Introduction IV. Marx, Engels, and the Politics of the Animal

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Nature, Re(a)d in Tooth and Claw:

New Understandings of Non-Human Animal Interiority through Transdisciplinarity

Clayton Plake, Ju Koh, Siddharth Mehrotra, and Xue Li

English, Cultural Studies, and Religion Department at CGU

Introduction

We intend to demonstrate that allowing for the likelihood of an evolutionarily shared interiority that exists among human and non-human animals may correct biased perspectives in the sciences and other fields. We argue it may also impel both experts and laypeople to repair some of the damage these biases have caused. In both an attempt to assess the prevalence of these biases within the sciences and related fields, we rely upon a substantial empirical survey, the results of which we then utilize critical theory to understand and apply. Finally, we suggest solutions to fundamentally change these biases through a combination of theory, philosophy, and literary study.

I. Scientific Reports on Animal Interiority and

Mentation

The purpose of the present essay is to supply a series of examples, in which the mentation of nonhuman animals is visible, of various sophisticated behaviors. At present, academia has not entirely escaped the misapprehension that nonhuman animals, however close evolutionarily to human, are incapable of voluntary thought or even of interpreting their own activities: a misapprehension conducive, according to Singer (1975; reprint 2009) and others (Coetzee 1999; de Waal 2013), to severe cruelty and unnecessary extinction. Therefore the present reviewer has selected a few examples, earlier collected by ethologists, biologists, and philosophers, of obvious voluntarity or intelligence, with which to demonstrate to the naiive and neutral auditor that such phenomena do occur in other species than our own.

Because the study of nonhuman intelligence is nascent, statistical data are almost absent from the ethological field, and the examples in the present essay are almost purely anecdotal; but may be none the less useful: partly because anecdotes, if collected by scientists sensible of their deficiencies, may be converted

en masse

into statistics, and partly because anecdotes are still the easiest understood by the laity (to whom the scientist is teacher, guide, and moral authority) of all transmissions of data (Bekoff 121-122).

Therefore, until the emergence of better information, we must suspend our disbelief in the utility of anecdotes, and use them. Meanwhile the same singularity that renders any anecdote almost useless to the scientist, is of great influence upon the laity; for as Harris remarks (citing 'the psychologist Paul Slovic and colleagues'): the amount of concern, or interest, experienced by ourselves, is inversely proportionate to the number of victims (pg. 68-70). Upon this same principle, the narration of a single example, may persuade the neophyte far more easily than might a synopsis of many studies. Therefore the examples here are few in number, but suggestive in character.

Definition

Evidence

Cooperation and Society

Navigation

Construction

Communication

Conclusion

RESEARCH POSTER PRESENTATION DESIGN © 2012 www.PosterPresentations.com

II. Philosophical Biases on Animal Interiority and

Morality

Scientists like Marc Bekoff not only offer evidence of animal interiority but also criticize philosophies that produce “bad habits” (10) to understand animals. Among many, Cartesian philosophy is the major object of critique because it understands animals as “mechanistic entities” (10-11). In this section, I investigate philosophical understandings of animal morality from

Plato to

René

Descartes and see if we can, first, extend Bekoff’s critique to

Descartes’s predecessors and, second, therefore, regard their understandings of animal interiority as “biased.”

• Philosophical Understanding of Animal Interiority I: Plato and Aristotle

• Philosophical Understanding of Animal Interiority II: Descartes

• Analysis I: Bekoff’s Critique of Cartesian Understanding of Animal

Interiority

• Analysis II: Bekoff’s Critique Applied to Plato’s and Aristotle’s

Understanding of Animals

• Counter-arguments of Plato and Aristotle against Bekoff and Their

Limitations

• Problem of Neglecting Reality in Philosophy and Its Influence on People’s

View of Animals

III. Survey: Academic Biases on Animal Interiority

Thus far, traditional philosophical understandings of animal interiority and morality have been discussed. In this section, we explore contemporary understandings of animal interiority and morality by means of a survey in order to get more lively responses and to gather more generalized results.

As already shown, philosophers admit animal interiority to some extent.

But no one admits animal reason and morality in that it is located in the highest place of interiority of a being. Therefore, rather than investigating contemporary philosophers’ understandings of animal interiority in general, we focused on their understandings of animal morality. Our hypothesis was that the number of philosophers who disagree about animals having morality would exceed the number of philosophers who think animals have morality because, first, neither Bekoff nor De Waal praises philosophy for producing such a positive understanding of animal morality – Bekoff once mentions that contemporary philosophers are developing interpretations of pro-animal morality, but he more often criticizes philosophy in general or philosophy of Descartes, and second, if positive understandings of animal morality is a new tendency, majority of scholarship would remain to follow the traditional understanding of animal morality.

• Structure, Hypothesis, Method, Design of Survey on Scholars’

• Understanding of Animal Interiority

• Analysis I: Hypothesis Tested

• Analysis II: Responses on Animal Empathy and Fairness

• Analysis III: After De Waal’s Video

• Analysis IV: Responses on Animal Empathy and Fairness after De Waal’s

Video

IV. Marx, Engels, and the Politics of the Animal

Interiority

In the sections preceding my own, one trend that emerges across disciplines in relation to the issue of non-human animal interiority is that, understood as a question, it is far from being answered. In what follows, I focus upon that question as it materializes in the sciences. Specifically, I politically situate the origins of scientific skepticism to serious consideration of that particular issue through briefly exploring the contradiction between how certain experts view the sciences ’ social and cultural role and their historically observable function in facilitating projects of exploitation. I then rely upon Marx ’ s concept of alienation in the context of productive relations under capitalism to shed light upon the disjunction that appears between the results of the research that my colleagues and I conducted with the common assessment of the sciences as unresponsive—even hostile—to the notion of the non-human animal ’ s interior life. The notion of alienation, and related parts of Marx ’ s work, will also allow me to further explore the political import of advocating for the existence of non-human animal interiority. Finally, though I am disinclined to allow for a uniformly present non-human animal interiority,

I argue that entertaining the possibility of its existence will help correct the anthropocentric outlook that is partly responsible for the wholesale devastation of the natural world today.

• The Historical and Political Situation of the Scientific Bias Against Animal

Interiority

• The Sciences as Super-Structure/Tool of Exploitation or False

Consciousness

• Marx and Alienation in Relation to the Natural World

• Understanding the Survey Results via Marx

• Marx, the Animal, and the Self

• Capitalism ’ s Profit Motive and Ecological Destruction in Relation to the

Issue of Animal Interiority

V. Animal Interiority and Solutions in Philosophy and Literature

Scholars like Bekoff and Peter Singer are critical of the fact that Cartesian understanding of animal interiority is still felt. They even think that the

Cartesian tradition legitimates animal exploitation. And we already saw that philosophers before Descartes also shared some biases on animal interiority. In my view, what philosophy can do to resolve philosophical biases are either to excavate philosophical works where philosophers uphold animal “ reasoning ” or to encourage contemporary philosophers to be more open to what “ reality ” says, maybe scientific observations in this case.

• Partial Solution in Philosophy I: Hume and Pollot

• Partial Solution in Philosophy II: Hope in Contemporary Philosophy with

Limitations

• Partial Solution in Philosophy III: De Waal ’ s Video Lecture as a Possible

Model of an Effective Pedagogy

Also in this section, we explore potential solutions to the inability and failure of certain fields to correctly assess and accept the presence of animal interiority and the adverse impact of this failure upon the health and well-being of non-human animals. We discuss the function of literature as well as other media that can arouse public awareness of animal protection. We first analyze the reasons by systematizing Cora

Diamond ’ s assertions of the function of literature, in particular, her comment on Coetzee ’ s use of literature that has managed to engage his audience in accepting the suffering condition of non-human animals. In addition, by looking into several examples of using literature and film descriptions that engender the awareness of animal protection, we compare the effects of philosophy, literature and other media. In so doing, this section will shed light on the function of literature and other genres that can fundamentally change people ’ s bias towards the suffering conditions of non-human animals.

Solutions in Literary Genres I: Cora Diamond and Coetzee

Solutions in Literary Genres II: The Function of Literature

• Solutions in Literary Genres II: Two Literary Techniques: Captive Narration and Science Fiction

• Solutions in Literary Genres IV: Other Literary Genres and Their

Limitations

VI. Final Thoughts: Understanding the Animal,

Understanding Ourselves

The evidence for accepting the existence of non-human animal interiority is indeed compelling. Despite the persistence of a healthy skepticism in certain of the sciences, the scientific support for the animal ’ s capacity to think and feel in ways previously thought impossible continues to grow.

Likewise, philosophers once beholden to outmoded notions of the animal ’ s cognitive inferiority are being challenged by voices that have begun arguing for the animal ’ s complex interior life. If our survey results are any indication, change in predominant attitudes in relation to animal interiority is possible, but more work must still be done. In philosophy, more consideration must be given to thinkers whose work challenges the

Cartesian denial of the animal ’ s capacity to think and feel. In the sciences, a more socially and ecologically responsible approach to research must be more fully developed. In our preceding remarks, we have shown that a transdisciplinary approach combining literary study with cultural critical and reformulated philosophical methodologies may do much to further transform how those we call experts understand—not just animal life— but the world, and how they understand the role that they play in shaping others ’ view of it and its inhabitants. This is crucial, for if we are to change the world, we must change our perception of it. It is precisely this larger perceptual shift that we hope to help achieve with our work—for the sake of other species, and for the sake of our own.

References (Selected)

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The Complete Works of Aristotle: the revised

Oxford translation.

Ed. Jonathan Barnes. New Jersey: Princeton

University Press, 1984.

Bekoff, Marc.

Wild Justice: the Moral Lives of Animals

. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 2009.

Plato, “ Cratylus.

Complete Works

. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis:

Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

---. “ Republic.

Complete Works

. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis:

Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

Descartes, Rene.

Selected Correspondence of Descartes

.

Some Texts from

Early Modern Philosophy . 2013. Access on 5 May 2015.

Hume, David.

A Treatise of Human Nature. Some Texts from Early Modern

Philosophy . 2013. Access on 5 May 2015.

Milgram, Stanley.

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

. New

York: HaperCollins Publishers, 2009. Print.

Muhammad, Khalil Gibran.

The Criminalization of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.

Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 2010. Print.

Newton, David E.

Science and Political Controversy.

Santa Barbara: ABC-

CLIO, 2014. Print.

O ’ Connor, James.

Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism

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York:

The Guilford Press, 1997. Print.

Singer, Peter.

Animal Liberation

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Print.

Williams, Chris.

Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological

– Crisis . Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010. Print.

Acknowledgement

The collaborators on this project wish to acknowledge and thank Hee Jin

Kim and Gregory Hennessey for their assistance in creating, computing, and evaluating the data from, the survey we administered.

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