© Ronald de Sousa
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto

Internet: sousa@chass.utoronto.ca

[Written for a Conference on Animals, March 1995, Victoria University, Toronto]

In this conference about animals, I intend to talk about humans, thus risking the very offense which it is my purpose to complain about in this paper: For my complaint is that we haven't yet got rid of our age old practice of looking to other animals only as a foil for our own self-congratulation as uniquely human. In spite of lip service paid to Darwin, we haven't yet appreciated our own non-uniqueness. We are loath to recognise our own animality.

Indeed, we hardly know what recognizing our own animality would mean. We like to think of ourselves as different from other animals in ways that do justice to neither. When we compare animals to people, we standardly get both people and animals wrong, usually in the service of making ourselves out to be better than they are. Thus we frequently represent animals as innocent by way of admonishment to ourselves. (Think, for example, of how fashionable it used to be to speak of the great apes as exemplarily `peaceful', until it was discovered that if you watched them for long enough you would find their murder rate to be rather higher than that of the worst American slums.) Conversely, if we do bring ourselves to view ourselves as animals, we usually do it by representing a "beast in ourselves" that must be overcome.

The sort of prejudice involved here is illustrated by one of the ironies of the history of philosophy of mind. Descartes thought that we were indeed animals, but distinguished from other animals in having an extra ingredient, a soul, a mind, call it what you will, but known by its capacity for "reason". He therefore surmised that the capacities of animals in general could easily enough be mechanised. What can't be mechanised would be the unique attributes and capacities of souls: mathematics, reasoning, language.

Lo and behold, he was almost exactly wrong: for what machines can't do is almost exactly what animals do best: see and move about in a world full of meaningful and diverse objects. It's only almost, because mere talking isn't big among either machines or other species. But it does illustrate how wrong we to be when we are comparing animals to people -- more wrong, perhaps, than when we look at one at a time.

The prejudices lurking here are most easily caught in the act when we look at the some of the phrases we describe humans that have "animal" in them. Consider the phrase, "we/they were like animals". It suggests a kind of mindless passion of aggression or lust, in connotation pretty much equivalent to such phrases as "fucking their brains out", or "bashing their brains out" -- which says something about how we unthinkingly picture animals. And yet this phrase, to be like animals, if taken literally, should designate a capacity for subtle, comprehensive but non verbal assessment of a complex situation. Shouldn't `We were like animals', if used as a simile in an erotic context, rather connote a quiet and intense attentiveness, a long and provocative stare, perhaps, in which a rich channel of communication is open which seems both enormously revealing of a complex situation and inaccessible to verbalization? For isn't that, rather than uncontrolled "beastly behaviour", what characterizes the stance of an animal assessing a moment in the wild?

I began by saying: "We are loath to recognise our own animality." If I am right in saying that we don't understand what this means in the first place, this is a difficult claim to interpret. Let me highlight at least some of its several layers of meaning:
 

• We are not God's special creatures. By the same token, we have no particular right to exploit other animals indiscriminately.

• Our existence has come about by chance, in a world ruled by both random and necessarily processes, including natural selection and random genetic drift. This means that we cannot claim to be at the "pinnacle" of a ladder, or a pyramid, or any other hierarchical structure. Cockroaches have much more demonstrated success than humans in the Great Chain of Being. We are part of Nature, and Nature, to paraphrase Omar Khayyám, "As impotently moves as you or I."

•  The purpose of our existence must be derived from our nature, not the other way around. Since our nature includes a capacity for language and for self-reflection, it certainly carries a potential for greater diversity of purposes and forms within a single species than exists among other animals. But the resulting diversity merely emphasizes the fundamental primacy of diversity in all of life. This, indeed, is the most important level of meaning in the plea to recognize our own animality. For this, it seems, is the deepest lesson of Darwin, and it is one that has scarcely yet been learned:

•  Diversity is the rule of life. In Aristotelian biology, the existence of variants within a single species was a puzzle in need of explanation. (There was even a branch of knowledge called teratology, or freakscience.) Like Newton's, Darwin's revolution consisted in inverting the relation of what is taken for granted and what requires to be explained. Newton revolutionized physics by saying: "Don't ask why the arrow continues in flight: that needs no explanation. Ask instead why it stops." Darwin's revolution consists in saying: don't try to explain diversity; ask about how we come to have, in the chaotic sea of natural diversity, those relatively tight clusters we call species.

In short, what we must give up on is essentialism. And that includes, to my mind, the idea that there is a definable essence that forever divides us "from the animals", as we say, when what we should say is "from the other animals."

I might pursue this idea here by talking about how we seem to be able to establish intuitive links with the animals, or else make them do things that look remarkably human. (I am thinking of the work of Vicky Hearne, for example.) But others at this conference are far better qualified to do this than I am. Instead, I want to look briefly at two differentia that have often been held to be crucial: human emotions, and intentionality.

Some people find it obvious that other animals have emotions; others, including myself, believe, for less obvious reasons, that there are important differences between the emotions of other animals and our own. There are reasons on both sides, and that is a tip-off, it seems to me, to the fact that the differences are differences of degree.

My reason for thinking that other animals' emotions are not like those of humans are linked to my own views about human emotions as identified primarily not by the impulses to which they give rise, but to the stories, the paradigm scenarios to which they are linked. I've written a book<1> to try and explain this, and I can't justify this view here; but I can draw a simple inference from it, which is that there are, in the nature of things, a potentially infinite number of different emotions, which will vary not only in the dimensions of intensity and action motivation potential, but especially according to the plots and tones of the stories we tell ourselves. Plots vary in complexity, and their tone and tenor depends on the language and imagery in which they are expressed. It follows from this, together with the fact that humans do have a fairly sharp differentia in their use of language, that the emotions of humans may be typically very different from those of other animals.

But the important thing to note in this context is that those differences exist within an indefinitely variable continuum, that they are therefore ultimately matters of degree. Just how much continuity there is among the "stories" that humans and other animals can "tell themselves", just how much distance or proximity in their social and communicative techniques, I expect will be illuminated by others in this conference. I myself just want to stress that where the basic rule is variety, absolute differences matter less.

More likely than emotions to be thought capable of yielding a rigid line between humans and other animals, is the capacity for intentionality. Intentionality is itself a feature of emotions, and the human capacity for intentionality is another reason one might have for thinking that other animals can't have our emotions. Wittgenstein once wrote:

A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after tomorrow? Can only those hope who can talk? Only those who have mastered the use of a language. That is to say, the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life. (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 174)

Intentionality is the philosopher's word for the peculiar magic of language, sometimes called "aboutness", which enables us to grasp, or at least talk about, a progression of increasingly wispy things: about absent things, about things that don't exist, about impossible things, and (almost as mysterious) about specific things which may or may not happen at specific times in the future. Insofar as these sorts of reference require increasingly sophisticated linguistic tools, they seem to be unavailable to other species. Nevertheless, there is a good deal of work in cognitive science that is beginning to break down this barrier, to view intentionality not as an all or nothing peculiarity of humans, born in a sudden illumination of linguistic skill, like Athena out of the head of Zeus, but as a progressive set of structures which begin humbly with the elementary goal-directedness of animal tropisms and gradually evolves the capacity for complex and abstract representation.

Without going into any technical detail, it is enough for my purposes today to note that the trend in both my examples is to show that most important issues about our distinctness from other animals are matters of degree. Does this mean, then, that I am prepared to take the view that animality is a matter of degree?

For my part, I am. But this kind of suggestion has the power of inducing states of hysteria in the most intelligent, peaceable, and sophisticated thinkers.

Witness a recent exchange in the London Review of Books, between Ian Hacking and Robert Nozick. Following Hacking's review of Nozick''s book on The Nature of Rationality, each accuses the other of espousing the following "Inference to Animality Thesis" (IAT):

If any trait distinguishes people from animals, and if people differ in degree along this trait, then ... some people are closer to animality than others. (Nozick, LRB 10 March p. 4)

Hacking:

Nozick writes that `our rationality, both individual and co-ordinate, defines and symbolises the distance we have come from mere animality.' Sounds terrific! Do the publishers realise that it appears to follow . . . that some peoples are closer to animality than others? (Hacking, LRB 27 January p. 4)

I don't think it follows, and have shown that it doesn't. If Hacking also doesn't think it follows then his attempt to pin on me a conclusion that I don't state via an inference that I don't make and that he himself knows to be invalid is even more reprehensible. I too would find offensive and repugnant a book fitting the description Hacking offers..... (Nozick, LRB 10 March p. 4)

 The differences between us matter -- they are differences between a
philosopher who feels closer to evolutionary biology and cognitive science,
and another who feels closer to cultural antropology. Because of the
time-honoured Western connection between rationality and humanity, these
differences have political and social meaning. (Hacking, LRB 24 March p.4)
 

If P distinguishes A's from B's, and if A's differ in degree of P, then some A's are closer to B's than others.
It would certainly pass for valid in a number of instances. Consider:

`"If a confidence in the free market distinguishes conservatives from
liberals, and if conservatives differ in degree of confidence in the free
market, then some conservatives are closer to liberals than others."

If femininity distinguishes women from men, and if women differ in degree of femininity, then some women's are closer to men than others.

Although both Nozick and Hacking are keen to reject the argument, they do so from different perspectives and on the basis of very different arguments. Nozick's reason for rejecting the argument is that among humans, the differences are relatively minor in comparison with the differences between humans and others:

The important gulf between humans and animals is this: all humans are able to learn and use a human language; no animals are. The large differences in linguistic ability among humans are relatively minor by comparison. All people have passed the significant threshold, and the variations do not put some individuals closer to those on the other side of the threshold." (Nozick, LRB 10 March p. 4)

In other words, large enough differences of degree add up to differences of category. The "threshold" analogy adds another idea: that as far as a certain category of similarity is concerned, only the question "is it or isn't it" counts, and there is no meaning to the further question: "how close is it." You might compare it with winning or losing the lottery: if your number is out by one, that doesn't meaningfully bring you any closer to winning than if all the numbers are wrong: "a miss is as good as a mile".

Hacking's reason, on the other hand, is more directly categorical. Insisting (tendentiously) that "trait" must mean "a genetically determined characteristic or condition",<2> Hacking wants to say that rationality, like anything else that is in essence cultural, is not a "trait" at all, "although I'm sure," he adds, rather confusingly, "only our species could develop that idea of rationality. It is a social product...." (LRB 24 March p. 4). But if a social product is such that only our species can develop it, why is this not enough to make it a "genetically determined trait"? What is genetically determined, to be sure, is not the specific form that it takes, but the general capacity to develop one form of it or another. So humans can all learn a language, and only humans can. That is a biological fact; but individual languages do not differ in respect of, or in consequence of, any biological differences.

Still, why does this mean that we must reject the "inference to animality"?

Here is a possible reason. What the argument shows, one might claim, is that we are not actually dealing with a biological fact at all; but the only difference there could be between us and the animals is a biological one.

- But not at all! On the basis of the argument about the importance of culture, quite the opposite is true. If the difference is cultural, then why should we not say, quite boldly, that the differences between humans and other animals are matters of degree precisely because they are cultural? Animals have cultures; people have cultures; some animals have more culture than others; why should some people not have less than others?

Well, of course, this last question raises highly technical problems. And the standard answer is that it depends what you mean by culture: in one sense, if it means the products of "high art", and written literature, etc., -- in short, the sense in which certain classes define themselves as more "cultivated" than others, culture certainly admits of degrees. But contrary to the snobism inherent in that attitude, it does not in this sense define any particularly important trait of humans as opposed to animals. On the other hand, culture in the anthropological sense means something like the totality of contingent practices that characterize a group or population in contradistinction to others. If culture is taken in this sense, it might be maintained, then there are no essential differences among humans in quantity of culture, only in its features.

This last argument would seem to demand an analysis in purely quantitative terms. Adapting the methods of Lévi-Strauss to the conceptual apparatus of information theory, we might say that the binary oppositions that constitute a culture might actually be counted, so as to obtain a quantitative estimate of the actual informational quantity of a culture's content. When we formulate it thus, it becomes obvious that it is an entirely empirical question whether the count thus obtained will turn out to be roughly the same or wildly different in different cultures. Yet it appears to be a matter of dogma among anthropologists that all cultures are, in that sense, equal. The only reason for this that I can imagine is that to admit the contrary possibility risks landing us in the IAT; and since we must at all costs, even at the cost of intellectual integrity, reject the thought that any human could be like an animal.... The underlying implication is that this would mean: as bad as some animal: and this underlying thought only makes sense from a point of view which takes the inferiority of animals for granted.

So in the end the argument reveals itself as just another form of essentialism -- another bad way to distinguish ourselves from the animals.

The fact is, that the kind of debate I have just quoted, conducted as it is between two of the most brilliant thinkers in our business (and it's the business of thinking, after all) seems to me a manifestation of the persistence of what Daly and Wilson have called "biophobia" -- the abhorrence of the idea that we are first, or even just importantly, animals.<3> For my part, I quite fail to see why there need to be anything degrading to myself "as a human being" (whatever that means) if I acknowledge something like the following "gradualist" theses:

1. What separates me from other animals is very like what separates me from other humans: in the near-infinite variety of the biosphere, there are innumerable traits (in the general and proper sense of the word, not in Hacking's tendentious one) in respect of which I resemble and differ from both other individual animals and other individual humans to varying degrees.

2. Some of these distinctions may, at any given time and from any given perspective, seem so great as to be unbridgeable "gulfs" or "thresholds". But I have already suggested that some of the most obvious -- emotions and intentionality -- are less unbridgeable gulfs than vague regions on continua; merely to list some other putative gulfs is to be forced to doubt their absoluteness:

•  Certainly I cannot fly, but we now have to add: unaided. Has that not toned down the difference?

• Certainly I cannot navigate at night like bats; But .. ditto.

•  Certainly, the other animals cannot calculate as we can. But machines can. Does this makes us, as a species, "more like machines than like other animals"? Well, yes, precisely in that respect. But so what? Whose dignity does that infringe, and just exactly how?

•  Certainly, the other animals can't talk. But chimps and gorillas are, at last on some accounts, actively learning to sign. Has that not toned down the difference?

3. We need to probe into the motives that make it so politically incorrect even to hint that some people are closer to animality than others. The quick answer, of course, is that even if it were true, or [if there is no truth in these domains] even if there were circumstances in which it could advance our understanding to suppose it true, we must hide the thought lest it be misused -- by racists, by fascists, etc. But in contexts of scholarship this argument is always dubious. And in any case, it is selectively applied with a partiality that is sufficiently shocking to undermine its credentials. For think of some of the other putative truths which are at the moment arguably doing more harm than good: that all sexuality invariably harms children, for example. This has consequences arguably as bad as the opposite belief; yet no one dares to gainsay it on that ground.

4. Why is it assumed that treating people as animals must result in treating them worse? Why should it not, on the contrary, result in better treatment of both?

5. The treatment of animals has never depended much on the mere fact that they are animals. On the contrary: some animals (and I speak only of mammals: not of all living things or even all animal life) are treated abominably as a matter of course (cattle, for example) and hardly anyone protests; others (baby seals) are treated no worse or perhaps not as badly, but their exploitation is the target of violent and sometimes lethal protest. It's not even a question of whether certain animals are regarded as pets; for in France, for example, the owners of pet rabbits can regard them with equal measures of sentimentality and carnivorous appetite. And in certain native cultures rituals that celebrate our oneness with nature and the animals encompass killing them, so long as it is done in the right respectful or apologetic spirit.

6. Besides, the respects in which beings of various sorts are deemed to deserve Respect are often highly specific. I doubt if the often noted fact that the British first had a RSPCA and only later a NSPCC shows that British people used to think animals were more like people than were children. Similarly, the best reasons to avoid mistreating people are actually identical, and not even different in degree, to the best reasons to avoid mistreating animals: namely the capacity of both to suffer pain. There are presumably different ways in which the special capacities of human make them susceptible to being hurt in specific ways. But in these matters, again, as the Golden Rule notoriously forgets, people differ among themselves too. One who suffers from others' chatter, may well hurt others by her silence.

To confront our own animality, then, is to give up essentialism. It is to view all differences, including the differences between and within animal and human cultures, in the context of the huge variety that is the first rule of biology. In such a perspective, all differences and all resemblances hold between individual organisms, and become matters of degree; we can become more realistic about the lives of animals even as we become more realistic about our own, and we need no longer fall into the trap of affirming our nobility only by presupposing the baseness of other animals.

<1>: The Rationality of Emotion. MIT 1987

<2>: Hacking cites the American Heritage dictionary. But in the OED2, the relevant definitions (the 5th and 6th) utterly fail to support this "biological" sense. They read, in full, as follows:
 

5 A line or lineament of the face; a feature.

1773 Life N. Frowde 52 The ten Thousand lovely Traits, that dwelt in every Feature of her radiant Face. 1809 Med. Jrnl. XXI. 329 The latter inherits the general exterior resemblance of his father, or even his shape, characteristic traits, looks, or voice. 1821 SHELLEY Let. 15 Aug., Her face is somewhat altered. The traits have become more delicate. 1860 EMERSON Condition. Life, Behaviour Wks. (Bohn) II. 385 A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors.

6 a A particular feature of mind or character; a distinguishing quality; a characteristic; spec. of a culture or social group. Also attrib. 1752 Hume. WALPOLE Lett. to Mann 28 Oct., A most sensible trait of the King. 1797 Monthly Mag. III. 494 That love of order, which is a remarkable trait in his character. 1803 NELSON in Nicolas Disposition. (1846) VII. p. ccxxxi, A very excellent young man, and has all the traits for making an excellent seaman and naval officer. 1807 With. IRVING Salmag. iii. (1824) 38 Who have no national trait about them but their language. 1859 WRAXALL theatre. Reason. Houdin xviii. 258 A pleasing trait of English manners and customs. 1897 GEN. Hume. PORTER in Century Mag. Sept. 744/1 Sheridan now began to exhibit those traits which always made him a tower of strength.1916 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. Mar. 656 In maize culture as practiced by American farmers we have a fine example of a borrowed culture trait. 1916 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 659 The colonists took over all the essential parts of the trait-complex. 1936 Reason. LINTON Study of Man xvi. 280 During this [trial] period both the new trait and the old trait or traits with which it is competing become Alternatives within the total culture complex. 1936 Reason. LINTON Study of Man xxii. 397 Every trait is intimately associated with some other trait or traits to form a larger functional unit commonly known as a trait complex. 1947 G. MURPHY Personality xxi. 506 Most of the trait names that are used represent general action tendencies; and as soon as they are applied to oneself, or..to others, they stimulate a trait psychology in their user. 1976 A. HALEY Roots vii. 21 Kunta would always turn and walk away, thus displaying the dignity and self-command that his mother had taught him were the proudest traits of the Mandinka tribe. 1977 Reason. HOLLAND Self & Social Context v. 165 Trait models of professions attempt to list the characteristics of professional activity..as though some essential quality will be revealed by describing and comparing the many examples. 1869 TOZER Highl. Turkey II. 269 The character of the tales has been altered.., yet..the original traits have..been preserved. 1871 JOWETT Plato I. 254 Some lesser traits of the dialogue may be noted.

c A `touch' of some quality. Now rare.

1815 W. Hume. IRELAND Scribbleomania 56 note, A poem..wherein are to be found many traits of exuberant genius. 1830 MOORE Byron I. 328 A trait of pathos or high feeling, in comedy, has a peculiar charm. 1835 URE Phil. Manuf. 343 Many traits of almost parental kindness on the part of the masters.

7 A stroke: a of skill or cunning. double trait, a stroke of double dealing. Objections. A. 1625 in Gutch Coll. Cur. I. 187 You deal with a Nation that hath playd more double Traits..than all the World beside.

b of wit, sarcasm, pleasantry.

1704 SWIFT That. Tub Ded., Embellished with traits of wit so poignant and so apposite. 1781 Hume. WALPOLE Let. to Hume. S. Conway 16 Sept., In Voltaire's letters are some bitter traits on the King of Prussia. 1859 TENNYSON Elaine 320 When he fell From talk of war to traits of pleasantry.

<3>: "American social scientists fear and despise biology, although few of them have troubled to learn any.... Again and again in the writings of social scientists, we find `biological' equated with `invariant' or `genetic' or `instinctive', and contrasted with `social,' with `cultural', and `learned'. This usage betrays an incomprehension of the domain of biology." Daly, Martin and Wilson, Margo Homicide (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter; 1988) p. 154.
 

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