Animals Are People

A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville

Chapter 18

“Morning, Jo! Let’s begin with Charles Henry Turner. Have you ever heard of him?”

“Nope.”

“Turner pioneered cognitive ethology, before it was banned by behaviorists, showing that the behavior of ants, bees, and spiders differs between individuals, and involves not only instinct, but intelligence too. Oh, and by the way, Turner was Black. That’s why you never heard of him. He’s an invisible man. Despite earning a PhD from the University of Chicago, he worked as a high school teacher. And despite publishing more than 70 papers, Turner is ignored by the canon. Jo, I left him off the syllabus to make a point — you don’t know what you don’t know.”

“So, Inari, it’s not only women who are invisible! I’d never heard of Ruth Harrison till this week, yet she deserves credit for the animal rights movement. Animal Machines, published in 1964, was the first book to uncover the horrors of factory farming. I just adore the preface by Rachel Carson, where she says, ‘The modern world worships the gods of speed and quantity, and of the quick and easy profit, and out of this idolatry monstrous evils have arisen.’ Moloch is in the house! Ruth says, ‘if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned.’”

“Precisely! Jo, these courageous women sounded the alarm long before you were born.”

“Inari, that’s what kills me! Ruth caused an uproar. The British government was forced to respond by defining the five freedoms of farm animals: freedom from hunger or thirst, freedom from discomfort, freedom from pain, injury or disease, freedom to express normal behavior, and freedom from fear and distress. Ruth motivated Peter Singer’s entire career. And she inspired Ingrid Newkirk to start PETA. Ruth made a difference. But she didn’t change the trajectory.”

“Yes! Jo, you’re starting to see the next larger context. Let’s move on to Jane Goodall.”

“I love her story. At four, Jane hid in a chicken coop for five hours to see a hen lay an egg. Her Mom called the police to report a missing child. At eight, she decided to go to Africa to live with the wild animals. At twenty-three, she went to Africa and met Louis Leakey, who sent her to study chimpanzees in Tanzania. It was dangerous. She got malaria. A colleague fell to her death. But Jane got to know the chimps as individuals who think, feel, hug, kiss, and tickle. She saw them use and make tools. Her report stirred Leakey to say, ‘Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human.’ Not bad for a girl who hadn’t even been to college!”

“Jane saw the truth because she wasn’t blinded by education. She went to Cambridge later on and said, ‘at university, it was shocking when I was told I’d done everything wrong. They said, chimpanzees weren’t supposed to have had names, they were supposed to have had numbers. I was also told I couldn’t talk about their personalities, minds or emotions because those were unique to us.’ Jo, all maps are traps. Education is indoctrination. So please don’t listen to me.”

“What’s that? Huh? Sorry, Inari, I was lost in a daydream.”

“Ha! So why study these three in a philosophy class?”

“A scientist may impact philosophy more than most philosophers. The same is true of activists like Ruth Harrison. By opening our eyes, they change our beliefs.”

“Yes. I’d say all three are philosophers too. Nowadays, we reserve the title for historians of philosophy, for academics who can quote Aristotle and Hegel. But philosophy is for all of us! In their own way, each of these folks is a seeker of truth, a lover of wisdom, and a contributor to our understanding of ethics. Until Goodall saw David and Goliath strip leaves off twigs and use them to fish for termites, man was thought to be the only animal to make tools. She changed our self-identity and our relationship to animals. If that’s not philosophy, Jo, what the hell is?”

“Inari’s gettin’ spicy! I love it. You know, Inari, we don’t cotton to cuss words ‘round here. We say, ‘what in the Sam Hill?’ and ‘dagnabbit’ and ‘son of a biscuit’ and ‘shut the front door!’ Here, down South in Dixie, you don’t swear. We are polite. We have manners. Just like the English.”

“Holy Mackerel!” Inari chuckles. It’s good to see smiles in their eyes. “It’s a taboo deformation — a word we say when we don’t want to say the word. You have some good ones!”

“Thank you kindly. I agree that all scientists and activists are philosophers. Also, Inari, I suspect that you included two women and a Black man as a setup for Peter Singer. It’s no surprise the world’s most famous philosopher and ‘father of animal rights’ is a cis, straight, white man.”

“You know me too well. Of course, Singer is also called ‘the most dangerous man in the world.’ So he’s not exactly a slam dunk in the philosophical canon. What’s your take?”

“It’s hard not to be a fan. In Animal Liberation, Singer says, ‘all animals are equal,’ and that while different beings may require different treatments and rights, we all merit equal consideration. He defines speciesism as ‘a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.’ He says speciesism is just as unethical as racism and sexism. Peter Singer doesn’t say ‘animals are people.’ But, Inari, that’s what he means, right?”

“Not all animals, Jo. He draws a line.”

“Good point! He’s a Utilitarian who invokes Bentham’s calculus of pleasure and pain. Singer says the capacity to suffer or experience joy is ‘the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others.’ He says that not all animals or humans are sentient or worthy of moral status.”

“Now you see why he’s infamous. He says, ‘A chimpanzee, dog, or pig will have a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility,’ and asks which of these beings has a right to life. Set aside the dated term, which was not offensive in 1975. He still breaks taboos by entertaining infanticide and euthanasia. How does that make you feel?”

“Both horrified and fascinated. Inari, I can see why disability activists and pro-life folks hate Peter Singer. He mirrors Bentham by preferring reason to emotion. He appears immune to moral revulsion, and at ease while musing over murder. Although, I do agree with his thesis, that we ought to expand the moral circle to include all sentient beings. Inari, what do you think?”

“Peter Singer is great at getting attention and making persuasive arguments. And he’s often right. Animals are subjects, not objects. And, in our culture, the sanctity of life obstructs the dignity of death. But I object to his cold utilitarian calculus which conflates moral value with intelligence and self-awareness. He says, ‘newborns are not self-aware, that is, do not have a sense of themselves as a separate object, with a past and a future,’ so they have a lower moral status than adults. And Singer says that it’s okay to kill a disabled infant, so the parents don’t suffer.”

“He’s a eugenicist!”

“That’s why Utilitarianism is dangerous. Absent emotion, reason finds one slippery slope after another. Be wary of those with moral clarity. Singer is now an evangelist for effective altruism and claims to know which charity does ‘the most good,’ as if morality is subject to mathematics.”

“I watched an interview. He did seem awful smug.”

“Yes. Peter Singer totally ignores the is-ought problem and tells us what we must, should, and ought to do.”

“What’s the is-ought problem?”

“David Hume questioned the leap from is to ought. Hume’s guillotine says that we can’t infer an ethical prescription from a factual description. It’s one reason why I say that morality is a mess we can’t make sense of. Peter Singer claims animals are persons, so we ought to be vegan. To him, it’s an intellectual debate. Peter Singer doesn’t even like animals! Ironically, his argument is ineffective. More animals suffer in factory farms and research labs today than when he wrote his book fifty years ago.”

“He made a difference yet failed to alter the trajectory.”

“Yes. And, Jo, there’s one more irony. When Singer’s mum grew ill with Alzheimer’s, he broke his own rules by spending money to care for her when, by his definition, she was no longer a person. Singer explains, ‘Perhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when it’s your mother.’ In the real world, all his oughts came to nought. Emotion is integral to ethics.”

“He didn’t walk his talk. But at least he loved his mom.”

“We’re all human, Jo. It’s foolish to demonize or deify. Who cares what Singer says? As long as he provokes us to think for ourselves. To that end, let’s talk about Donald Griffin.”

“The white dude who stole all the credit, a century after Charles Henry Turner pioneered cognitive ethology.”

“You’re not wrong, though both deserve credit. Donald Griffin made his bones conducting seminal research in animal navigation. He discovered biological sonar in bats and coined the word ‘echolocation.’ Thirty years later in The Question of Animal Awareness, Griffin put his legacy on the line by claiming that animals are conscious just like humans. E. O. Wilson noted, ‘The very suggestion of a cognitive ethology might have been considered dangerous or even foolish by anyone other than an experimental biologist of Professor Griffin’s stature. We owe him a debt for breaking the taboo.’ Donald Griffin used his power and privilege to break the spell of behaviorism.”

“Fair point, Inari. Griffin says, ‘most people not indoctrinated in the behaviorist tradition take it for granted that animals do have sensations, feelings, and intentions.’ So he knew it was obvious back in 1976. Like Darwin, Griffin admits the ‘evolutionary continuity of conscious experience,’ saying ‘mental experiences, like other attributes of animals and men, exhibit a continuity of variation and are not typologically discrete, all-or-nothing qualities totally restricted to a single species.’ And Donald Griffin taunts the behaviorists by saying ‘This belief that mental experiences are a unique attribute of a single species is not only unparsimonious; it is conceited.’ So I guess he does deserve credit after all.”

“Ironically, Donald Griffin also wasn’t an animal lover. During World War II, he led a campaign to attach time-delay bombs to thousands of bats to be released over Japan at night. The bats were to roost in wooden buildings, ignite fires, and burn down entire cities. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the plan, but when focus shifted to atomic weapons, the bat bombs were canceled.”

“Inari, that’s horrific! I guess Nietzsche was right in saying that ‘Man is the cruelest animal.’”

“Maybe. Yet humans also exhibit love, kindness, and compassion. On that note, let’s take a ten-minute break.”

Ghost and I walk down to the pond. As we near, a frog splash makes me laugh. It’s early May in Virginia. And there is so much life! I shrug off my sandals, sit on a rock, and dangle my feet in the water. Ghost is on the scent of someone. There’s a splash, a muskrat swims away, and his ripples fade into reflection. It must have been amazing to be Jane, back in the day, to live with chimps, to change the world. I’ll tell Inari about the alpacas. No more hiding. They must accept who I am.

On my way back to class, I grab trail mix and a cream soda. No Inari yet, so I sit on my bed, relishing the crunch and swirl. The moment they appear, I know something’s up.

“Inari, what’s wrong?”

“I have difficult news. The medicine isn’t working. I had more tests. Jo, the doctor says that I have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. Do you know what that is?”

“Not really. But it’s bad, right?”

“In time, all my voluntary muscles will weaken and paralyze. It started in my mouth, thus my slur, and has traveled to my lungs. I feel it in my fingers. I feel it in my toes. We can’t predict how it will progress. But everyone dies of this disease. There is no cure. I’m so sorry, Jo.”

“How long do you have? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Jo, I only got the diagnosis a few days ago. Outside my sister and my two closest friends, you’re the first to know. There are medicines and machines to slow progression and sustain quality of life. But even so, the doctor gives me two to five years. Jo, I need to say a couple things, and then you need time to think and feel. First, I want to keep teaching you, as long as I can. My college semester just ended, and I won’t be going back. And I’ve given up on my book. But I hope to still be your teacher. If that works for you. Second, I want us to talk about death and dying. Not now. It’s too raw. But in a week or so. I need to talk with your mum. To make sure that she’s okay with the idea. And like I said, Jo, you’ll need to decide if it’s alright with you. It’s a lot to process. I’m sorry, Jo.”

I don’t know what to say. This can’t be real. I’m numb. I feel lost. My shirt is damp with tears. So I must be crying.

“What’s happening? I don’t understand. I can’t breathe.”

“Jo! Look at me. Now slow down. You need to breathe. Jo, it’s going to be alright. Inhale through your nose. Slow, deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. Good. That’s much better. You were hyperventilating. Jo, you’re going to be okay.”

“Sorry. I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t breathe.”

“It was a panic attack. They’re quite common. I had one, years ago. Nothing to be sorry for. Jo, is your mum home?”

“Yes. In the kitchen.”

“Go. Tell your mum. I’ll call later, but now, you need a hug.”

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville