Animal Ethics in a Process Perspective

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Animal Ethics in a Process Perspective
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Two modes of perception

• The process distinction between perception in
  the mode of causal efficacy and perception in the
  mode of presentational immediacy is extremely
  useful in evaluating research on animal
  experience.

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Presentational immediacy

• quantified sense data devoid of a sense of past
  inheritance and thus devoid of meaning, emotion
  or purpose.
• Perception in this mode does not disclose mental
  functioning.

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Perception in the mode of causal efficacy

• involves the prehension of the past as well as
  the feel of individual experience. Includes vague
  though powerful emotions and intuitions.

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Animal Aesthetic and Moral experience

• Whitehead asserts that animals experience
  emotions, hopes and purposes, largely derived
  from bodily functions, yet tinged to a degree
  with conceptual functioning.

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Bower birds

• Their bowers with display grounds and painted
  walls illustrate the ability of some animals to
  enjoy sensuous contrasts and structures.
• Bird song the constructional basis appears to be
  identical to that which we find in our own music.

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Animals are capable of virtuous actions

• While animals are not capable of stating how
  their actions follow general principles, their
  actions nevertheless can be virtuous.

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Symbol use

• the dance language of honeybees has displaced
  qualities.
• Nevertheless The mentality of animals is more
  closely tied to the physical world than is that
  of humans. Hence animals fail to grasp abstract
  concepts such as beauty and God, number,
  structure, and goodness.

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Nonverbal Thought

• For Whitehead propositions are nonlinguistic
  entities and are usually entertained not only
  without language but without consciousness.
• Propositions are quasi-physical, in that they are
  lures of feeling at the unconscious physical
  level.

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Natural concepts

• Consistent responses to a category of perceived
  objects or events
• Based on perceptual abstraction and are abstract
  to varying degrees.

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Animal consciousness

• The difference between human and animal
  consciousnes is a matter of degree.
• For Whitehead consciousness is a feeling of the
  contrast between what is and what could be.

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Language use

• Demonstrated in primates, dolphins, seals, and
  parrots.
• Includes use of metaphor and deception.
• Hermans study of dolphins demonstrates
  understanding of word order in imperative
  sentences and of questions.

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Self-Consciousness

• A vivid feeling of mineness. The subject is
  aware that it is prehending the contrasts between
  what is and what might be. Awareness of being the
  center of experiencing.
• Demonstrated in mirror experiments with primates,
  self-referential language use, and deception.

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Deception awareness

• Some chimps have exhibited the awareness that
  others may also deceive.

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Animal cultures

• Recent studies have indicated that chimpanzees
  and whales and dolphins
• One definition currently used
• Culture is information or behavior acquired from
  conspecifics through some form of social
  learning.

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How much soul?

• The human psyche is less closely bound to the
  moment, so that its experience is freer, more
  creative, allowing more choice and more
  generality of thought.
• The animal psyche is more closely bound to the
  immediate situation.

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Whitehead makes this remarkable statement

• Without doubt the higher animals entertain
  notions, hopes, and fears. And yet they lack
  civilization by reason of the deficient
  generality of their mental functioning. Their
  love, their devotion, their beauty of
  performance, rightly claim our love and oure
  tenderness in return.
• Civilization is more than all these and in
  moral worth it can be less than all these. (MT 4).

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Personhood

• Midgley points out that historically personhood
  has been based on emotional fellowship.
• Gomez asserts that apes are ape persons, based on
  their ability to recognize others and themselves
  as individual subjects capable of feeling and
  behaving intersubjectively.

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What do we owe animals?

• We owe them respectful treatment according to
  their natures, their telos. They should be given
  equal consideration.