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The Neo CartesianRevival: A ResponsePeter HarrisonBond University

Editors' Note: The following is ProfessorHarrison's response to Professor EvelynPluhar's article Arguing Away Suffering:The Neo-Cartesian Revival," which appearedin the preceding number of Between theSpecies Professor Pluhar's reply follows.Several corrections of errors, for which theeditors are responsible, are to be made toArguing Away Suffering." See ' 'Errata'' on

page 92 of this number.

Let me begin by saying that I am grateful toProfessor Pluhar for having drawn my attention to somepossible sources of confusion in my original paper andfor pointing out where further clarification is required.In view of space limitations I will not deal with all ofher criticisms seriatim but will consider major pointsof contention under five headings:

I. The Moral Implications of Animal Pain2. Mental States and the Relevance of Physical

Similarities3. Sensation and Consciousness4. Free Will and Determinism5. The Relevance of Evolutionary Theory

'This will be followed by some general remarks aboutmy overall argument. I will not be restating my originalcase in any detail, but given that t is not presented inits best light in the preceding article, readers may wishto consult it for tllemselves.

1 The Moral Implications of Animal PainPerhaps the most serious misconception in Professor

P uhar's paper is her contention that i Peter Carruthersand I have our way, "scientists might as well return to

the practice of nailing research animals to boards forvivisection without benefit of anaesthesia. Theimplication is that from assumed facts about animaIs-that tlley do not feel pain, for example---certain moralconsequences directly follow. However, to arrive atconclusions about how animals ought to be treated, wemust be anned with more than facts. l Some moral theorymust come into play. Indeed one's view of morality willdetermine which facts are morally relevant. For thosewho subscribe to some crude form of utilitarianism,according to which tlle morality of acts is judged bywhetller tlley conduce overall to physical pleasures orpains, putative facts about animal pain may well be tllesole determinant of how animals ought to be treated. Itmight follow, for such utilitarians, that i animals donot feel pain, tllen there are no strictures on how theymay be treated. However, for those who, like myself,subscribe to an alternative moral theory, animal pain isbut one element among others. In my view there ,aremoral considerations independent of the vexed questionof animal pain which ought to govern our treatment ofnonhumans. Thus, even if animals do not feel pain, itdoes not directly follow for those committed to somenonconsequentialist theory of ethics that we can treatanimals how we wish.

The fact that the question of animal pain and themoral status ofanimals are distinct issues can be furtherillustrated by reference to the treatment of animals in

Peter Harrison, 1992

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the seventeenth century. t is by no means clear, howeverfrequently it may be asserted, that Descartes had aprofound effect on the practice of vivisection, Thesources offered for this common view, i any are offeredat all, are usually those contemporary French writerswho describe the gruesome experiments carried out bythe Cartesians at Port-Royal.3 However thereare equallycompelling counter-instances of Cartesians whopreached kindness to animals.4 Moreover, for thisargument to work, it would have to be shown thatCartesians pursued animal experimentation with morevigour and cruelty than did their non-Cartesiancounterparts. To my knowledge, no one has establishedthis. Indeed it would be surprising if they could, for inthe seventeenth century it was simply not necessary togo to the extent of denying that animals felt pain inorder to justify experimenting on them. Whetheranimals felt pain or not was irrelevant, given the almostuniversal belief that animals had been placed in theworld for the service of mankind. t was this view,combined with the Baconian understanding of nature,which informed the practice of vivisection. Only withthe advent of Bentham's utilitarianism did the purportedcapacity of animals to feel pain become morallysignificant. Again, it is clear that one's treatment ofanimals need not be determined solely, i at all, bywhether they are capable of feeling pain.

2. Mental States andthe Relevance of Physical Similarities

We now tum to my apparent covert commitment toCartesian dualism. This is ascribed to me on the basisof examples put forward to show that pain is a mentalstate (a claim which, I confess, could have been statedmore explicitly, but which should not be confused withanother which Professor Pluhar erroneously attributesto me, that pain is primarily psychological, whateverthat means). There are few if any, philosophers whowould contest this assertion. What is at issue is therelation between such mentalistic statements as I amin pain and physicalistic statements of the kind X'snervous system is presently in such and such a physicalstate. My position with respect to the relation of themental and the physical is indeed dualist, but one maybe a dualist without subscribing to Descartes' ontologyof dual substances. Leibniz isa case in point, and somewould argue that epiphenomalists are dualists of a kind.There are, in addition, a number of modem versions of

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dualism which differ from the classical formulation ofDescartes.s Dualists in this context are simply thosewho consider propositions about mental states to differfrom propositions about physical states in terms of bothmeaning nd reference. Admittedly, dualism, Cartesianor otherwise, does have difficulties, but in my view theseare less intractable th n those of alternative theories ofmind. In any case, arguments that animals are notsubjects of such mental states as pain do not necessarilyrely upon a dualist theory of mind. As Pluhar herselfindicates, earlier this century it was actually opponentsof dualism who, influenced by linguistic philosophy,challenged the meaningfulness of all mentalisticstatements. In view of this confusion it might e worthsorting out some of the implications of various theoriesof mind, particularly with respect to the argument fromphysiological similarities.

t seems to me that the most a dualist can say is thatunder specific conditions, certain neurologicalstructures seem necessary for mental events of certainkinds.6 (I mearrempirically necessary, not logicallynecessary.) To make the much more difficult case thatthe same neurological structures are sufficient for mentalexperiences, we need to subscribe to some theory ofmind according to which, in principle, all propositionsabout mental events are logically deducible, orempirically discoverable, from propositions aboutphysical states.7 A materialistic theory of mind,according to which mental states are nothing butphysical states of the brain, would be most suitable.However, even if some form of physicalism is correct,and if, through some unimaginable scientificbreakthrough, we are able to infer mental states fromphysical states, it may still tum out that the subjectiveexperience of pain in one human individual may turnout to be represented by a different physical state fromthat which obtains in another human being experiencingpain. Thus no amount of knowledge of brain stateswould evershed light on mental states. But further, evengranting all of these ifs, we would never be in aposition to know what an animal's mental states were,because despite the most complete knowledge of theirphysical states, given that their nervous systems differfrom ours in significant ways, and given that we haveno independent access to their mental states (assumingthey have them), we would have no way of constructingthe hypothetical map which would allow us to read offmental state from physical state. Thus even the theoryof mind which most favours the view that the similarity

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of animals' neural structures to our own is a relevantconsideration in detennining whether they feel pain,must be supplemented with additional assumptions.

When we turn to those psychologists whose researchapparently involves the induction of grief, anxiety,anguish and p s y o ~ i s in nonhumans, the relevanceof our discussion of alternative views of mind becomesapparent. t is clear that some materialistic theory ofmind is often tacitly, and hence uncritically, acceptedby the scientific fraternity. Symptomatic of its influenceis an increasing tendency in psychology to convertmental criteria into physical criteria. Physical criteriacan be measured and manipulated in a way that mentalcriteria cannot, and physical criteria yield objectiveknowledge. A classic case is the treatment of dreamingin psychological literature. The sole criterion for theoccurrence of a dream is a waking report. However,some psychologists, attempting to establish linksbetween measurable physical states and reports ofdreams, have tended to displace the mental criterion infavour of some physical criterion, in this case, a periodof rapid eye movement (REM). But as NonnanMalcolm has ably demonstrated, however interestingthe correlations between these physical events andsubjects' reports of dreams, such connexions can onlybe established by continual reference to the original,mental criterion of dreaming.s The illicit substitutionof period of REM sleep for dream leads psychologists into a discussion of some phenomenon whichonly indirectly pertains to what we routinely refer to asdreaming. The criterion of dreaming as we

commonly use the tenn, is emphatically not somemeasurable physiological state, however convenient thislatter characterisation might be for psychologists.

In animal psychology the tendency to make thesekinds of illicit substitutions is endemic. Hence, asPluhar has indicated, we find such labels as grief,anxiety, anguish, and psychosis applied toanimals. However, the criteria for the use of thesetenns are not, as in the case of human use, reports ofmental state but, rather, particular physical syndromeswhich correspond roughly to those physical states ofhuman beings who make reports of the psychologicalphenomena concerned. These subtle substitutions canonly be meaningful if their reference is restricted tothose physical characteristics which serve as criteriafor their application or if the standard use of the termsas applied to humans is altered so that these tenns refernot to mental states but to other physical criteria

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thought to correlate with those states. Either way, theuse of such tenns sheds no light on the mental lives ofnonhumans and is at best highly equivocal, at worst,hopelessly mUddled.The whole body of respectable evidence to theeffect that animals make choices, incidentally, ispredicated upon a similar linguistic confusion.9

In the light of this discussion, we can return to whatprompted the charge of Cartesian dualism-mydiscussion of the psychology of pain. Reference wasmade to this literature to illustrate one simple principle:if two human individuals, who presumably have verysimilar neural structures, experience the same painfulstimulus in different ways, the subjective experienceof pain is simply not a direct function of neuroanatomy.(Aristotle, Spinoza and Ryle, incidentally, would hardlyhave supported my general position. Ryle, in particular,was a notorious anti-dualist. These philosophers werecited merely to show there is general agreement thatpain is not a sensation.)

To conclude this discussion of the relevance ofphysical affinities, let me make it clear that I do notdeny the significance of the neurophysiologicalsimilarity of human and nonhuman species. Thissimilarity, however, can admit of two quite distinctinterpretations. I welcome Pluhar's announcement thatwe have 98.4% of genetic material in common withchimpanzees (although the statistic is somewhatmisleading).l0 We can add to this the observation ofSir John Eccles that in the [human] neocortex nospecial structural or physiological properties have beenidentified that distinguish sharply a human brain fromthe brain of an anthropoid ape. ll What thesesimilarities demonstrate is that the achievements ofhuman consciousness are vastly disproportionate tothe neurological differences which exist betweenourselves and our nearest relatives. We do notcharacteristically observe our simian cousinsproducing works of art, writing literature, composingmusic, or building cities, which are, on average, 98.4%as good as ours. There is in the animal world nothingto compare with the products of the conscious mind,however much evolutionary biologists want to stressthe continuities between human and animal species.(Chimpanzees' constructions of two- and three-termexpressions in ASL do not, in my view, comparefavourably with the works of Shakespeare.)l2 Nor needwe be committed to any particular theory of mind tosee the force of this disproportion. We may, like

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Descartes, postulate the existence of some spiritualsubstance which, allied to the human brain, accountsfor the difference. Alternatively, we may want to arguethat the unique products of human culture are directfunctions of very small brain differences. But even ifwe adopt this second view, we are admitting that therelevant statistic is not 98.4% similarity, but the 1.6%difference. There simply is no proportionality betweenphysical and mental worlds.

3. Sensation and ConsciousnessIn the final section of my paper I am alleged to

have made a stunning turn, conceding thatnonhumans can experience pain. At least I am inillustrious company, for Descartes and I stand jointlycharged with wanting to have it both ways, in that weare supposed to have asserted both that animals arenot conscious nd that they are capable of havingsensations. The difficulty here is that words likesensation carry with them what Wittgenstein calledgrammatical illusions -in this case the belief that

all sensation is conscious. (We have already witnessedthis in the parallel instances of animal anxiety,grief, etc.) As Descartes himselfwas at pains to point

out, albeit in vain, sensations need not be conscious. IAnimals, in his view, have sensations, but they arenot aware of them. There is no ambiguity here, it issimply a matter of attending closely to how thesewords are used. (Leibniz's apperception was anattempt to avoid the misunderstanding engendered bythe use of sensation. )14 The point I am making, atany rate, is not, as Pluhar erroneously believes, thatanimals experience genuine pains and then forget thembut, rather, that animals lack the self-conscious identitywhich is a prerequisite for conscious experience. Thesentence which is cited in support of my stunningturn- I am not implying here that painful experienceswhich are forgotten were never painful to start with refers only to human experience, as should be clearfrom the original context.

Pluhar has placed a similarly unfortunate construction on my argument concerning learning inProtozoa. My observations about Protozoan habituationwere to illustrate the principle that learning does notrequire consciousness, not that all learning was of thesimple Protozoan kind. Rather than multiply examplesbeyond necessity, let me simply cite another author onthis question:

On its own, the behavioural evidence isambiguous, since persistence of a responseafter the stimulus has ended, memory,anticipation and learning are readily explainedin terms of simple neural mechanisms whichdo not require the postUlation of any form ofsubjective experience on the part of theanimal.I5

4. Free WiD and DeterminismTo holding the undefended assumption that the

capacity to choose is incompatible with the deterministicthesis, I plead guilty. I also concede that the classicproblem faced by incompatibilists, like myself, is howto construe an uncaused choice in a meaningful way.The classic counter is, of course, that free agents arethe causes of theirown actions. The problem of freedomand determinism, like the mind-body problem, is notone which I claim to have solved. All I have done is toopt for a philosophically-defensible thesis of humanfreedom which is consistent with my overall position.I6

For the benefit of those who, with Professor Pluhar,believe that an action can be both determined and freelychosen, let me rephrase the argument which links painand choice: f animal behaviour is externally caused(i.e., not caused by animals acting as agents), then wehave some good reasons for thinking that animals donot suffer pain. Despite Pluhar's claim to the contrary,this is not an instance of attempting to prove a thesis byappealing to its premisesP The only genuine groundfor complaint is the if ' used in the formulation of thisargument. Pluhar can show that my view of free-willis wrong, then the argument fails. But whileincompatibilism of the kind outlined above continuesto be a serious philosophical option (although, as Iconceded in the original paper, not an uncontroversialone), my case remains plausible.

5. The Relevance of Evolutionary TheoryProfessor Pluhar is quite justified in chastising me

for having given a rather simple account of naturalselection. Indeed, my own case assumes the moresophisticated version which she presents. Yes, is truethat not every trait of every species confers some kindof selective advantage. Accordingly, when Pluhar statesthat it is simply false to say that debilitating pain,depression, anxiety, etc., do not threaten our survival,

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I am in full agreement with her. My point is that thehuman species has something which compensates forthis-namely, a culture which insulates us fromselection pressures which might otherwise lead to ourdemise. Culture enables us to carry these, and perhapsother, negative traits It seems less likely that animals,who donotenjoy the benefit of this culturalbuffer, wouldbe able to perpetuate similar disadvantageous traits.

It must also be pointed out that while evolutionarytheory might in principle allow for the fact that sometraits confer no selective advantage, it is not clear, inpractice, when evolutionary biologists would bejustified in abandoning the search for such explanations,for a researcher could never be in a position todistinguish between a trait which conferred an as yetunknown selective advantage, and one which wassimply not advantageous. We can see the strength ofthis if we consider the example provided by Pluharthe behaviour of a cat or dog which ceases to eat on thedeath of a companion. It might reasonably be arguedthat one half of a superannuated breeding pair is nolonger in a position to enhance the survival of thespecies. On the contrary, having fulfilled itsreproductive function, it is now competing for foodresources with other pairs which have reproductivepotential. Not eating in this situation turns out to beadvantageous to the species. Now, it does not reallymatter whether this account works or not. The point isthat such behaviour is not intrinsically mysterious tothose who deny that animals have subjective statesanalogous to human grief, because there will alwaysbe the possibility of some such overlooked explanation.

Professor Pluhar might respond at this juncture withthe cry of false dilemma. This grieving behaviour,she might point out, is both adaptive and indicative ofmental grief. Rather than trump the false dilemma withOccam's razor, let me just point out that to introducementalistic explanations is immediately to move beyondthe bounds of evolutionary theory, for t is behaviours,not mental stites, which adapt, and it is only physicalentities which can be the subjects of natural selection.

ConclusionTo conclude, I wish to offer some brief comments

on Pluhar's final verdict on my argument. In herjudgement, t consists of a series of inadequatelysupported statements, hasty generalisations, andquestion-begging assumptions. I'm not sure about the

hasty generalisations, but the remarks about theinadequately supported statements and the questionbegging assumptions are revealing. On the first head,there were, indeed, a number of inadequately supportedstatements in my piece. This does not mean that theyare insupportable. My views on the nature of free will,for example, were not supported, but the running inthis department has been made by others. The sameapplies to my assumptions about the nature of mind.The important thing in these cases is that argumentsare available. Moreover, in the construction of aplausible argument-which is all I have claimed formy case-it is perfectly legitimate to make assumptions,provided that they are not clearly false. critic mustshow that such assumptions are erroneous, not merelycontentious. While Professor Pluhar has competentlyrehearsed some standard objections to a number of myassumptions, she has not shown any of them to be false.

On the second head, Pluhar seems to confuse thedemonstration of the consistency of a position withbegging the question. My argument functions in partby showing that if we take a certain position with respectto (say) free will, and add to this a commitment to aparticular philosophy of mind, we may be led to certainremarkable conclusions about animal consciousness.These, in tum, may mesh neatly with a certain type oftheodicy. The fact that these positions are mutuallysupportive actually strengthens the argument. followsthat an effective criticism would have to demonstratethat (a) my premises are false, or (b) the implications Ihave drawn from those premises are false, or (c) thevarious philosophical positions which serve as mypremises are inconsistent with each other. ProfessorPluhar has failed on each of these counts.

NotesI This not least because, as Hume famously pointed out,no ought is deducible from an is.2 Philosophers as divergent as Aquinas and Kant denied

the relevance of animal pain, while insisting at the same timethatwe ought to refrain from cruelty to animals. More recently,some writers on animal welfare have avoided references topain in the search for more objective criteria to inform thetreatment of animals. See, e.g., D.M. Broom, Indicators ofPoor Welfare, British Veterinary Joumal 42 (1986) 524f.For a brief statement of the kinds of moral considerationswhich I consider to be relevant to our treatmentof nonhumananimals, see Peter Harrison, Do Animals Feel Pain? ,Philosophy 66 (1991) 25-40, part v; cf. Patrick Bateson,

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Assessment of Pain in Animals, Animal Behaviour 42(1991) 827-39, p 836.

The utilitarian approach, in any case, suffers from otherembarrassments. While there is doubt about animals'subjective experiences of pain, there must be doubt about howthey ought to be treated. Moreover, utilitarianism leads to aconflict of positive duties toward animals: Do we save thebird from the cat? For a systematic account of the limitationsof a utilitarian approach to the issue, and of some of theimplications of a contractualist ethics, see Peter Camithers,The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in Prcu:tice (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992).

3 The standard sources are Joseph Lavalk, Letters of aMarmeluke (London, 1804), p 106; N Trublet, Memoirs pourselVir d histoire e la vie etdes ouvragesde M de Fontenelle(Amsterdam: Mrac-Michel Rey, 1761), p. US. NicholasFontaine also wrote of Cartesians who justified vivisectionby claiming that animals did not feel pain: see L Rosenfield,From Beast-Mcu:hine to Man-Mcu:hine (NewYork: Octagon,1968), p. 54.

4 See, e.g., John Norris, Essay Towards the Theory oftheIdeal or Intelligible World (London: Pr for S. Manship, 1704),pp. 59,100. Also Louis Racine, cited in Rosenfield, BeastMcu:hine to Man-Machine, p 53.

5 For some modem versions of dualism, see The CaseFor Dualism, ed. J Smythies and 1 Beloff (Charlottesville:University Press of Virginia, 1989).

6 Even this may be doubtful. We would generally say, forexample, that a striate cortex is necessary for conscious visualexperiences. However, some human individuals seem to beable to see without one. See David Paterson, Is Your BrainReally Necessary?, World Medicine 3, May, 1980,21-4. Theargument that certain neural structures are at least sufficientfor certain conscious experiences would, in any case, onlyapply to human mental states. The brains of birds, for example,also lack a striate cortex, despite behaviour which suggeststhat they have visual experiences. I should add that somedualists believe in the possibility of disembodied existence.Under these conditions, obviously no physical state wouldbe a necessary condition of a mental state.

7 Epiphenomenalists would also accept this, but in myview the positionof epiphenomenalismis neutral withrespectto arguments about animals' consciousness.

8 See Norman Malcolm, Dreaming (London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1959), ch. 13.