The attacks against human exceptionalism are many and varied, mostly coming out of what is sometimes called the Liberal Intellegentsia. Explicit case in point by the founder of “Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,” professor emeritus (of course!) Mark Bekoff. Writing at his Animal Emotions blog at the Psychology Today Website, Bekoff slams human exceptionalism in an emotional jumble called, “Animal Minds and the Foible of Human Exceptionalism.” From Bekoff’s blog:
Nonhuman animals (animals) are magnificent and amazing beings. They clearly have wide-ranging cognitive, emotional, and moral capacities. We can learn a lot from them if we open or minds and hearts to who (not what) they really are. We should be proud of our citizenship in the animal kingdom. Scientific research is changing the way we view other animals. We don’t have to go beyond the science or embellish what we know to appreciate how they express their intellectual skills and emotional capacities. We’re clearly neither the only conscious beings nor the sole occupants of the emotional and moral arenas in which there are also some surprising residents including honeybees, fish, and chickens. Surely we have no right to intrude wantonly into the lives of other animals or to judge them or blame them for our evil ways.
Good grief. Only humans can have “evil ways,” because only we are moral agents. Nor are we “citizens” of the animal kingdom, in the sense of being just another member of the forest society. Indeed, only we can rationally discern the “kingdom’s” existence.
Humans inhabit a place uniquely our own–not wholly removed from the natural world, to be sure, but certainly not wholly within it, either. And it is ludicrous to consider bees, fish, and chickens or any other animal to be moral actors in the sense that humans are. Only we decide what is moral and not, e.g. only we promulgate moral codes using rational and conscious processes. Besides, virgin queen bees kill other newly hatching queens. Fish are merciless hunters. Chickens establish rigid pecking orders. Male dolphins force themselves upon unwilling females in packs. If humans did that, it would be gang rape. Hyenas eat prey alive uncaring about the pain experienced by the animal being eaten. Elephants destroy local ecosystems in their foraging with nary a thought for the consequences to other animals and plants of their destructive eating habits. They are just being animals, in so doing. But if they were moral agents, they would surely be harshly judged.
Illustrating Bekoff’s unhinged beliefs, he turns to the animal rights radical Stephen Best for support. That is very telling. As I pointed out in A Rat, is a Pig, is a Dog, is a Boy, Best is a wild radical, whose has supported violence in the cause of liberating animals–calling “non violence against animal exploiters” a “pro-violence stance that tolerates their [animals] blood-spilling,” urging “counter terrorists” animal liberationists “to wage a perfect war against oppressors of the earth.” As a consequence of his advocacy, Best has been banned from entering the UK, and shame on Bekoff for relying on anything Best writes as authoritative.
Back to Bekoff’s own nonsense:
We need to be more compassionate, empathic, and humble and act with greater concern for animals and their homes. We suffer the indignities to which we expose other animals and in the end we all lose when we ignore nature and act as if we’re the only animals who count, that we are exceptional and better and can do whatever we want because we can. Power is neither license to make other animal’s lives miserable nor to redecorate their homes with no concern for their well-being.
This is the kind of utterly sophmoric pap we often see in attacks against HE. We do not do “whatever we want” to animals “because we can.”
Hello! Animal Welfare Act. Anti cruelty laws. Treaties against poaching. Indeed, one can argue reasonably that we should do more than we now do. But we self evidently don’t do whatever we want to animals: Otherwise Michael Vick would never have been jailed. In fact, it is human exceptionalism that allows us to understand that we are not the only ones who count,that animals can feel physical and emotional pain, and that as a consequence, we have positive duties toward animals in our treatment of them. I am not sure what he means by “redecorate their homes,” but animals don’t have aesthetic tastes.
Bekoff’s piece is typical of the hyper emotionalism and irrationality being used to undermine human exceptionalism. And the campaign is spreading. The publishers of Psychology Today might want to take note that if Bekoff and Best prevail, the mental health sector will no longer be able to study animals in experiments aimed at gaining greater understanding of our and their mental faculties.
July 31st, 2011 | 12:02 pm
[...] First Things (blog) [...]
August 1st, 2011 | 8:59 am
Taking some off-the-walls comments against “human exceptionalism” in a pop-culture magazine as proof positive that “human exceptionalism” is an intelligent philosophy, is akin to citing the publications of “creation scientists” as serious, scientific rebuttals of evolution.
Anyone interested in discovering the true antecedents of “human exceptionalism” has only to read the writings of Christian dominionists Rushdoony, Kennedy et al. “Human exceptionalism” is nothing more than Christian dominionism, deodorized and repackaged.
HW
August 1st, 2011 | 2:05 pm
Two words:
“Psychology Today”
Was this in the crayon edition of Psychology Today or the annual finger painting special?
Let it go.
Let Bekoff return to his doggie yoga in peace.
August 2nd, 2011 | 5:21 am
Absurd to put humans and animals on any sought of equal playing field or even on a sliding scale. Human language is one area where there is no congruence as John Searle points out
“Dr. John Searle: All right. Well, first of all, we have to think about the role of language in cognition and in society, generally. I think most biologists make a serious mistake when they think that human language is just kind of a more elaborate form of animal signaling system. And of course, that’s completely wrong. Human languages have the capacity to represent in a way that animal signaling systems don’t have.
Animals can signal danger or sexual desire or a few things like that, but they cannot get this articulated form of precise representation that we get in human languages. So the big jump off point is between animal signaling and human languages. Human languages have these remarkable capacities that they are compositional; that is, you can figure out the meaning of the utterance from the meanings of the parts and the way they’re composed.
Human languages have also involved this remarkable ability of commitment; humans commit themselves to doing something when they make a promise. They commit themselves to something being the case when they make a statement. There’s nothing like that in animal signaling. Now, that’s the basics of language: compositionality, representation and commitment. Keep those three in mind.”
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/searle.htm
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 9:34 am
@Damien Spillane,
I agree with Prof. Searle that human language is far more subtle and complex than animal communication. However, that doesn’t make humans any more “exceptional” than the ability to sprint up to 50 or 60 mph makes cheetahs “exceptional.” The fact that we’re able to out-communicate most other members of the animal kingdom doesn’t automatically endow us with superior rights that allow us to kill and maim at will.
HW
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 5:46 pm
@HistoryWriter, humans clearly have amazing capacities, but it does, as you point out, depend on what we define as “exceptional.” A book review, you might find interesting, by Colin McGinn, a brilliant philosopher. He addresses some of these questions with the neuroscientist Ramachandran. it’s the latter’s book McGinn is reviewing.http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/24/can-brain-explain-your-mind/?page=3
the above is the book review, and below is their exchange.http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/tell-tale-brain-exchange/
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
August 4th, 2011 at 2:10 am
@Damien Spillane, With all due respect, I just don’t see how anything that you’ve written, here, is at all relevant to whether animals should have rights.
I think John Searle is right in his assessment of humans language abilities.
So?
In other words, we’re better at language than other animals; what does this have to do with whether they have the right to life, and “liberty” (I put that word in quotes, because their liberty will reflect what neural capacities the creature in question possesses).
What is relevant, is that animals are conscious and can suffer. (I don’t know what Searle’s views on animal rights are, but he’s explicitly stated that he believes cats and dogs are conscious. He rejects the Cartesian notion that only humans are conscious, and can feel).
August 2nd, 2011 | 12:31 pm
I’ll believe the good professor when I can sue a bee for stinging me and I get the settlement (unless the bee pleads temporary insanity and gets off the hook).
August 2nd, 2011 | 5:38 pm
Thanks Wesley for supporting animal welfare. We do disagree, I believe in animal rights, and you believe in animal welfare. But it shows that there can be some common ground somewhere here.
The more theroretical the discussion gets, the more the disagreement is evident. But I do commend you for your commitment to animal welfare. You obviously care about other animals, and want them to be treated compassionately.
August 2nd, 2011 | 7:28 pm
If humans aren’t uniquely exceptional, then why are we the only species held to uniquely exceptional goals? I’ve yet to hear an animal rights activist suggest roosters be jailed for raping hens (but they want to stop human chicken breeders because they are facilitating the rape of the hens by the rooster, no, really, someone actually said that to me), or put the lion in jail for life for murdering a zerba, or accuse a cat or torture for fatally ‘playing’ with a mouse. The people trying to get chimps recognized as ‘people’ don’t think they should be tried and convicted for murder when they kill a competitors offspring. So, if humans are ‘just’ another animal why are we held to such a higher standard? Why can’t we kill our food as visciously as we please? Torture unwillingly victims to death for practice and amusement? Kill our spouse’s children from a previous relationship? Etc, etc, etc. These deluded people want humans to grant the rewards of ‘humanity’ (life, freedom, property, etc) without requiring of them any of the responsibilities of humanity (respecting other people’s life, freedom, etc). Only humans are still to be held accountable…doesn’t that make us exceptional?
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 8:26 pm
@Jespren, We’re held to a higher standard, because we know better. Other animals are not “put in jail” because they don’t possess the cognitive capacity to know right from wrong. But they DO possess the capacity to suffer, so it’s our obligation to do all we can to prevent, or at least reduce that suffering.
If an animal can suffer, it has the corollary right to not be put in a situation where it can suffer. Animals don’t have the same rights as we do, (such as the right to vote, drive,etc.) because of their different cognitive capacities. But they do have rights. These rights, correspond to their cognitive/emotive capacities: they have a right to life, and freedon from suffering.
Jespren Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 7:47 pm
@Bret Lythgoe, no, if *we* are the ones who know right from wrong, then *we* have a responsibility to act in the right, do not allow needless suffering, but an animal does not have a ‘right’ to not suffer, or that ‘right’ would equally apply to everything it came in contact with. If animals have a right not to suffer then they have a right not to suffer, it would be equally bad for a wolf to cause a deer to suffer as for a man to cause a deer to suffer. Instead, what animal rights people are actually saying is that humans shouldn’t cause animal suffer. That has everything to do with the human in the equation and nothing to do with the animal. A right isn’t a right only if a party understands it, it’s fundamental, it is all-incompassing and automatic. A mentally challenged person might not understand that I have a right to life, but he is still held to that right. He can’t hurt me, and society will intervien if necessary. An animal can’t hurt me, and society will intervein if necessary to keep it from doing so (dangerous dogs are put down, wild man eaters are killed, dangerous wild animals are relocated). That’s because humans have intrinsic RIGHTS and with those rights come RESPONSIBILITIES. Animals do not recognise ‘rights’ their own or others, they are incapable of it, they are, as a whole, fundamentally different than humanity. Rights can not exist in a vaccum. You can’t say an animal has a fundamental right to life *only* if a human seeks their death, that’s not a fundamental right, that’s a bestowed privilege. Animals have been granted certain privileges by humans who have recognized their responsibility to act as good stewards. These privileges depend wholy upon humanity, varry greatly place to place and time to time, and are not intrinsic ‘rights’ such as humanity possesses.
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
August 4th, 2011 at 1:27 am
@Jespren, Do you believe that humans should try and stop animal suffering, if so, why, if not, why?
Jespren Reply:
August 9th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
@Bret Lythgoe, yes, humans should try to stop needless animal suffering (you could use the term ‘excessive’ instead of ‘needless’ if one wanted) because humans are called to be good stewards over the animals and, since suffering is wrong (not a part of the natural order of things but a punishment for sin that affects all of creation), we should do what we can to minimize it. Believing that humans have resonsibility and not that animals have rights does not mean people are for animal cruelty. On the contrary, if *we* have the responsibility, than failing to do so directly reflects poorly upon us, while being animals have rights that are being ignored more activily reflects poorly upon the ‘system’, not individuals.
August 2nd, 2011 | 7:54 pm
Although we disagree about animal rights, I commend you for supporting animal welfare, as you stated in this post. Thanks for acknowledging that animal welfare may not go far enough. It doesn’t.
I agree with Gary Francione’s apt phrase that “moral schizophrenia”, describes how we tend to treat animals. How else to explain that we can, as a society, support the killing of billions of cows and pigs for food for food, and yet have anticruelty laws in our dealings with cows and pigs?
August 3rd, 2011 | 11:33 am
You can’t argue againts Human Exceptionalism without unwittingly promoting it. it’s inescapable
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Yes, that is the irony, Imer.
August 5th, 2011 | 7:11 am
Wesley, you say it’s ludicrous to to consider other animals as moral actors in the same sense human are. (to paraphrase what you wrote above). Agreed. Has anyone ever claimed otherwise? I don’t know of any animal rights activist, who has claimed that other animals are moral actors in the sense humans are. That would require other animals to possess the capacity to engage in moral reasoning. Has any advocate for animals claimed this?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 5th, 2011 at 9:09 am
Bret: The article I was critiquing claimed otherwise.
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