Animal Consciousness
My sixth-grade teacher had an annoying habit of occasionally letting his religious views intrude on his classroom. On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, the subject of homosexuality arose (I don’t remember how) and my teacher explained it was his opinion that sexual orientation is a matter of choice. His reasoning was that God would not allow humans to be born gay and this view was supported by the ‘fact’ that homosexuality had never been observed in any other species.
At the time, I would have conceded him the latter point but did not pretend to be impressed by the former – I did not feel I could have chosen to be gay, did not see how anyone could, and did not see why it should not feel equally natural for others to be born with a different set of preferences. Yet, in hindsight, his second point now strikes me as even more dubious.
According to one count, same-sex mating behavior has been observed in over 1500 species, ranging from “primates to sea stars, bats to damselflies, snakes to nematode worms.” Evolutionarily, the phenomenon may seem baffling. Closer examination has, however, led many researchers to conclude that sexual fluidity benefits gene pools overall. In human males, a trait like emotional sensitivity can make a man more attractive to women, while, past a certain point, it can also facilitate male homosexuality. So long as the cumulative reproductive benefit outweighs the inefficiencies, any given trait will endure.
Would it make a difference if there were an element of choice involved? Why do we credit animals with less free will than humans? There is nothing new about diagnosing human behaviors as products of social conditioning on the rationale that those behaviors are uniquely human. Certain feminists have been known to claim that male sexual assault of women is clearly the result of patriarchal conditioning because rape has never been observed in other species – another claim with no grounding in scientific truth, unfortunately.
The questions then arise: what is choice, anyway? Is there more to it than can be explained by the laws of physics? Do we actually have free will, and does it matter if we do?
Do animals have free will?
Whether or not our existences are entirely predetermined, our status as biological beings is determined by genetics. The popular nonfiction author James Gleick, in his book The Information (2011), explains Richard Dawkins’s development of meme theory in the 1980s, bridging the gap between genes and the realm of ideas: “[Dawkins’s] essential actor was the replicator, and it scarcely mattered whether replicators were made of nucleic acid”. Seen in this light, genes are not just combinations of DNA but biological encryption systems whose messages decode themselves into tangible phenotypic traits.
Much of every living organism’s life is, therefore, determined by a set of characteristics that nothing, or almost nothing, can change. There is no whale which is not a water-dwelling mammal, just as there is no bird that was not hatched from an egg. The physical, genetically coded conditions of every individual organism’s existence tightly bind the organism’s capabilities into a narrow tunnel of experience from which there can be no escape unless those conditions change, and even then, an opening in one part of the tunnel typically represents a closing in another. The only real question is whether, within that narrow tunnel, there is some freedom to explore the space.
If we accept at face value the notion that animals lack human “souls” or at least a human sense of “consciousness,” then it follows that they cannot explore even the narrow confines of their existential tunnel. Religious rulings on treatment of animals vary, yet many posit that the absence of a soul is the core difference between animals and humans. The Catholic Church teaches that animals and plants do, technically, have souls, but nonspiritual souls: “Animal and vegetable souls are dependent entirely on matter for their operation and being. They cease to exist at death.”
One scientific perspective is that what animals lack – in contrast to humans – is consciousness, understood as “your awareness of yourself and the world around you”, and that your perspective is unique to yourself. But does this differ from what animals experience? A growing body of research suggests that it doesn’t. A contemporary group of neuroscientists seeking to factor consciousness into animal testing recognizes that “all mammals and birds, as well as many other organisms, have the same brain structures and substrates that make consciousness possible in humans, which makes consciousness possible for them as well.”
The traditional argument suggests that those animal behaviors which seem to indicate consciousness – cowering in fear when faced with a physical threat, for instance – are only a reflexive response to a stimulus. This has never been an entirely satisfying assessment of the evidence. It may still be impossible to prove that consciousness undergirds an animal’s emotional reactions, but it is equally impossible to prove the same of other humans, hence what is known as the “problem of other minds.” We project our own experience onto others through empathy, which is not the same as actually experiencing what others experience. Many animal species, particularly intelligent animals, have been observed demonstrating unmistakable behaviors, such as play, which seem inseparable from consciousness or at least some variety of inner life.
If this is true, it obviously raises profound questions about ‘animal ethics’; but it also raises questions about what it means to be human. Animals, whether conscious or not, laden with spiritual souls or not, are undoubtedly much less mentally complex than humans. Their behavior, therefore, can still be plausibly attributed to determinism as opposed to free, willed decision making. It seems incongruous, however, that mental complexity alone can confer freedom of the will.
Do humans have free will?
To what extent, then, are we able to control and influence our own lives? We love to think we have free will, yet our first instinct is to fall back on the logic of determinism when we make mistakes, especially when our moral conduct is called into question: “[He/she/some-other-factor] made me do it!” The more things get out of control, the more we feel powerless: not for naught do we speak of losing our cool, losing our heads, losing control.
There can be no doubt that our genes shape our mental development as much as they shape our eye color and skin tone. Political psychologists have documented the strong positive correlation between the political values of parents and their children, not all of which can be ascribed solely to nurture. We are our bodies; we are also our brains.
This in itself does not prove that we have no free will – nothing can prove that – but it does suggest some of the limitations that constrain human selfhood. Our ability to engage in deep contemplation, while perhaps unique to the human experience, can be plausibly understood as a coded response to stimuli. It does not require the existence of a spiritual prime mover to explain its existence or function. Occam’s Razor comes into play here. The more we learn about everything, that is to say, the more we are able to explain things, the less we are able to marvel at them. This applies as much to patterns in our own conduct as to patterns in the behavior of our pets, of bees in flight and ants on the ground.
That same loss of wonder is sometimes invoked (particularly in the movies) as an argument against scientific inquiry. There are numerous ethical issues in science, but the loss of mystery is not usually a bad thing. For one thing, the solving of one scientific mystery always raises another. More importantly, at least in biology, a deeper understanding of other creatures gives us a deeper understanding of ourselves. Animals do, indeed, make us more human. The realization that animals can, indeed, find conscious pleasure in play does not detract from our relationships with our pets but increases their value.
Likewise, the probability that we do not have free will does not diminish the value of freedom, of our ability to make our own decisions. Even if these things can someday be explained entirely by the laws of physics, there will always be a subjective element in our individuality which science cannot touch. Our self-awareness, our sensory perceptions, our capacity to make decisions…these things will always be uniquely our own, and more precious as science continues to explain what makes them unique.
Animals, whether or not they have conscious minds, probably do live more in the moment than humans. The curse of heightened consciousness is that it distances us from our sensual selves, yet its beauty is that allows us to appraise and appreciate the facets of those selves more deeply. What makes us animal is what makes us human.
