It is seriously
overdue of course and quite rightly a victim of prejudges. As we are just now reaching to understand the
reality of animal human - communication it is highly appropriate that we
address the communication of emotion.
Recall that all decision making is loaded emotionally. This is an important observation. We take it for granted. But if I challenge an opinion held by yourself,
you are likely to get angry before you actually consider the rational aspect of
the challenge.
Have I made my
point?
The good news is
that consciousness can be openly discussed and critiqued and it is long
overdue.
Mainstream
Science Finally Recognizes The Consciousness of Animals
FEBRUARY 25, 2014
After over a century, mainstream scientists finally
got around to acknowledging something that has been completely obvious to
most – animals are conscious beings.
A year ago at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference,
evidence of this obvious conclusion was presented by self-congratulatory
scientists, despite the fact that only one of them had actually bothered to do
any field research into wild animals and that field researchers had already
made the same conclusion years before. As Michael Mountain at the Nonhuman
Rights Project, which seeks to change the common law status of some nonhuman
animals as “things”, stated: ”Science leaders have reached a critical
consensus: Humans are not the only conscious beings; other animals,
specifically mammals and birds, are indeed conscious, too.”
Two of the primary reasons why it has taken so long
for the scientific establishment to come to such self-evident conclusions is
the nature of the study of psychology and consciousness itself, and the
historical cultural values towards animals in the Western world.
The rise of behaviourism at the turn of the
twentieth century as the dominant psychological model for the study of human
nature represented an outright rejection of conscious and subconscious actions,
reducing psychology to a strictly scientific discipline based solely on
observable behaviour. Consciousness, it seems, was proving to be too
problematic for the fresh-faced psychologists who were desperate for their
field to be taken seriously by other scientists, with John B. Watson – one of
the strongest early advocates of behaviourism – stating in his 1913
paper, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It:
Behaviorism claims that consciousness is neither a
definite nor a usable concept. The behaviorist, who has been trained always as
an experimentalist, holds, further, that belief in the existence of
consciousness goes back to the ancient days of superstition and magic.
While behaviorism doesn’t have the tight grip on the
academic psychological community it once had, the dominant scientific consensus
still has a tendency to reject any unorthodox views on the nature of
consciousness. David Lewis-Williams described this as the “consciousness of
rationality”, describing this in his book, The Mind in the Cave as
follows:
The contemporary Western emphasis on the supreme
value of intelligence has tended to suppress certain forms of consciousness and
to regard them as irrational, marginal, aberrant or even pathological and
thereby to eliminate them from investigations of the deep past.
This suppression has manifested itself in a number
of distinct ways. The study of emotions has been frequently ridiculed, for
instance when U.S. Senator William Proxmire rallied against researchers in
the 1970s who were studying love and deemed the work as a waste of taxpayer
dollars, issuing them his first Golden Fleece Award. The subjective nature of
emotional states by definition precludes them from investigation by an
ideological model rooted in empirical data.
More recently, Graham Hancock found himself under
attack from the scientific community and censored by the TED organization for
his talk, The War on Consciousness - his major crime against
established consensus was to reject the materialistic view which relegates
consciousness to nothing more than the product of electrical impulses in the
brain rooted entirely in our physiology, and suggest that the use of shamanic
visionary plants can teach us that we are immortal souls temporarily incarnated
in these physical forms to learn and to grow.
Given the inability for any form of consensus on the
nature of human consciousness, it is little wonder that the scientific
community has taken so long to concede that animals, particularly birds and
mammals, are conscious too.
Another problem derives from cultural values.
Historically throughout the West, non-human creatures have been relegated to
the status of “dumb beasts” incapable of love or happiness, pain or suffering.
Aristotle viewed the function of animals as serving human beings as “natural
and expedient”, and the Bible states that animals are there to be used by
mankind – while this was originally not intended as a license for abuse,
history has demonstrated that as a species humans have failed to adhere to the
proverb, ”A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the
kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.” It goes without saying that the
contemporary factory farming model represents the total reduction of animals to
unthinking, unfeeling commodities.
Philosopher Rene Descartes, adopting the mechanistic
view of the world, infamously described creatures other than humans (lacking,
as he saw it, the body-mind duality which made humans uniquely conscious) as
“animal machines”, while in the nineteenth century the Zoological
Journal declared that all behavior which appears to resemble
characteristics of consciousness were actually little more than reflex actions.
Often, people who exhibit violent or unreasonable behaviour are described as
behaving like an animal, with specific creatures – asses, mongrels, pigs and so
on – functioning as pejoratives.
All of this can be seen as an effective way in which
humans have historically absolved themselves of responsibility for the manner
in which they have historically exploited the animal kingdom for their own ends
– the reluctance on the part of the scientific community to acknowledge that
animals are indeed conscious can be viewed as a continuation of a willful
collective blindness.
Yet the study of emotion in animals should have
cleared up the question of consciousness in animals some time ago. As the
dictionary defines it, emotion is:
An affective state of consciousness in joy, sorrow,
fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as
distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.
Numerous species of animals have been seen to
demonstrate sorrow. Elephant families are so closely knit – and live for so
long – that the death of one of their number can be devastating. They are
known to bury their dead and attend the corpses in what appears to be a
mourning ritual; they have even been known to bury humans with the same attendant behaviour.
Death rituals have also been observed in dolphins,
and a number of primates – many of whom we know to have complex social
structures – also show clear signs of mourning. Magpies have been observed
conducting rituals similar to those of elephants – Marc Bekoff wrote in his
book, The Emotional Lives of Animals.
A few years ago my friend Rod and I were riding our
bicycles around Boulder, Colorado, when we witnessed a very interesting
encounter among five magpies. Magpies are corvids, a very intelligent
family of birds. One magpie had obviously been hit by a car and was laying dead
on the side of the road. The four other magpies were standing around him. One
approached the corpse, gently pecked at it-just as an elephant noses the carcass
of another elephant- and stepped back. Another magpie did the same thing. Next,
one of the magpies flew off, brought back some grass, and laid it by the
corpse. Another magpie did the same. Then, all four magpies stood vigil for a
few seconds and one by one flew off.
Other rituals more commonly observed relating to
courtship and mating. In addition to the elaborate displays of birds of
paradise, hermaphroditic flatworms engaging in “penis fencing”; male giraffes
take a mouthful of the female’s urine then proceeds to stalk her – sometimes,
when the female is particularly interested is a certain male she will pursue
him and rub her neck against him in an effort to get him to rub her rump so she
can urinate in his mouth. Porcupine mating rituals also involves urination,
this time with the male peeing all over the female (once she has given him her
approval after a bout of nose-rubbing). Male hippos prefer flinging excrement
to attract the attention of a female. Some animals deal with sexual rejection
in much the same way as some humans, for instance the male fruit fly, who will
often turn to alcohol.
Other emotions have been observed in various
species. In 2007, a 4 year old Siberian tiger took revenge on three men who had apparently been taunting her – the
tiger left her enclosure and ignored hundreds of other visitors to San
Francisco Zoo before attacking the men, killing one of them. A similar fate
befell Russian tiger poacher Vladimir Markov - after shooting and wounding a tiger and
taking part of its kill, the tiger found his cabin and waited for his return
before dragging him into the woods and eating him.
University of Chicago neuroscientists have
observed compassionate behaviour in rats. Placing one rat in a restraining device while
allowing another to roam free, the latter will attempt to release its
companion, ignoring any treats available. Professor of psychology and
psychiatry Jean Decety said, ”There are a lot of ideas in the literature
showing that empathy is not unique to humans, and it has been well demonstrated
in apes, but in rodents it was not very clear.”
Perhaps, given the number of psychopaths amongst the
human population, rats are actually more compassionate than ourselves.
A recent book by University of Miami philosopher
Mark Rowlands has suggested that animals exhibit human-like traits which go
beyond displays of emotions. Can Animals Be Moral? discusses the idea
that social animals know right from wrong and can choose to be good or bad.
Male bluebirds sometimes beat their mates if they catch them with another bird;
monkeys refuse to electric shock one another even when it means missing out on
food; a female gorilla by the name of Binti Jua rescued an unconscious
3-year old boy who had fallen into her enclosure, protecting him from other
gorillas and calling for human assistance; there are many cases where dolphins
have rescued humans from shark attacks.
These small samples of evidence clearly pointing to
the rich emotional lives of animals indicates that the recent declaration by
scientists regarding the conscious status of animals is a case of stating the
obvious – science, it seems, often struggles with basic common sense.
What this sense of superiority and reluctance to
acknowledge the capacity for other animals to experience emotions as conscious creatures
highlights is an aspect of mankind’s unfailing arrogance. Many of the positive
traits exhibited by animals are sorely lacking in our own species. One example
might be an incident in my own city, where a young girl on the roof of a
shopping mall was goaded by onlookers before jumping to her death – a stark
contrast to the respect shown by elephants and other animals. And while it is
true that some species of animals are known to commit suicide, there is no
evidence that other members of their species look on with a perverse, callous
pleasure.
It is the differences between human behaviour and
that of other animals which should be the focus of scientific scrutiny. We
display a number of negative traits rarely witnessed in the animal kingdom
which if anything mark us as emotionally inferior: we lie, cheat, steal and get
pleasure from bullying and cruelty, both psychological and physical. In
fact, our propensity for violence for the fun of it is believed to be as strong
as our drive for sex and food. While aggressive behaviour is observable in a
variety of species, most often this relates to defense of territory or mates.
[ I really think
that all characteristics will turn out to be universal but also triggered by
situation. – arclein ]
These negative emotions and behavioural
characteristics have achieved a kind of supremacy in the contemporary Western
world and are most obvious in the upper echelons of society, where greed, power
and corruption dominates the elite cliques who shape the ideologies which have
the most negative impact on humanity. Cultural and political institutions
reflect the psychopathic tendencies of those in charge and the general
population, through a form of mass conditioning on behalf of mainstream media
and superficial popular culture, becomes infected with the value system of the
rich and powerful. In daily life this manifests itself in bullying on the
school playground, road rage, vicious serial killers and hierarchical street
gangs.
Continuing down the path of negative behaviour, with
its vast potential for destruction of both the species and the planet itself,
is clearly untenable. But fortunately, the prognosis isn’t all doom and gloom.
While the powerful elites continue their drive towards total domination over
both the people and the planet, greater numbers are standing up and
demonstrating that love and compassion can work as a powerful tool in
reclaiming our lives from those who seek to oppress us. Peaceful protests and
movements for positive social change are emerging every day as the flimsy
facade of “democratic” political institutions crumbles, revealing the
authoritarian underbelly ruled by oligarchs and tyrants.
As Graham Hancock demonstrated in his TEDx talk, the
old psychological models which allow us as a species to justify our destructive
impulses on the planet and everything which lives on it are now facing rigorous
challenges. Rather than being viewed as something barely worthy of
consideration, consciousness is increasingly considered as something
fundamental to all reality; an interconnected web which ties humanity
intrinsically to all life on the planet, and indeed, the universe itself.
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