord them the rights -- to "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness" -- they so richly deserve. Every oppressed human
group has fought for its liberation; now it's the animals' turn. Since
they can't speak for themselves, their liberation demands our own
liberation from the long-standing tradition of human biases toward other
species. As we grant animals minds, we free our own.
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