{"id":1000,"date":"2019-01-04T18:40:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T18:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=1000"},"modified":"2019-01-04T18:40:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T18:40:01","slug":"the-quality-of-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/04\/the-quality-of-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quality of Mercy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

“I’d love to get your thoughts on whether it’s not only the neurobiological components of emotion that are widespread in the animal kingdom, but the subjective experience of emotions \u2014 or, conversely, whether aspects of cognition that are unique to humans modulate those components such that our experiences of emotions are likely singular.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/b>That\u2019s a rather complicated way of putting it. Let me first try translating your question (which sounds like it comes from the abstract of a peer-reviewed journal article!) into ordinary lay English: <\/p>\n

\u201cIs the brain activity and the behavior that accompanies our feelings<\/i> — and that we share with many kinds of animals — evidence enough that they, too, feel? or are human feelings somehow different?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The answer is that there is a kind of mind\/matter dualism \u2014 the idea that feelings are some sort of \u201cnon-material\u201d stuff \u2014 lurking behind that kind of question (just as it lurks behind the belief in an immaterial, immortal \u201csoul\u201d).<\/p>\n

I think the fact is that the only way we even know that other people feel is because they act much the same way I do when I feel (and so do their brains). That\u2019s the \u201csolution\u201d to the \u201cother-minds problem\u201d (“does anything other than me feel?<\/i>\u201d): If it\u2019s otherwise indistinguishable from me, then yes, it too feels. (That\u2019s what\u2019s behind Turing\u2019s insight in the Turing Test. And, ironically, it\u2019s the implicit assumption behind all biomedicine, both somatic and psychobiological).<\/p>\n

I suppose that in the days of slavery, racists might have asked the same kind of question: <\/p>\n

“How do we know that when Africans behave the same way I do when they seem to \u201cfeel” something, and so do their brains, that they really are feeling (or feeling what I or any other white person feels)? Maybe there\u2019s something special, something different about white people\u201ds feelings, and that\u2019s what \u201cmodulates\u201d their behavior and brain activity so that when it happens in them, it really means they are feeling something, but when it happens in black people it doesn\u2019t?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That link between dualism and racism is a bit shrill. But I think exactly \u2014 and I really mean exactly \u2014 the same reasoning is behind the notion of human exceptionalism that makes people think that when animals’ bodies and brains are doing pretty much the same thing ours are doing, they\u2019re not really feeling: something else is going on.<\/p>\n

And note that what is at issue here is not whether other species can think the same esoteric thoughts and harbor the same rarefied sentiments about the mind \u2014 \u201cI think therefore I am,\u201d \u201cThe quality of mercy is not strained,\u201d \u201cSic duo faciunt item, non est item<\/i>\u201d \u2014 that we humans do.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s more a question about exactly what is being felt, rather than whether.<\/p>\n

Let me speak, confidently, for other species here: \u201cWe don\u2019t care whether you think we are having the same lofty sentiments you do. But please, don\u2019t doubt that we are feeling. Let Shakespeare, in another racial context, be our voice\u201d:<\/p>\n

“I am a \u201cbeast.” Hath not a beast eyes? Hath not a beast hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a \u201cman” is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?.\u2026 If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”<\/p>\n

<\/i>Segner, Helmut (2016) Why babies do not feel pain, or: How structure-derived functional interpretations can go wrong<\/a> Animal Sentience<\/i> 2016.033<\/p>\n

Safina, Carl (2016) Animals think and feel: Pr\u00e9cis of Beyond words: What animals think and feel<\/i><\/a> (Safina 2015) Animal Sentience<\/i> 2016.002<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Or, as often evoked from Jeremy Bentham from The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780):<\/p>\n

The question is not, “Can they reason?\u201d
\nnor, “Can they talk?\u201d
\nbut “Can they suffer?\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I’d love to get your thoughts on whether it’s not only the neurobiological components of emotion that are widespread in the animal kingdom, but the subjective experience of emotions \u2014 or, conversely, whether aspects of cognition that are unique to humans modulate those components such that our experiences of emotions are likely singular.” That\u2019s a … <\/p>\n

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