Animals, Society and Culture

1. Animals, Society and Culture Lecture 3: The philosopher’s dog and Schrodinger’s cat 2012-13

2. Lecture outline • Existence of this dualism in Greek writings on animals and its incorporation into Christianity and other world religions. • Descartes and what has become known as Cartesian thinking. • How the idea of human supremacy has been challenged by natural science, particularly Darwin, but, despite this, how scientific practice has, until very recently, continued to assume a gulf between humans and animals.

3. Aristotle (384-322 BC) • 1. Biological gradualism • 2. Humans are distinguished from all other animals by their intellectual powers, particularly their possession of reason • 3. The soul is a biological entity not a spiritual one • the souls of plants are ‘nutritive’ • non-human animals are more developed than this – have in addition consciousness and locomotion • only humans possess reason which is a capacity of the human soul

4. Aristotle ‘Thus we must suppose that nature [cares for] animals in like manner when they are once alive, and that plants exist for the sake of animals and the other animals for the sake of men, domesticated animals for both his use and his food and most of the wild ones, if not all, for his food and other needs, so that clothing and other products might be produced from them. If then nature makes nothing without purpose or at random, it is necessary that nature has produced all these things for the sake of man’ (Politics, 1256b 15-23 in Newmeyer, 2011:27)

5. Porphyry (232-309 AD) • Animals are conscious, they can feel pain and terror, they can be harmed and so it is possible to treat them unjustly (Sorabji, 2001:208) • Humans should not eat meat, animal sacrifice should be abolished • Argues against the Stoics that animals can be used in any way humans want because they are irrational, animals possess some degree of rationality and therefore we must refrain from harming them

6. Christianity • St Augustine (354-430 AD) • Nature made by God to serve ‘man’ • Animals have no reason therefore outside moral community • ‘Thou shalt not kill’ doesn’t apply to animals • Animals exist to help humans on road to salvation

7. Pastoralist societies • Fraser, D (2006) ‘Caring for farm animals’ in Waldau and Patton (eds) A communion of subjects, Columbia University Press • Pastoralist ethic • Animals can be used as long as conventions observed • Animals have to be properly cared for

8. Religion not to blame • The ‘degradation of the status of animals to mere objects finds no justification in the bible. While the cultural roots of it are in antiquity, it is essentially the produce of the sequence of modern thought since Descartes… which has made humankind the centre of the universe and has seen the outside world as subject to the human mind’ (Vischer, Living with animals, p.138, Communion of subjects)

9. Descartes (1596-1650) • Lack reason and language – indistinguishable from machines. • Lack immortal souls – they have sensitive souls (Aristotle) or what Descartes calls corporeal souls, but not rational souls which are immortal • Animals can’t make choices – they’re therefore not moral agents, not responsible for choices they make, and because they lack moral obligations they also lack moral rights • Can’t feel pain – incapable of conscious, perceptual states of pain • Gary Steiner (2006) ‘Descartes, Christianity and contemporary speciesism’ in Waldau and Patton

10. Enlightenment • Exaltation of reason • Shift away from reason in 18th century • Hume and Bentham • Utilitarianism • ‘The question is not can they reason? Nor can they talk? But can they suffer? (Bentham)

11. Charles Darwin and evolution • The Origin of Species (1859) • The Descent of Man (1871) • ‘last great work of heresy’ (Serpell, p.164) • No concept of design • No purpose of progress towards higher goal • No supreme creative being • No human superiority over other species

12. Science • In 1894, Lloyd-Morgan wrote: • ‘In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one that stands lower in the psychological scale’ • This is what Midgley refers to as ‘parsimony’ • Never attribute higher thoughts or feelings to animals if behaviour can be explained in terms of reflexes and instincts • Resulted in ‘systematic anthropocentric bias to the study of animal behaviour which has remained there ever since’ (Serpell)

13. Scientific theories and practice • Lynda Birke (1994) Feminism, Animals and Science, Open University Press • The price of so-called objectivity and its gendering • The reductionism of scientific method • The anthropocentrism underpinning much scientific practice

14. Objectivity • As a 17 year old she ‘had to swallow my disgust when confronted with a white rabbit with pink ears for dissection…Learning to be objective means learning to distance yourself from those feelings. To become a scientist I had to leave emotion behind and learn to construct a façade of scientific authority’ (46). • Emotionality and empathy are at odds with the ‘objective pursuit of truth’ • This is gendered – objective detachment is (in western culture) masculine, not letting emotions get in the way represses something ‘feminine’

15. Reductionism • In humans cultural variation accepted • In animals variation between different groups not regarded as culture • ‘Animals’ different experiences are typically relegated to some feature of their biology, their intrinsic nature; for humans, by contrast, we see explanation in terms of cultural difference’ (97)

16. Evolution • Popular interpretation - humans ‘pinnacle of evolution’ • Not what Darwin’s theory says • Survival of the fittest • Nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ • Ideas about human exceptionalism inform scientific practice

17. Summary • Roots of species barrier in ancient Greek philosophy –tendency to see separation between humans and animals rather than connection. Links to pastoralism. • Descartes is the culmination of this view – denied animals were anything more than machines, weren’t rational, had no soul or consciousness and couldn’t feel pain, any experiments on them were therefore morally defensible. • Science reproduces the separation of humans and animals by using reductionist methods to understand animal behaviour. Scientific objectivity is gendered, denies empathetic relationship to animals under study which is seen as anthropocentric and sentimental – feminine rather than masculine.