Do animals think?

ES 600
Homework #1 Question: Environmental Ethics

DRAFT

Do animals think?

In contrast to teachings of most deontological systems, science teaches us that humans evolved from animals through millions of years of evolution. In comparison to other animals, humans stand up by showing signs of not only superior intelligence and abilities but distinguishably by developing consciousness and system of values and morals. Such view is at the center of science and therefore adopted by anthropocentric ethics where the world is to “provide” to humans who are to “have dominion over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”, Genesis 1:27-8

But human thoughts about the surrounding world have evolved through thousand of years. Anthropocentricism could not be possible thousands of years ago where nature was seemingly untenable and full of mysteries to the rather primitive by our standards homo sapiens. So this simple fact begs the question, is the value we assign to human in contrast to other species intrinsic or instrumental?

Indeed just a couple of hundred years ago, probably in the place where I am writing this paper, the humans who inhabited this place thought of man as merely one of many animals who was to seek survival by partnership with the animals. Hunting was an activity of necessity and animal killed was given a respect and the hunter prayed to its spirit for forgiveness. Man and animals were one.

What is often summarized by simple worlds – technological innovation – has given a birth to much more materialized approach to our environment. No longer do we see “spirits and mysteries” surrounding a forest as new animism movement points. Similarly more and more animals are seen only as meat, food that can sustain human population.

The mom-and-pop restaurant are disappearing and instead chain enterprises are building what really amounts to feeding places for population which is hardly hungry but instead gorges itself in cheaper and cheaper, larger and larger portions of slaughter animals. Those animals are raised in conditions that prevent them often from moving, seeing sunshine, keeping alive till slaughter day by piles of antibiotics, fatten up by steroids.

Anthropocentric instrumental-value view of our environment would simply stay that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the view of animals raised in commercial way. Animals are to be used for food. It is the economy that dictates modern, large scale farming activity. There is no scientific evidence that today this harms humans in any way and any other evidence is simply irrelevant.

Other schools of ethics such as biosphere-centered would argue that other species and the environment as a whole have a right to continued existence, protection of fundamental interests, and protection from harm and damage. Peter Signer argues “speciesism” in homo-sapiens arbitrarily presuming control over the animals is immoral and wrong.

Deep ecology movement would not only provide the animals with dignity and intrinsic value but would extend those values to environmental elements that most people never think of such as mountains, rivers. Christopher Stone thought that giving those environmental elements legal rights similar to legal rights of corporations or individuals would stop the abuse those elements encounter from the hands of humans. For all practical reasons in Western world this idea would most likely produce tangible environment protection but it is doubtful it could ever materialize.

I proposed more balanced view, sort of a mixture of both major branches: Atomistic (anthropocentric; biocentric), Holistic (earth-centered).

Our world is full of mysteries. Until we have answers to at least some deep questions below, we should be careful by not engaging in some “deep” environmental protection which in essence is hypocritical portrait of our richness while it is nothing more than “hidden anthropocentrism.

What is conscious, are different levels of consciousness and are humans at the end of the scale? Is human a miracle of universe? (More or less the dogmatic view of God creating human) Is life a miracle? What is life? How come bacteria “know” what to do? Could it be that planet is “alive”, meaning it “thinks” on some larger unimaginable scale? Are other forms of ‘life’ possible beyond organic? Do galaxies have some ‘logic’ and ‘meaning’ beyond the physical laws that govern them? Furthermore, is there some meaning to not just lives of human beings but to the universe as a whole? After all, universe seems cold, brutal place where through explosions old matter dies and gives birth to new matter which exists for millions of years to die. There is a cycle but is there some meaning to all of this, some higher purpose? Is human logic and capacity failing humanity when faced with those big questions?

Since we can’t really answer those questions, I believe we should strive to look at earth from the point of Sustainability. I capitalized the “S” like the proponent of Deep Ecology movement of ‘Self-realization’ because this is not the sustainability we are accustomed of hearing in our economy driven, capitalistic society concerned with the next quarter financial result.

Based on today’s knowledge, earth is a fragile miracle. It is very true then that “People ought not to degrade this wonderful system in such a way that it can not function to keep its systems within the various delicate margins necessary for life.”

In a way this is anthropocentric view of the world for humanity but in this view I believe the view of animals or mountains having feeling can be replaced by view of earth with humanity playing leadership role to preserve it. By preserving it – the earth – the leadership will also be preserved. Treating animals “inhumanly” feels wrong because they are part of eco-system, the only eco-system we know. The animal may or may not be aware by itself that wrong actions are being done to it, but at least in part, through humanity being able to perceived the consciousness of this act being morally wrong, the very animal has some conscious. In other words, unnecessary killing of animals, the epidemic of obesity being at least in part related to society loosing sight of what is good food, what good food is or should be worth to people, we are harming not just planet as a whole, but the very humanity itself. Animals can and have to be killed for food. Such process however should be done in respectful manner. People should respect and appreciate food, its quality, origins, values, where it came from and how the source lived and died.

In my view, humanity’s problem is not that the anthropocentric view has contributed to the dismay of environment; it is that this anthropocentric view has been applied in very narrow and short sighted way with emphasizes on next month, next year, at most next decade and also to small population – country, region at most. In addition, this view is applied hypocritically through the lenses of privilege class – mainly rich Europe, USA and some other Asian countries. Just like feminists environmentalists speak of male dominance of women, we must recognize that developed countries are oppressing developing countries. They have been doing this in the past by polluting earth and becoming rich or through military invasions or both. Today, the same countries faced with consequences of their short sighted actions appeal for environmental protection without willingness to pay not just larger cost of doing so but often any cost at all (USA refuse of Kyoto)

So the question if animals have feeling and are able to feel some consciousness about their own existence must be put aside. First the humanity must answer a question of its own long term consciousness about the environment. Today, humanity looks more like an animal in line to slaughter house amazingly unaware of what is at the end of the line – environmental catastrophe and disappearance of the little blue planet in otherwise vast, cold and violent lifelessness (as far as we know) universe.