What animals are thinking and feeling and why it should matter

February 18, 2022 12:14 PM

What animals are thinking and feeling and why it should matter

Also by Carl Safina

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posted by y2karl (8 comments total)

Pulitzer-prize-winning Atlantic writer Ed Yong writes on Twitter:

My new book—AN IMMENSE WORLD—comes out this summer. It’s about how other animals sense the world, and the very different version of reality that they perceive.

Here’s a thread about the book, why I wrote it, and why I hope you'll enjoy it...

I'm really looking forward to reading it.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:27 PM on February 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

...Put on your shower cap and step into the cold. Humans have altered about 70 percent of Earth’s land surface and ocean. Wetlands have lost 85 percent of their natural area; kelp forests have lost 40 percent; seagrass meadows are disappearing at 1 percent per year; the ocean’s large predatory fish are two-thirds gone; coral reefs have lost half their living mass. Agriculture has halved the weight of living vegetation on land, driving a diversity loss of 20 percent; 40 percent of extant plants are currently endangered. Farmed animals and humans now constitute 96 percent of all land vertebrates; only around 5 percent are wild, free-living animals. The world’s wild populations of birds, mammals, fishes, reptiles, and amphibians have declined by an average of nearly 70 percent in just the last 50 years, a breathtaking plummet. More than 700 vertebrate species have gone extinct over the last 500 years, an extinction rate 15 times the natural rate. Around a million species are now threatened with total extinction. These disruptions and declines have caused the deterioration of soil, air, and water quality; pollination; carbon sequestration; and human health. Other things have increased: floods, fires, the number of malnourished people, plastic pollution, general toxification, and infectious epidemics.

Referring to the loss of living diversity and abundance, the authors note: “The mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization.” But I think the problem is that the fabric of human civilization has been built and fueled precisely by causing erosion of the living world. The pain of other living things is seldom humanly felt, their interests seldom considered, their intrinsic values discounted. (I am still asked “why we should care” about whether even iconic creatures such as right whales, for example, vanish forever.)

Avoiding a ‘Ghastly Future’: Hard Truths on the State of the Planet
posted by y2karl at 4:05 PM on February 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

Safina makes the point that voices that resist the dominant paradigm are ignored. These voices do exist, however much they are ignored. One of my favourites is Harry Waton, a twentieth century American thinker of Russian Jewish background. Here's something from his A True Monistic Philosophy, v. 1, p. 54.

The Absolute is absolute thought, existence is thought, the realities of existence are forms of thought, and we are only a form of thought. Thought can comprehend thought. When the philosophers and the scientists will realize this, they will no longer raise any objection against anthropomorphism. The truth that thought is the substance of all realities was perceived by profound thinkers long ago, but it took science a long time to perceive this truth.

Spinoza figures prominently in Waton's work, as well as that of his contemporary, Constantin Brunner, who argued for a complete re-foundation of biology on the basis of Spinoza's insights. The way forward is through the rejection of Cartesian dualism in favour of Spinoza's neutral monism.
posted by No Robots at 7:20 PM on February 18, 2022

Preaching to the 40,000 member Cat People Choir, 'round here.
posted by Oyéah at 2:28 PM on February 19, 2022

Sometimes, the tiger rolling on its back really DOES want a belly-rub.
posted by Goofyy at 5:16 PM on February 19, 2022

Preaching to the 40,000 member Cat People Choir, 'round here.

So... can I get an amen?
posted by y2karl at 6:25 PM on February 19, 2022

Not an ameow?
posted by eviemath at 9:28 PM on February 19, 2022

As it is in heaven.
posted by y2karl at 11:21 PM on February 19, 2022