"Now the rogue will either mend his ways or I will deal with him,"
May 7, 2019 7:49 AM   Subscribe

 
Mankind cannot advance in any significant way without recognizing that mind/soul/spirit/intelligence is a property of all things.
posted by No Robots at 7:53 AM on May 7, 2019 [13 favorites]


So long, and thanks for all the fish letting us join your war parties?

Does anthropomorphization help us treat animals better?
posted by filthy light thief at 7:54 AM on May 7, 2019


Much to the surprise of scientists studying the issue, it turns out that elephants have souls but humans do not.
posted by kyrademon at 7:55 AM on May 7, 2019 [39 favorites]


I really appreciated this, thank you
posted by rossmeissl at 8:16 AM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Mankind cannot advance in any significant way without recognizing that mind/soul/spirit/intelligence is a property of all things.

Large parts of mankind do and have always had such beliefs. Cartesian duality in the West is born from religious and philosophical traditions specific to its history.

I think, though, you're being far too optimistic. I would be interested in seeing studies as to whether societies with traditions of animism or more universal conceptions of spirituality have lower rates of animal abuse or some other measure of how they treat non-human creatures than Western ones in the Cartesian tradition. I suspect that the results wouldn't be all that different. People are very good at justifying all sorts of horror and cruelty within whatever moral or philosophical frameworks they find themselves. That Jesus guy the West seems so fond of was pretty big on non-violence, for instance, but that didn't seem to help all that much.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:17 AM on May 7, 2019 [11 favorites]


Relevant.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:17 AM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Charles Darwin on the Mental Continuity of Humans and Animals

Recommended: The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

@Sangermaine: Allow me to rephrase: Science cannot advance in any significant way without recognizing that mind/soul/spirit/intelligence is a property of all things.
posted by No Robots at 8:21 AM on May 7, 2019


Once Science has progressed enough to abandon an old way of thinking (see: flat earth), it's damn hard to make any "reasonable" person accept the validity of any part of the "old way" (see: the dividing line between human intelligence and the rest of the animal world).
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:32 AM on May 7, 2019


"Mankind cannot advance in any significant way without recognizing that mind/soul/spirit/intelligence is a property of all things."

Are you being poetic here or advocating for magical beliefs? I also don't see how assuming rocks have mind/soul/spirit/intelligence is a necessary component for progress on anything. There's a way to respect living beings without ascribing to them spirits or any metaphysical properties.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:35 AM on May 7, 2019 [10 favorites]


This is not complicated. The more advanced a lifeform is, the more complex its brain is and the more likely it is that emotions and deep memory are emergent phenomena of its evolution. We fancy ourselves to be the Most Advanced Thing On Earth and regularly go gaga in amazement over the "revelation" that other animals also have, like, feelings and stuff. It is anthropocentric hubris. Sure, dog emotions are probably not the same as human emotions - there's no way for us to know! - but it is foolish to assume that they don't exist.

As for spirit/soul, it isn't "magical thinking" so much as a metaphor for the parts of ourselves which we are not objectively able to observe or measure but definitely exist. See: the unconscious; whatever regulates our emotions; how dreams work. I have no doubt that sufficiently intelligent animals also have concepts, however rudimentary, for these unknowable aspects of self.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:50 AM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


Do Elephants Have Souls?

Yes.

Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha Sharanam Ganesha
posted by Fizz at 9:04 AM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


Do elephants have souls?

no, but nobody else does either so that's no reason to look down on the elephants
posted by murphy slaw at 9:12 AM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]


Yes. Yes, they do. Also, what Fizz said.
posted by yoga at 9:20 AM on May 7, 2019


This issue was settled for me the day my mom read Horton Hears a Who. I've had the great fortune to see elephants in the wild on many an occasion and I have never doubted.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:36 AM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]




I was a little annoyed with the article, because it never really attempts to answer its own question. Yes, elephants are intelligent, in ways that are difficult to measure due to significant differences in sensory equipment between us and them. They definitely appear to be self aware, form complex social bonds, experience physical and emotional pain and pleasure, and probably should be classified as “people,” with legal rights and protections. Grappling with the theological issues of soul just muddies the water. I mean, many Buddhists would tell you that elephants don’t have souls but neither do you....
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:54 AM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


yes upon further reflection the proper response to the question posed in the headline is "mu"
posted by murphy slaw at 10:58 AM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


I think that's for the question "Does an elephant have Buddha-nature."
posted by praemunire at 11:03 AM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


The Posidon's Children series by Alastair Reynolds is very much about this. It's also unique in that there isn't any outright horror in it. So if you wanted to read some of his work but were turned off by the darkness it might be for you.

We need to make things up to the elephants.
posted by East14thTaco at 11:11 AM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Are you being poetic here or advocating for magical beliefs? I also don't see how assuming rocks have mind/soul/spirit/intelligence is a necessary component for progress on anything. There's a way to respect living beings without ascribing to them spirits or any metaphysical properties.

I can't speak for the poster, but up until recently we thought the same thing about trees (and fish before that, and dogs before them, etc etc). Science tells us otherwise.

Hell, humans recently discovered prairie dogs can communicate color, height, and gender to one another verbally. Just because an intelligence isn't the same as our own, or a language spoken isn't as "sophisticated" as our own, doesn't mean it's non-existent.
posted by dobbs at 11:28 AM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]


Are you being poetic here or advocating for magical beliefs?

I, too, cannot speak for No Robots but absolutely am advocating for magical beliefs.
posted by ragtag at 12:21 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


i don’t have a problem with folks forming unfalsifiable hypotheses about metaphysics per se, it’s mostly that “do elephants have souls” is a poor question because there is no consensus on what a “soul” is, to the degree that you would have to specify very clearly what attributes are provided by one, and at that point it would be clearer to everybody if you just asked “do elephants have [the property you actually want to discuss]?”

anyway elephants are good people and we should treat them better.
posted by murphy slaw at 1:08 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]


Given what we put them through, I should hope elephants don't have souls.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:21 PM on May 7, 2019


Do elephants enslave other elephants? Because according to David Graeber, our concept of the mind/body divide was developed to explain how some people could be "free" which essentially meant they owned "themselves" (in contrast to slaves, who did not own themselves). In other words the mind was the slaveowner of the body.

Tho, that's a separate issue from the issue of a soul, if you consider a soul to be neither the "mind" nor the body but something that persists after death. There's no evidence that anything has a soul.
posted by subdee at 1:59 PM on May 7, 2019


Agreed on the slipperiness of the word "soul." In Latin, "soul" is "anima," meaning spirit or breath. We get such words as "animal" and "animate" from it. In this way of thinking, the spirit is literally what moves us. Then, thinking of motion, we get "motive" and "emotion."

So these thoughts are embedded in the West's cultural heritage.

Charles Darwin was aware that his theory of evolution eliminated the Aristotelian gap between humans and animals and that this would raise objections. He went on to consider the mental and emotional states of animals in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals to address those objections.

It's been interesting to see the arc that the accusation of "anthropomorphism" has taken during my lifetime. It was once a strong accusation but now it has no teeth. The question is whether imbuing animals with human characteristics is inherently suspect versus whether elevating humans beyond the animal realm is, itself, fraught. In respectable publications, the tide has shifted decidedly toward the latter. FWIW, Darwin anticipated and addressed these objections over a century before the scientific community came around: Point Darwin.

I can't conclude without heartily recommending that you actually read On the Origin of Species. It is, surprisingly(?), a page-turner. It's full of examples from Natural History, clear explication, nuanced argument, and just plain lovely prose that does not grate on the modern ear. If you are at all interested in Natural History and have not read it, it may be the best book you've never read.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:36 PM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


What's the inverse of anthropomorphism? Anthropodenial: a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves.
posted by Thella at 1:16 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]


Can we talk about how great a word "Loxodon" is?
posted by DigDoug at 11:16 AM on May 8, 2019


« Older Why Budapest, Warsaw, and Lithuania split...   |   A wealth of Cretaceous fossils from Burmese amber... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments