Philosophy On The Mesa

On Dec,6, 2007 I posted a story from Austria about Matthew Hiasi Pan (”Hearts and Minds of Chimps”) who was about to be sold into an unknown future. Matthew Hiasi is a chimpanzee, and supporters have argued that he should be granted human status, as opposed to being legally classified as a thing. In Austria there are only those two legal options. Some of you may have wondered what happened to him: In mid-January the Austrian Supreme Court decided against Hiasi: He has been found to be a thing, with no rights. His British mentor is taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights. The trouble with the court ruling seems to be that the court has decided against making a distinction between “humanity” and “personhood.” It goes without saying that Hiasi is not a human being, genetically, but being a “person” requires (among other characteristics) the capacity for meaningful communication, a sense of purpose, and self-awareness, characteristics that apes share with us at least to some extent, as the stories of Washoe, Koko, Kanzi and Panbanisha have shown us. Even Kant finally came to the conclusion that there ought to be an intermediate category between a person and a thing (although he didn’t include animals in that category). Apparently it is too much of a challenge for the Austrian Supreme Court to consider the possibility of partial personhood.

The Kyoto University cognitive scientist Tetsuro Matsuzawa has just  published a study where he demonstrates that a group of chimpanzees have better memory functions than a test group of college students. That ought to interest our students, here close to the finals…

“Matsuzawa showed a computer screen grid of nine numbers to six chimpanzees, all trained to recognize the ascending nature of arabic numberals, and nine college students. When subjects touched one number, the others disappeared. Then they had to touch the squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there. When the original numbers remained on-screen for seven-tenths of a second, the college kids fared as well as Ayumu, the most prodigious of the chimps. Both had a success rate of 80 percent. But when the numbers flashed for just four-tenths of a second or less, Ayumu’s success rate stayed the same, while the others plummeted to 40 percent. Even with six months of training, three students still couldn’t beat Ayumu.”

So what does this mean? The Wired headline asks, “Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee?” but that is not the key question. Memory and intelligence are not the same—birds and squirrels have a fantastic capacity for remembering where they hid the nuts the year before.  It is what we do with our memory that makes the difference. It is entirely conceivable that other animals may have skills that supercede our own; eidetic memory may have been more necessary in the wild for the chimp ancestors than the human ancestors. What is truly interesting about this study is that we barely bat an eye anymore at the suggestion that chimps are smart—and the sea change has happened really fast: In 2000 a Chicago conference on animal behavior chaired by Jane Goodall concluded that there would no longer be any legitimate reason to claim that animals had no emotional life, nor any form of intelligence. In contrast to what was considered an appropriately skeptical academic attitude in most of the 20^th century, a new generation of researchers is now weighing in, from the notion that animals may have a natural morality (see Dwight’s blog below) to the concept of animal rationality. Some of us are saying, “It‘s about time,” after a century of critics across the board have disregarded the clear evidence of animal minds based on two cases of animals who weren’t as smart as first assumed, the horse Clever Hans and the ape Nim Chimpsky. As Frans de Waal, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Fouts have pointed out in recent books, the ape capacity for morality as well as abstract thinking expressed in verbal and nonverbal language is real, and not a matter of researchers superimposing their own interpretations on animal reactions in a training program, as the Nim Chimpsky critics used to claim. As late as the 1980s I myself heard the influential linguist Thomas Sebeok lecture that animals have no rational mind activity or language comprehension whatsoever, and now, 20 years later, we are more than willing to accept the thought that not only apes, but dolphins, elephants and perhaps even dogs have some form of self-awareness, through the mirror self-recognition test.

             Add to this paradigm shift the case of Matthew Hiasi Pan, highlighting the fact that these debates about ethics and capacity for reason aren’t just academic ivory tower discussions: As of late September 2007 Pan was in danger of being sold unless the Vienna Supreme Court grant him personhood, because Pan is a chimpanzee, and the animal shelter where he has lived for 25 years is in bankruptcy. Echoing Kant’s infamous dichotomy, the Austrian legislators only recognize the status of a person, and the status of a thing, and as of now, Matthew Hiasi Pan is a thing. In England, New Zealand and Australia apes are considered hominids with limited rights. It seems that Austria is about to have a debate about personhood on their hands. Stay tuned.

Time Magazine’s cover story for their December 3 issue is a fascinating summary of recent work in understanding the biological and evolutionary basis of morality.

“The deepest foundation on which morality is built is the phenomenon of empathy, the understanding that what hurts me would feel the same way to you. And human ego notwithstanding, it’s a quality that other species share.”

This research, which includes animal studies, investigations into the neurobiology associated with moral behavior, and child development studies, suggests that human beings have a genetically encoded moral compass that has emerged through eons of evolution.

This research is in its infancy and there are limits to how much science can tell us about moral conduct. However, if the research stands up to scrutiny, there are a variety of widely held myths that must be set aside.

Myth #1 would be the pernicious belief in original sin–the doctrine that human beings are inherently corrupt and can lead morally good lives only through God’s grace. Apparently, the capacity for morality is as deeply embedded in human nature as the capacity for savagery.

Myth #2 is the belief that, because evolution prescribes  ”survival of the fittest”, evolution has designed us to be self absorbed moral cretins eager to slay anything that piddles on our property. Instead, apparently, “fitness” is in part bound up with the capacity to recognize and respond to the vulnerability of other human beings.

Myth #3 is the idea that becoming moral is a matter of overcoming our animal nature, an idea for which we have Christianity and Kant to thank. Apparently, to be moral we ought to embrace our animal nature–an idea for which we have Nietzche to thank.

Myth #4 is related to #3–the idea that becoming moral is a matter of becoming more rational and less emotional. Apparently, it is rational to embrace at least some of our emotional responses.

This biological and psychological research reduces the plausibility of Kantian and (some?) utilitarian moral frameworks. It enhances the plausibility of Aristotelian ethics and the ethics of care because both revel in the goodness of being animal.

We used to call people who were egregiously deficient in mental acuity a “bird brain.” But recent research suggests this epithet is no longer appropriate.

“A nutcracker can remember the precise location of hundreds of different food storage spots. And crows in Japan have learned how to get people to crack walnuts for them: They drop them near busy intersections, then retrieve the smashed nuts when the traffic light turns red.”

The article calls this “part of a growing recognition of the genius of birds.” I don’t know if this qualifies as genius but it is not bad for a bird.

At any rate, we need a new epithet. I guess “dumb as a tree” still works. Is there any research on the intelligence of trees?

According to a Washington Post article, “What Were They Thinking? More Than We Knew”, dogs have been shown to be able to imitate atypical actions of other dogs. I am not completely surprised at the findings, only at the courage to publish (we all know about the Clever Hans curse). I had the privilege of watching our beloved wonder dog over 12 years expanding her comprehension-vocabulary and “tricks” with things we never taught her, but which she observed, remembered, and imitated. An alien intelligence, right there by the fireplace! Why is it so important to have established that dogs can imitate each other? Because it is one of the true tests of intelligence: having a Theory of Mind, an understanding of “Other Minds:” Brian Hare of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology says, “This suggests they can actually think about your intention — they can look for explanations of your behavior and make inferences about what you are thinking.”

As a philosophy student a couple of centuries ago I was told that (1) only humans can think, (2) only humans can feel, and (3) only humans have morals. Over the years I started doubting first one, then the other, and lastly the third one; and animal behaviorists and neurologists are now showing us what anecdotal evidence has hinted at all along (which was enough for Darwin), that many animals have rudimentary logical thinking, complex emotional reactions, and even some form of community awareness (if we want to call that “moral” is another question). Apes have been shown to have self-awareness through the mirror self-recognition test, and dolphins and elephants have been added to that list. And now…could dogs be joining the club? The question is, can you imitate what someone else is doing, deliberately, without knowing that you are doing it? In other words, does it imply self-awareness? Skeptics say no, we’re falling for the old anthropomorphizing trick again, dogs are automata working on pure instinct, and if we call dogs self-aware, then we’ve watered down the concept of self-awareness. But as David Hume said in the 18^th century, if it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, guess what? Well, not in those exact words, but he did say that if animals display the same kind of behavior that humans do under certain circumstances, and we call the human behavior intelligent, there is no reason why we shouldn’t use the same terms when describing animal behavior. Although it’s a little too soon to declare that dogs ought to have the right to vote and to receive a basic education …This story takes us in two directions: one toward epistemology, and the other toward ethics.