
Why humans need to rethink their place in the animal kingdom - Petiver
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/01/why-humans-need-rethink-their-place-animal-kingdom
======
roenxi
Even if we can't justify drawing a sharp line between humans and everything
else, you get into very tricky ground if you do not.

Ant colonies have a similar biomass to humankind [1]. If humans aren't
exceptional, do we acknowledge some sort of responsibility to provide for
ants? Can they draw on welfare?

If we separate by intelligence ... humans are clearly quite exceptional. Even
then though, if we reject human exceptionalism we will need convoluted
definitions. Can a town itself sue you for leaving because the intelligence of
the town itself decreases? Is a corporation a philosophical as well as legal
entity? Can they feel pain? A corporation can 'speak'; to some extent
independently of the people in it.

Humans may well not be exceptional in the harsh world of facts and science. We
still have to act as though we are or we may as well give way to nihilism. The
line has to be drawn somewhere.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_\(ecology\))

~~~
bitcoinusername
There's no need to define boundaries that give rise to bazillion exceptions.

Nihilism isn't the ultimate end.

I'd say that if you can choose between eating a fruit, and killing a bird and
eating it's flesh, a virtuous agent would eat the fruit.

It's unnecessary to go the utilitarian way of trying to draw the lines and
meet every single exception to the rule.

Acting in the world as a virtuous agent is a much more practical approach.

Would you test and experiment on someone who has a nervous system capable of
feeling pain and suffering, if it could save thousands or even millions of
people? Given the data of the lack of success of a huge percentage of studies,
you would, being virtuous, deduce that it's better to seek other means of
testing instead of doing a hit and miss approach on animals.

People don't behave as virtuous agents, and they do not act kindly. Especially
not to those they deem less worthy than them.

That's why stuff needs rethinking and regulation.

~~~
Ntrails
Where is it enshrined as truth that being virtuous (by the implied definition
above) is important or even desirable as a trait in a species?

~~~
hood_syntax
This is the crux of the issue. What makes one moral framework "virtuous" and
one not? It could be considered virtuous to ensure the dominance of the most
competitive species (us in this case).

Even if one, for the most part, cares for the world around them, is it
virtuous to attempt to ensure the survival of a species like the panda? As a
species it would vanish without any outside intervention.

~~~
katzgrau
Considering humans the most competitive species is also something that could
be called into question. We certainly think we're special, but we're probably
falling into Dunning-Kruger territory.

I think the only obvious route is to treat other living things the way we
would like to be treated - after all, we have a common ancestry and a case
could be made that we're just one big multicellular organism

~~~
hood_syntax
I do buy the golden rule as the only unarguably reasonable philosophical
principle (I hold it pretty highly as an essential combination of rationality
and empathy), I'm just arguing for the sake of it.

The reason I consider humans the most competitive is because we could
potentially wipe out any form of life (for some, we would have to go too). As
for the special thing, I don't think we're special in the sense that we have
some innate quality that separates us from other animals, we're just more
intelligent. Some unknown gap between the smartest animals and us results in
the situation we see today: humans have created technology and industry,
pursued math and science. No other species has, as far as I know (or at least
not to a degree that makes it significant relative to human understanding)

------
foxhop
This is a great article.

> "The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is,
> certainly is one of degree and not of kind."

I think deep down we all inherently know this. This is largely why I try my
best (although it is difficult) to eat mostly vegetarian. I think if it were a
matter of survival killing and eating is natural, however what we do with live
stock and factory farming is obviously unethical.

It's hard to watch footage of the process, from birth, life, and ultimate
death of animals in captivity. It reminds me of a video game I played called
"Prey" (great game, worth playing even today).

A recent film that strikes this chord but misses the chance to drive it home
is "Arrival" (2016). Another recent film is "Bladerunner 2049" (looking at the
farming practices of both protein and replicants)

There are countless documentaries on Netflix (and likely other services)
regarding factory farming animals which are worth watching. They certainly
helped clear some of my own ideological barriers.

~~~
jlos
If the difference is of degree, could the degree be discrete rather than
continuous? What I mean is that is that of the shared faculties between higher
animals and humans, such as language, it does not appear as if increasing
animal capacity by some factor would yield near human capacity. Instead, it
seems that animals and human operate in different, discrete, levels of using a
faculty.

Using language again, and I'm going to have to dig through my magazines to
find the book reference, but recent research by Noam Chomsky into animal
language reveals that it is fundamentally different than human language. Human
language is non-linear and recursive, that is, words can have antecedents and
self-referential clausal structures, whereas animal language is all linear;
the current sound is always in direct relation to the previous sound. Moving
from even highly developed animal language to human language, then, is not
simply a continuous increase but a discrete one.

Not disagreeing with you here, just trying to nuance the point that to suggest
that rather than seeing humans as fundamentally similar to animals and on a
higher continuum, that we are fundamentally similar to animals and yet at a
discretely higher level not achievable by increasing any given factor of those
animals' faculties.

~~~
simonh
Fair points, but does it follow that because human communication is
significantly different from animal communication, that therefore all other
aspects of the human experience must be equally remote from those of animals?

I think that’s an inference too far. The parts of our brain responsible for
language are quite different from those of animals, but the parts of our
brains responsible for body image, sight, hearing, locomotion and emotional
experience are pretty unremarkable compared to other higher mammals. Therefore
it seems likely that our experience of those things is unremarkable too, at
least when it comes to mammals. It’s just that we can talk about it, and they
can’t

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gumby
With respect to the author, he has it backwards (Wittgenstein and humans’
anthropomorphic assumptions are at the core of my work these days).

Humans always discuss non-human actors in human terms. This can be useful
(think of Dennet’s “the thermostat wants to keep the room at 70degrees”) but
also lead down a false path (the “queen” of a hive isn’t the boss — innfact
there is no boss).

So the very model the author decries is a specfic tool to _avoid_ these kinds
of errors. Animals that killed humans were sometimes tried and hanged in
medieval Europe. That’s a foolish absurdism. And people do understand this —
his example of the elephant minders shown that people can adapt these models
just fine.

This conception of agency explains some opposition to, for example, self-
driving cars. People are confused when they can’t make eye contact with a
car’s driver. They make assumptions as to why certain material shows up in
their Facebook feed. Etc. I’m not working on cars, but am working on on
systems that don’t violate human assumptions.

~~~
mannykannot
The authors of this review and the books reviewed are not proposing a return
to that sort of literal anthropomorphism; they are calling for a less
dogmatic, more realistic look at the evidence.

It would be something of a problem for evolutionary theory if every scrap of
conscious and intelligent behavior was exhibited by Homo Sapiens alone. The
current situation is probably a contingency of history: between now and the
last common ancestor of us and chimpanzees, many species have come and gone,
with some of them leaving evidence of intermediate cognitive abilities.

------
danielam
The view more or less described by the article probably has its (most recent,
at least) origin in Descartes. Cartesian metaphysics posits two kinds of
things in the universe, namely, mind and matter. Mind is associated with
thought, desire, emotion, sensation, consciousness, etc. Matter, of course, is
not. Of all life on earth, only man is a composite of mind and matter. Non-
human animals are therefore mindless which is to say devoid of emotions,
desires, sensations, consciousness, etc. This view, I claim, goes against
common sense. Try telling anyone who owns a dog that Spot is merely a machine
devoid of emotions, desires or consciousness.

In the context of intellectual history, this Cartesian view is rather recent.
Aristotle, for example, describes plants, animals and human beings quite
differently in De Anima. In his analysis, human beings entail all faculties
that are essentially proper to animals, and non-human animals entail all
faculties that are essentially proper to plants; the entailment is transitive
so that the faculties essentially proper to plants are entailed by human
animals. For Aristotle, animals are living things that possess the faculties
of locomotion. The only faculties that essentially differentiate human beings
from other animals are the intellectual faculties. So in this sense, human
beings are "exceptional" in the sense that among the animals, they alone are
known to possess intellectual faculties, but it is not so extreme as the
Cartesian position. Still, it is an important difference with important
consequences.

------
haZard_OS
The author is, to put it mildly, mistaken to say that "most of our science,
philosophy, and religion" assume a hard division between humans and other
animals.

Most of our religion? Yes. Most of our philosophy? Maybe. Most of our science?
No. Wrong.

How could anyone post-Darwin write what this author has written...unless the
person is utterly ignorant of anything approaching modern biology?!

------
gkya
> Ludwig Wittgenstein once observed, “If a lion could speak, we could not
> understand him.” But Ludo, mind if I ask how much time you’ve actually spent
> with lions? Thought not. Because that’s rubbish, at least in the sense that
> humans and lions couldn’t possibly have common ground for a conversation.
> Wittgenstein can beat me in any logico-philosophical contest of his or
> anyone else’s choosing, but he hasn’t spent as much time as I have hanging
> out in the bush with lions.

How can I take this seriously now...

~~~
kiliantics
Preposterous really, it should be Ludi, not Ludo.

------
JackFr
> I try my best (although it is difficult) to eat mostly vegetarian.

But presumably you don't hold lions to the same ethical standard.

> what we do with live stock and factory farming is obviously unethical.

I don't disagree, but it is specifically the belief that it is unethical that
makes us special.

------
ciconia
I've been watching Black Mirror recently and have reflected on this - human
exceptionalism. We'd like to think of ourselves as gods, or almost-gods, and
with technology we are surely achieving some god powers. But we always seem to
fall back to misery just when we thought we've conquered nature - human
nature, animal nature.

The greatest lesson we'll ever learn is our own insignificance in this world.
Only then will we stop fighting the world, and indeed each other. Only then
will we stop destroying, and accept our true place and destiny among all
living things.

~~~
metafunctor
Living an insignificant life and living in misery are not the same thing.

~~~
taneq
Almost the opposite; one of the things that most bedevils successful humans is
the drive to make their lives significant.

------
pixl97
Given the ethical dilemma presented in this article, after much thought, I
have come to the conclusion that cannibalism is acceptable.

------
prepend
I have twice the biomass of the average human. Should I get two votes?

------
chb
Humans should have reconsidered their place within the global ecosystem well
before the twenty-first century, but our limited longevity and innate myopia,
along with rapacious capitalism and religious dogma, kept us from doing so.
Now we've destroyed the one thing that sustains us, and to what end?

------
Arnt
The article argues that we because our existing differentiation between humans
and those others, we need a revolutionary change, meaning a large change.

That last bit is very nicely done rhetorically. But I don't see any actual
argument in the article that the practical effects of the philosophical shift
have to be large, or even will be large.

