But such evidence can only exonerate the man so much. And it would be hugely unfair to ignore the fact that Descartes had a pet dog, Monsieur Grat, whom he probably loved dearly. Prevarications like this suggest that, in practice at least, Descartes saw a meaningful difference between animal life and inanimate objects. Thus, Descartes speaks of animals having sensations, and even feeling emotions like anger and happiness, even though a strict adherence to his dualism would demand that they could only do so if they possessed an immaterial soul. In Descartes’ defence, modern scholars such as John Cottingham have shown that Descartes couldn’t quite stomach his own strict separation of man and beast (‘A Brute to the Brutes’: Descartes’ Treatment of Animals’, Philosophy 53, 1978). Of course, Descartes has been repeatedly and mercilessly criticised for this view, especially in our time, when far fewer people share it. See his Discourse on Method (1637) and Meditations (1641) for his elaboration of this idea. So ultimately, Descartes thought that animals were not hugely different from cars or computers they were mechanical objects and not living subjects. However animals, reasoned Descartes, show no signs of being inhabited by rational souls: they don’t speak or philosophise, and so (as far as we can tell) they lack souls, and minds. He believed this because he thought that thoughts and minds are properties of an immaterial soul thus, humans have subjective experience only because they have immaterial souls inhering in their physical bodies. Descartes famously thought that animals were merely ‘mechanisms’ or ‘automata’ – basically, complex physical machines without experiences – and that as a result, they were the same type of thing as less complex machines like cuckoo clocks or watches. This moral difference between a puppy and a laptop might seem obvious to us, but it was not at all obvious to the father of modern Western philosophy, René Descartes (1596-1650). Thus, even though our society is guilty of enormous industrial cruelties to animals, we tend to believe that we ought to treat animals well, because, unlike inanimate objects, they are living, feeling creatures. Implicitly then, we believe that there are important moral differences between animals and inanimate objects. If the Marine had been filmed throwing a fancy watch over the cliff, none of the moral outrage would have followed. Even so, the fact that the video outraged so many people proves that for most of us, animals have a moral significance it matters how we treat them. Perhaps there were circumstances surrounding the incident which, if we knew them, would make the whole thing seem (slightly) less monstrous: the Marine apparently claimed that the puppy was terminally ill. Naturally enough, the public was outraged, and the Marine in question was discharged. The grainy footage posted on YouTube showed the soldier holding the small black and white puppy by the scruff of the neck and remarking how cute it is before violently flinging it over the edge. Marine who was filmed throwing a puppy over a cliff. – George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin (1872)īack in March 2008 the collective rage of the internet was roused against a U.S. “No one understands animals who does not see that every one of them, even amongst the fishes, it may be with a dimness and vagueness infinitely remote, yet shadows the human…” SUBSCRIBE NOW Articles Descartes versus Cudworth On The Moral Worth of Animals Samuel Kaldas compares two views on the nature of animals and their implications for our moral responsibility towards them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |