Humans are the only species that use other animals for technological research or that manipulate the social nature of other animals for their self-interest. That being said, experiments have been done to consider the degree to which non-human animals experience life similar to humans. There are many things that we, as humans, wonder if non-human animals have the ability to do. For example, what is the non-human animal’s state of consciousness in terms of morality? Or emotional feelings? Can non-human animals dream? These questions are important to consider because they can have big impacts on the ethical implications of animal research and animal feedlots. Non-human animals cannot communicate in the same way that humans can (Carvalho, Gasper, Knights, & Vincente 2019), thus human experimentation on animals will always be some degree of guessing.
Some people believe that since humans have the ability
to have moral and ethical understandings based on shared human values and
non-human animals cannot, human life is valued more (Dennis, 1997). However,
this raises many issues within the human species, because many people with
intellectual disabilities are unable to recognize emotional expressions and the
depth of moral acts due to the inability to perceive different signs of emotion
(Babiak et al., 2022). The belief that humans are worthy of more value because
of their ability to process moral and ethical dilemmas is based on a
superiority complex of the human mind. This mentality is what promotes hatred
between the human species because humans establish hierarchies within society using
concepts that are biologically limited. It is too easy to dismiss the idea that
non-human animals cannot have moral and ethical understandings because humans
are only able to understand morals and ethics as experienced from the human
perspective (and there are fallacies of this mentality within the human species
as previously stated). New research is looking at the non-human state of
consciousness, thinking, awareness, and emotional communication (du Toit, 2015),
but this requires a new way of recording results that are less biased by the human
experience.
So, what if animals can dream? Humans dream during REM
sleep suggesting that only animals who enter REM sleep should have the ability
to dream, but animals, like elephants, who have atypical REM sleep would be
proposed to not dream or have dreaming abilities unlike humans (Manger &
Siegel, 2020). See how the human bias can get complicated in our understanding
of animal consciousness? If animals can dream, does this imply animals are more
similar to humans than we previously thought? Do we start to value their life
more?
These questions and their possible answers will have
big implications for how humans treat animals in feedlots and in scientific
research. So even if we found a way to get the answers to all these questions,
do we even want them?
Babiak,
O. O., Okhrimenko, I. М., Lyakhova, N. A., Lapin, A. V., Zamsha, A. V., & Parkhomenko,
K. Y. (2022). AFFECTIVE-COGNITIVE INDICATOR OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
FORMEDNESS IN HIGH SCHOOLERS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES. Wiadomosci Lekarskie (Warsaw, Poland : 1960), 75(2), 504-508. Retrieved from http://dml.regis.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/affective-cognitive-indicator-emotional/docview/2641506773/se-2
Carvalho,
C., Gaspar, A., Knight, A., & Vicente, L. (2019). Ethical and scientific
pitfalls concerning laboratory research with non-human primates, and possible
solutions. Animals, 9(1), 12.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani9010012
Dennis,
J. U. (1997). Morally relevant differences between animals and human beings
justifying the use of animals in biomedical research. Journal of the
American Veterinary Medical Association, 210(5), 612-618. Retrieved from http://dml.regis.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/morally-relevant-differences-between-animals/docview/78857399/se-2?accountid=28590
du Toit, C.,W. (2015).
Pursuing an understanding of animal consciousness: Implications for animal
morality and a creaturely theology. Verbum Et Ecclesia, 36(3),
1-10. Retrieved from
http://dml.regis.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/pursuing-understanding-animal-consciousness/docview/1738751652/se-2
Manger,
P. R., & Siegel, J. M. (2020). Do all mammals dream? Journal of Comparative Neurology, 528(17), 3198-3204. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.24860
This made me think of a book that I'm reading called "Different" where a primatologist describes stories of altruistic behavior he has seen in animals. In a study done in 1969, an experiment observed a white rat end the electric shock of another white rat by pressing on one of two levers. Rats that had been shocked four days prior significantly changed their lever preference to ensure that their fellow friend was not getting shocked (Greene, 1969). I definitely think that all animals, to some extent, have conscious thoughts about pain, at the least, and try to minimize that for others.
ReplyDeleteGreen, TJ. (1969). Altruistic behavior in the albino rat. Psychon Sci. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03336420.pdf
Great post! I wanted to expand the topic by adding that plants are a completely different case which has ongoing research into their sentience. Trees in particular are a topic of conversation where, taking into perspective many other beliefs, trees are sentient, community-based beings (Abbott, 2021). If we want to get into science fiction a bit, humans and robots are a popular moral dilemma to base stories upon. In particular, studies show that humans show empathy to robots in many cases, although it shows the self-centered nature of humans to look at robots through the human perspective (Coeckelbergh, 2018). These studies may delve into philosophy and are somewhat abstract, but the point of non-human sentience is clear.
ReplyDeleteAbbott, S. (2021). Approaching Nonhuman Ontologies: Trees, Communication, and Qualitative Inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(8–9), 1059–1071. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800421994954
Coeckelbergh, M. (2018). Why Care About Robots? Empathy, Moral Standing, and the Language of Suffering. Kairos. Journal of Philosophy and Science, 20 (1), 141-158. DOI:10.2478/kjps-2018-0007