Chapter outline Which organisms are phenomenally conscious? Higher mental states in organisms
Bad tests for intelligence
Proof of absence of mind?
Evidence for higher-order intelligence:
Concept formation, insight and same/different distinctions in honeybees
Concept formation, insight and same/different distinctions in honeybees
Overview of some recent results: Click here.
Means-end rationality (esp. tool use) - see Kacelnik 2004. Chappell & Weir in refs. Animals seem to be capable of some means-end reasoning. Length: 300 words.
Self-Concept - see article by Gordon Gallup in Bekoff, Allen & Burghardt (2002). Length: 400 words.
Concept of Others (Theory of Mind) - see Horowitz (2002) and Nissani (2004). Length: 500 words.
Language Use - briefly discuss Kanzi, Ake and Alex. Ignore Nkisi because no peer review. Rico has very good language comprehension, but only at a functional level. Length: 500 words.
Moral behaviour
De Waal (1996) defends the notion that non-human animals are moral agents, in a weak sense. His central claim is that the following four key ingredients of morality can be found within the animal kingdom, especially in primate societies: (i) sympathy-related traits; (ii) norm-related characteristics; (iii) reciprocity; and (iv) the ability of animals to get along with each other.
Many mammals - whales, elephants, mongoose, to name a few - display not only nurturance (care for their own offspring) but also succorant behaviour (caring for individuals other than progeny). This succorant behaviour may take several forms: mutual attachment, or dependency, on the part of the animals involved; emotional contagion, or the ability to be vicariously affected by the sufferings of another; and learned adjustment, or the ability to alter one's behaviour to take into account the needs of another individual. All of these skills are found in monkeys, but none of them, de Waal contends, presuppose the capacity to put onself inside another individual's skin, see things from their perspective and extrapolate what they would be able to do. Only when succorant behaviour springs from a combination of empathy (the ability to understand what makes others suffer and recognise it in others) and concern for the well-being of others, can we speak of true sympathy, or concern for others, in which we recognise the other's experiences as belonging to the other. De Waal maintains that the capacity for cognitive empathy is unique to the great apes. Monkeys appear to lack it: when a seven-month old rhesus monkey, Rita, broke her arm, leaving it dangling by her side, none of the other monkeys noticed her handicap. Her peers continued to play with her roughly, and even her mother Ropey behaved no differently towards her. Fortunately, her arm healed perfectly.
I would warn against making too much of the contrast between monkeys and chimps.
Norm-related characteristics
No moral system could exist without rules. In particular, members of a moral society must obey prescriptive rules for it to function properly. Effective rule enforcement, argues de Waal, requires the existence of rank, fear of punishment and a deep-seated desire on the part of individuals to belong to a group and fit in with it. De Waal reasons that we should expect rule enforcement to be most prevalent in co-operative species such as canids and primates. Wolves rely on each other for hunting, and chimps have to band together to protect themselves against hostile neighbours.
Moreover, some species (e.g. dogs and wolves) not only follow rules, but seem to actively inculcate them in others, according to examples cited by de Waal.
Other features of sophisticated rule enforcement in animal communities include: the care with which punishments are graded, depending on the age of the individual (in monkey societies, for instance, newborn infants live above the law, but gradually infants learn that certain behaviours are not tolerated, and punishments for infractions gradually move from a slap or a firm shake to mild bites, to serious bites); the tailoring of instructions to the learner's level of experience (adult monkeys teach their infants by giving exaggerated threat signals, while juveniles would respond to a mere raising of the eyebrows, accompanied by a stare), and conflict mediation by leaders.
Reciprocity
Getting along
Writing a few years ago, Hauser (2000) acknowledged that some non-human animals could inhibit their behavioural responses (e.g. rein in their aggressive behaviour), alleviate another individual's pain, observe rules and punish other individuals who break the rules. However, he argued that without an awareness of others' beliefs or intentions, their behaviour could not be called ethical.
However, Hauser's ethical boundary has been challenged by findings in recent years (Horowitz, 2002; Nissani, 2004), suggesting that some animals do in fact possess a primitive theory of mind. What is more, recent discoveries of traditions within chimpanzee communities and of cases where chimpanzees mothers actively teach their young how to groom themselves by guiding their hands (Daily Yomiuri, 19 February 2002) suggest the possibility of animals imparting rules to their offspring without requiring language. If this is so, then it seems there is no reason in principle why they could not teach their young simple moral rules, too.
The foregoing line of reasoning contains two oversights: it overlooks the distinction between a moral norm and a technique, and it fails to advert to the requirements for moral agency.
Another point: although animals enforce rules, the way in which they do so is non-moral. They do not appeal to each other's better natures: they simply inculcate an awareness of unpleasant consequences if the rule is broken. Following a rule to avoid unpleasant consequences is not moral behaviour.
What I intend to argue here is that even if an animal has the cognitive capacity for empathy, it cannot satisfy the requirements for moral agency unless it is capable of reflecting on its character and its virtues. Following Aristotle, I maintain that moral agency does not merely consist in doing the right thing here and now, but in acting from a proper disposition, which one seeks to cultivate over a lifetime.
The core intuition guiding my argument is that at the minimum, a moral agent must be capable of self-improvement. Self-improvement, I suggest, requires the ability to critically evaluate not only one's conduct here and now, but also one's dispositions over the course of time, matching them against an ideal of goodness. It also requires a capacity to formulate resolutions to change one's dispositions, in order to improve one's character. An individual trapped in the momentary present, lacking the ability to reflect on its past and future life, would be morally paralysed, unable to diagnose its character faults and resolve to rectify them.
If the foregoing argument is correct, then we are unlikely to ever uncover moral agency in non-human animals. At a minimum, moral agency requires a very "thick" concept of time (extending over the agent's past, present and future), a high degree of abstraction and an ability to envisage how one might alter one's own dispositions in order to achieve an ethical ideal of moral goodness. Length: 1000 words.