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Human and Animal Individuality 1 Research Services Melbourne Campus 115 Victoria Parade Fitzroy, Victoria, 3065 Human and Animal Individuality Simon James Coghlan BVSc, Grad Dip (Philosophy), Masters Qualifying(Philosophy) Australian Catholic University Melbourne Campus Doctorate of Philosophy Date of Submission : 31st May 2011 Supervisor : Professor Raimond Gaita 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ..............................................................................................................3 Statement of Authorship and Sources ..............................................................................4 Abstract ...............................................................................................................................5 Introduction ........................................................................................................................7 Chapter 1 Realm of meaning Part 1 ...............................................................................20 Chapter 2 Realm of meaning part 2 ...............................................................................38 Chapter 3 Ethical Theory and Human Nature .............................................................58 Chapter 4 Imagination and Thought .............................................................................83 Chapter 5 Difference and Differences ..........................................................................105 Chapter 6 Science and Conceptual Understanding ....................................................137 Chapter 7 Animals in the Realm of Meaning ..............................................................169 Chapter 8 Individuality .................................................................................................221 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................266 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................273 3 Acknowledgements: I am very grateful for the assistance of my supervisor Professor Raimond Gaita in the production of this thesis. I thank him very much for many discussions and much advice. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Peter Coghlan for his assistance and proof reading and Jennifer Coghlan for her support. Thank you to Sarah, Charlotte and William for their help and support. 4 Statement of Authorship and Sources: This thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. No parts of this thesis have been submitted towards the award of any other degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgment in the main text of the thesis. Signed: Simon James Coghlan 5 Abstract: Discussions of various connections between human beings and nonhuman animals in moral philosophy, for example in “animal ethics”, are dominated by a certain philosophical approach. This standard approach is characterized by philosophical assumptions about the nature of reason and argument on questions of morality and value. Assumptions like these tend to assimilate good thinking about value to a narrow interpretation of “reason” which stresses rational argument and justification. This interpretation of what discussions about the value and nature of human and animal life should look like naturally leads to the creation of theories, such as the various theories of animal ethics proposed in utilitarianism, rights theory, and virtue ethics. In the field of animal ethics, three well known philosophers who advocate one or other of these theories are Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and Rosalind Hursthouse. It has also been common in the standard debates about animals, from the 1970’s onwards, for philosophers to accept that an “objective” understanding of the mental lives of animals is most comprehensively provided by modern science, including ethology and evolutionary theory. In philosophy, and in significant parts of society, views on the relations between humans and animals have changed over recent decades. There is a greater tendency to take animal life more seriously than in the past. Parts of science and mainstream philosophy have lately tended to the view that human beings and animals differ only in degree and not in kind. Even philosophers who wish to defend the idea that humans are different in kind, often occupy the same ground as their opponents by turning to ethical theory to justify their views about human importance. In another part of philosophy, an alternative approach to these questions has emerged. Two prominent philosophers in the Wittgensteinian tradition - Cora Diamond and, more recently, Raimond Gaita – have written on the connection between human beings and animals. This approach seriously questions the presuppositions of the philosophers who stand on more mainstream ground. The general position worked out by Diamond and Gaita claims that there is indeed a difference in kind between human beings and animals; but it also offers a means of exploring the question that, far from accepting the assumptions that the mainstream view and many of its critics rely on, has yielded, and promises to continue to yield, new and creative insights. At the same time, there has been a great deal of interest in the human-animal question from the domain of literature. In particular, the recent work of J.M. Coetzee has 6 stimulated both public and philosophical interest in animality. The sort of work that Coetzee has produced has both put some life back into the debate about animals, and has attracted the attention of philosophers from this alternative Wittgensteinian tradition, who are interested in the connection between philosophy, science, and literature. In fact, Coetzee’s work on animals has also aroused the interest of philosophers in the more mainstream tradition. Such philosophers typically have a different view of the role of literature and science in philosophy than those who have been influenced by Wittgenstein. This thesis examines the nature of the various elements of this topic as just outlined. In particular, it tries to lay out the general parameters of the mainstream assumptions and those of the alternative Wittgensteinian position, mostly as this has been developed by Cora Diamond and Raimond Gaita. The aim is to clarify what is philosophically at stake in basic ethical questions about humans and animals. As the thesis argues, attending to certain fundamental questions about human and animal life is a precondition of addressing more explicitly moral questions about them. The thesis concludes by arguing that Gaita’s view, which focuses on issues of meaning and on a responsiveness to both human and animal life that is disciplined by a range of critical concepts, in the most fruitful way forward in addressing those moral questions. 7 Introduction This thesis is about the sort of meaning or sense that, in the Western tradition of moral philosophy, can be made of animals, of human beings, and of animals and human beings together. Human life is often partly understood by a contrast with animal life, both when people attempt to show its special nature and significance, and when they try to stress its similar and continuous nature and significance as compared with other creatures. Here we see the project of seeking to find the ways in which we humans are, and are not, animals too. I will consider some of these endeavors in this thesis. In significant part, I also want to see how a detailed and particular sense of what it is for human beings to be (or to fail to be) a distinctive kind of animal affects – indeed crucially affects – a sense of the nature and significance of nonhuman animal life. In recent times there has been a change in attitudes towards nature and our place in it, and towards animals and our relations with them. A variety of ethical perspectives on animals has emerged. Increasing momentum and complexity has gathered in these emerging perspectives from the 1970s onwards, in the wake of other “progressive”, and to various degrees successful, social movements and changes. Outside philosophy and other academic and intellectual circles, there have been a number of forces driving these new views on animals. One is concern over worsening environmental damage and the intensification and increasing scale of the use of animals. Another is a deepening wonder at the lives of animals, a wonder and an engagement that is often felt in an audience that no longer directly harms or uses them. There is also now a tendency to place greater importance on relationships with “companion animals” than has happened in the past – some animals are increasingly felt to be “members of the family”. The modern interest in animals is seen in television and literature, and in the work of scientists and naturalists like David Attenborough, whose programs for several decades have nurtured an appreciation of the marvels to be found in the natural world. The influence of these social changes on attitudes to animals is clearly of substantial importance. 8 In academia, and philosophy specifically, there have also been changes in the ways animals are perceived. These changes have no doubt been influenced by changes in our culture. But, interestingly, they have also fed into the wider society (Peter Singer says that on the question of the treatment of animals philosophy has instigated rather
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