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8/8/2019 Minding the Animals_Steven Best

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Minding the Animals

"The basic facts have come home at last. We are not the only conscious creatures on

earth." Bernard Baars, cognitive psychologist

Koko the gorilla has a sign vocabulary of 500 words and does internet chats. Alex theparrot knows the names of over 100 different objects, 7 colors, and 5 shapes; he cancount objects up to 6 and speaks in meaningful sentences. Michael the gorilla lovedPavarotti and refused to go outside when he was on TV. Hoku the dolphin grievedwhen his companion, Kiko, died. Flint the chimp died of a broken heart after thedeath of his mother, Flo.

While this account of the emotional and intellectual richness of animals may touchthe layperson, it offends the hard-nose scientist. From the scientific perspective, it isnonsense to speak of animal emotions and minds, since they can't be observed ormeasured. 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 aremerely anecdotal.

Beginning in the seventeenth century, modern science constructed a mechanisticparadigm which views animals as automata or machines. From Descartes tosociobiology and behaviorism in the present, the modern tradition cast animals in therole of brutes or machines who can neither feel nor think. Students trained in thisparadigm quickly learn to avoid reference to the subjective life of animals unless theydesire ridicule. Under the spell of behaviorism, scientists redescribe the love achimpanzee might experience as "attachment formation," the anger of an elephantas "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 Iwrote for `Nature,' the scientific periodical, they actually crossed out where I put `heand she and who,' and put `it.'"

Today, this situation is changing decisively as science undertakes an excitingparadigm shift that embraces the study of animal emotions and minds. Until the lastfew decades, human beings have languished in the Paleolithic Era of their knowledgeabout animals. As evident in a spate of recent books and the new discipline of"cognitive ethology" that studies animal intelligence, science finally is beginning tofathom the depth of animal complexity. Only in the 1960, for instance, when JaneGoodall went to Gombe National Park in Tanzania, Africa, did human beings learnthat chimpanzees make and use tools. Not until 1983 did researchers discover thatelephants communicate with ultrasound. New studies suggest that rats dream whenthey sleep and that the great apes have "self-awareness neurons" responsible forself-consciousness.

Having misled us for so long about animals, science is initiating a revolution in ourunderstanding. Through evolutionary theory, genetics, neurophysiology, andexperimental procedures, many scientists are providing strong evidence that animalsfeel and think in ways akin to us. The changes began with Charles Darwin. His theoryof 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

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of degree, not form. Although evolution became the dominant paradigm in biology,scientists failed to appreciate the implications of his argument for evolutionarycontinuity. While Darwin sketched our similarities with animals in The Expression ofthe Emotions in Man and Animals, scientists found his argument repugnant. In aprofession that knows no limits to the cruelty it inflicts on animals, mechanism hasproved 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 theyare closer to us genetically than to orangutans. Mammals possess a limbic systemand neocortex, the same functions that enable human beings to experience emotionsand have abstract thoughts. The brain structures of humans and chimps are almostidentical. All mammals possess oxytocin, a hormone involved in the experience ofpleasure during sex and that plays a key role in mother-infant bonding. If theemotions 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 likelove 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, andgorillas) laid the foundation for many human behavioral and familial dynamics. Bothhe and Jane Goodall conclude that chimpanzee societies demand complex socialskills far beyond that allowed by behaviorism. Their world is governed not only byinstincts and chemicals, but also through rules and norms. Like us, they live in aculture of shared communication and learning that is passed down from generationto generation.

Donald Griffin's work in Animal Thinking (1984) and Animal Minds (1992) dealtpowerful blows to the behaviorist tradition of John Watson and B.F. Skinner.Considered to be the father of cognitive ethology, and famous for discovering batsuse echolocation to map their terrain, Griffin took seriously the notion that animalscan think and made compelling arguments to that effect. Since Griffin's work, a rich

scientific literature has been assembled proving the sophistication and flexibility ofanimal minds. Through countless instances of observation and experimentation, asolid case for animal intelligence has been established that is changing not only ourview of animals, but ourselves.

Given the tools of American Sign Language and lexigram symbols, great apes arecommunicating 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 afamous experiment, birds -- who also are tool makers and users -- have solved theproblem of how to eat food dangling from a line by looping the string and holding itwith their feet. Beavers exhibit great flexibility in building their dams and solveproblems posed to them on a case-by-case basis. Various tests with mirrors andhidden objects suggest that chimpanzees and bonobos might have self-

consciousness and awareness of other minds. Thousands of experiments in the fieldand laboratory have demonstrated that animals such as prairie dogs, squirrels, andeven chickens convey not only emotion but also information in their complexlydifferentiated 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 chimpsuse analogical reasoning better than children and some adults. One researcher foundcases where pigeons performed better on categorization tests than his own

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undergraduates. In his book Wild Minds, Marc Hauser adopts the stance of a "healthyskeptic" toward many claims about animal emotions and intelligence. From anevolutionary perspective, he argues that all animal brains have to cope with similarproblems, and therefore each species has its own special "mental toolkits" forprocessing information about objects, number, and space. Variations lead todifferences 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 statementconcerning consciousness in animals is open to verification and experimentation."

This is simply false, for the ethological literature abounds with examples of ingeniousexperiments which have been designed to test the emotional sensitivities andintelligence of animals. Hauser's book in particular discusses experimental designswhere hypotheses about animal emotions and minds are confirmed, refuted, or leftuncertain.

Clearly, results can be interpreted in different ways, and staunch defenders of

behaviorism remain unconvinced. In 1984, C. Lloyd Morgan formulated the "law ofparsimony," a variation on Ockham's razor, which states that one should not appealto a "higher" function intelligence) of organisms when a "lower" function (instinct) willadequately explain a behavior. Behaviorists used his principle in an aggressivelyreductionistic manner, subsuming all behaviors to crude instincts and learningmechanisms. But Morgan himself admitted animal intelligence exists and hisprinciple establishes just the opposite. When confronted by the overwhelmingevidence of animal intelligence, the lower functions do not explain the behaviors;rather, they make sense only through reference to higher level principles. In otherwords, the simplest explanation, the one not saddled with ad hoc qualifications, is anappeal 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 similaritiesand differences with animals. In Rattling the Cage, Wise shows that animalintelligence varies according to the degree researchers nurture it with proper socialenvironments. It should be no surprise that Professor Herbert Terrace, who concludedchimpanzees only mimic their trainers and don't sign creatively on their own,confined them in a stultifying laboratory setting.

Acknowledging only one model of intelligence and communication -- that of homosapiens -- scientists have argued since animals don't speak or reason like we do, theydon't have minds at all. In expecting animals to satisfy human criteria of languageand intelligence, scientists have, after all, succumbed to the dreaded sin ofanthropomorphism. 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 arecore 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 consciousnessare as complex as ours, but that they exist in remarkably rich forms. Human beingsare unique in the degree to which they possess intelligence; no other species, to myknowledge, has written sonnets or sonatas, solved algebraic equations, or meditated

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on the structure of the universe. But humans are not unique in their possession of aneocortex; of complex emotions like love, loneliness, empathy, and shame; ofsophisticated languages, behaviors, and communities; and perhaps even of aestheticand moral sensibilities.

The paradigm shift from seeing animals as objects of a scientific gaze instead of

subjects of their own lives has important implications. The genetic, behavioral, andemotional continuities between humans and great apes, for example, is thephilosophical basis of "The Great Ape" project co-founded by Peter Singer, whichaims to establish our kinship with, and secure basic rights for, our biological relatives.Similarly, scientific findings about animal intelligence are crucial to the legal rightsfor animals movement as described by Harvard law professor Steven Wise in Rattlingthe Cage.

Feeling the winds of change from science, philosophy, and law, it seems thatAmerican culture itself is in the midst of a paradigm shift. As we learn to appreciatethe 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 thepursuit of happiness" -- they so richly deserve. Every oppressed group has fought for

its liberation; now it's the animals' turn. Since they can't speak for themselves, theirliberation demands our own liberation from the long-standing tradition of humanbiases toward other species. As we grant animals minds, we begin to free our own.

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