Denying Animal Consciousness

One of the most bizarre philosophical positions is that of denying non-human animal consciousness. Even archskeptic David Hume thought the existence of animal minds was obvious. And while I remember having one professor who briefly mentioned that he thought dogs didn’t feel pain, people pretended not to hear him and that was that. It’s sort of this joke view that will be offered by some psychopathic character like Creed from “The Office,” who, when hunting a bat in the office and told not to hurt the animal, blithely says, “Animals can’t feel pain.”

Taken from “Animal Rights and Human Obligations.”

I think David Hume is right here, but I do disagree with some of his assessment. Where Hume is wrong, unfortunately, is that some of the arguments in this case do escape the most stupid and ignorant. I don’t pretend to be able to persuade these people, as this level of skepticism is immune to argument. But for those who are curious about the arguments in favor of animals minds, here are a few.

The evolutionary argument

We are capable of feeling pain because we have a central nervous system. Damage to the central nervous system can impair our ability to feel pain. Our central nervous system shares many similarities and evolved alongside the central nervous system of many other animals (and we are animals too). So the animal consciousness denier has to contend that only the central nervous system of one species of animal can produce pain, while the others do not. In other words, this position asks us to make a seemingly arbitrary judgment that dogs have nerve endings (like us), but they have no sensations (unlike us). It’s akin to saying dogs have eyes and therefore cannot see.

The explanatory power argument

One weakness of behaviorist views of the mind is that they lack explanatory power. They can point to observations about movement and bodily reactions, but can still lack in explanatory power. However, if we accept that dogs feel pain, we can more readily explain why a dog would move away from a source of, say, intense heat. Pain is a noxious stimuli. We are quite familiar with our experience of pain and what we do when faced with it (we try to get away from what is causing pain), and so we can better explain why some other animals act the way they do. Denial of this explanation just seems deliberately obstinate.

The anti-solipsism argument

It seems to me that denial of animal minds comes at the cost of the denial of, at the very least, some human minds. To play into the skeptic’s game, we can only have direct awareness of our own consciousness, we can deny that the nervous system or brains of others allows them mental states in the same way we can deny this for other animals, it would be poor reasoning to infer from our single experience of consciousness alone to the consciousness of billions of other humans, language could just as well be a show by elaborate programming and not a true indicator of consciousness, and there are pre-linguistic (infants) and non-linguistic humans (feral wolf kids) so they must not be conscious either. That said, if you reject this sort of pedantic solipsism, its accompanying reasons, and accept human animal minds of all stripes, then you seem committed to accepting the minds of other animals too.

The obvious argument

Many non-human animals possess some awareness of stimuli. Our knowledge of this claim is more obvious than any argument, premise, or epistemology the animal consciousness denier brings up in defense of his bizarre skepticism.

The moral argument

If we aren’t led to outright dismissal of animal minds, but still find ourselves unsure about the issue, we should still err on the side of caution. We should act as if animals have minds regardless. This means not beating dogs with hammers or killing and consuming pigs, chickens, cows, and the like. In response, a failing super senior who’s hooked up to anime and Twitter might invoke panpsychism. “Hey gotta err on the side of caution for your keyboard because it might be conscious.” No, I don’t. The arguments for panpsychism are far less certain, and, even if true, it’s not clear I could hurt a conscious keyboard by clacking at its keys. Besides, I can get along in this world without intentionally killing and consuming animals, but I can’t not interact with objects in some capacity.

So what’s the appeal of animal consciousness denial?

Though uncommon and hard to understand the motivation for it, there’s a few things that may drive this view.

One, it allows people to be morally lazy. After all, if animals are unfeeling machines, one doesn’t need to change his or her diet or way of life. One can abuse animals without a second thought. Dismembering and skinning a dog alive would be no different, morally, from disassembling a car. There’s no moral obligation not to disassemble a car, so how could one have a moral obligation not to support the horrors of the slaughterhouse and animal testing lab?

Two, it could be due to some sort of psychopathology. Anti-social personality disorder makes it difficult to empathize with others. Autism makes it difficult to perceive other minds as well as making empathy more difficult to experience. Neither (or any other disorder) is necessary nor sufficient to lead one to deny animal consciousness, but it may play a part for some people.

Three, it’s fueled by philosophical skepticism in general. People who are drawn toward trends and skepticism wholesale may see denial of animal consciousness as an inevitable conclusion of their worldview.