The question: Should we care about animals?
It is fashionable at the moment to downplay the differences between human beings and other animals to the point that they can be regarded as virtually non-existent. It is almost politically incorrect to assert, say, that animals don't have culture. Or as Frans de Waal (pdf) puts it, "We are animals not only in body but also in mind." Consider yourself told.
Part of the motivation against such speciesism comes from evolutionary psychology. Its champions believe their science to be a new "theory of everything". It has the ability to decipher everything from why we like paintings of pastoral scenes to why we follow rule-making gods. (Do we?) Tight links with our animal past are integral to the explanatory shaggy-dog stories they tell.
Or there is the disgust at the religious and philosophical traditions that have justified the foul treatment of animals, a concern that is a lively one to this day. Kant argued that animals "are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end" – that end being for our benefit. He was humane enough to recognise that cruelty to animals is abhorrent. But he could not arrive at very compelling reasons for believing so. The best he could muster was the supposition that cruelty to animals nurtures cruelty towards fellow human beings. That seems a pretty weak, anthropocentric argument.
It is undoubtedly the case that Enlightenment sensibilities have underestimated animal capacities. The naturalist Katy Payne has spent years studying whale and elephant communication. She is convinced that both animals are able to express emotions of empathy, feelings of joy and the contents of their memory. She even wonders whether they are capable of faith, perhaps not in a God but at least in hope for tomorrow.
Alternatively, contemporary neurophysiology suggests that the way we perceive our world may be much like the way other animals perceive theirs. The structures of our brains and theirs are so similar. Wittgenstein once declared that if lions could talk we wouldn't understand what they said. Another philosopher, Thomas Nagel, wrote a famous essay entitled "What is it like to be a bat?" (pdf), concluding that we'll never know. There is now good reason to disbelieve both.
So should we worry about animals? Yes. As Jeremy Bentham put it, "The question is not can they talk? Nor can they reason? But can they suffer?"
However if a rebalance is necessary, it seems silly to overdo it – to aver that there is no difference at all. I am sure that my cat plays with me when I play with her. But I am also sure that she does not subsequently slink off to her bed by the fire to ponder just what the nature of play might be.
So the question is how we should recalibrate our understanding of the gap between ourselves and them.
A key issue – perhaps the determining issue – has to do with language. Being in possession of linguistic talents opens up a radically new dimension to the experience of life. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that all animals that exhibit consciousness can be said to live in meaningful worlds, in a way that plants presumably do not. Well, language adds something further again. It generates the capacity to ask questions and seek answers. It is integral to the ability to reflect. It enables us, at least to a degree, to transcend our instincts and desires – to objectify and study them, to resist and change them. A non-linguistic animal can be trained to behave in certain ways. Only a linguistic animal can decide to do so.
The mistake is to believe that language necessarily sets us above "brute beasts". In his book, The Philosopher and the Wolf, Mark Rowlands recounts the period in his life that he spent with a pet wolf, called Brenin. Over the course of that decade, he realised Brenin had a certain kind of intelligence. He calls it "mechanical intelligence". For example, the wolf was able to solve problems like how to open doors simply by observation. That differs from dogs, Rowlands believes, because they have what he calls "magical intelligence". They do not know how to open the door, only to sit besides the door, looking at it, until their owner appears. How their owner then opens the door remains a complete mystery to the dog.
Whether or not you go along with the specifics of that, what is striking about Rowland's analysis is that his obvious love of Brenin does not lead him into anthropomorphisation. Perhaps that's just not possible with wolves. Instead, he explores the gap that exists between his moral and rational intelligence and the mechanical intelligence of Brenin. Why? Because a deeper understanding of what it is to be human can emerge from "somewhere between" the wolf and the philosopher. There is much to be discovered by respecting the distance between himself and Brenin, and to resist simply collapsing it.
As our understanding of the capacities of other animals deepens, it will be worth doing the same.