A CRITIQUE OF EMILY CANNON’S PAPER: “ANIMALS MIGHT HAVE RATIONAL SOULS: INSIGHTS FROM CHIMPANZEE COLONY” (Published in International Journal of Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 5 December, 2017)

A CRITIQUE OF EMILY CANNON’S PAPER: “ANIMALS MIGHT HAVE RATIONAL SOULS: INSIGHTS FROM CHIMPANZEE COLONY”

Charles Kenechukwu Okoro

Department of Philosophy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

The Merits of the paper

In the paper, “Animals might have Rational Souls: Insights from Chimpanzee Colony,” Emily Cannon advances a view that apparently supports the contemporary course for the promotion of animal rights. Drawing largely from Frans de Waal’s study of animal behaviour, using especially Chimpanzees, she advances this course with greater vigour by ascribing rational souls to animals. Systematically raising interesting philosophical questions, the paper is undoubtedly as thought-provoking as it is intellectually enriching. Its philosophical interest in the possibility of non-human animal consciousness makes for a re-assessment of man’s unique nature and privileged status in the universe, especially through comparison and contrast with those animals whose actions could approximate to those of human beings.

More still, the paper’s anchorage on the results of some scientific and empirical studies makes it appealing. However, it features a number of contentious and arguable assumptions that are very critical to its central thesis. Against this backdrop, it is imperative to re-assess the operational definition of the concept of “rational soul” against which this discourse proceeds. It is also necessary to re-examine the basis and justification for considering intelligence and expression of emotions as indicative of the presence of a rational soul that is equivalent to man’s spiritual, eternal or immortal soul, as well as identify some possible limitations of Frans de Waal’s study on which this paper heavily leans.

Rational Soul: A Conceptual Clarification

The concept “soul”, the root of which is traceable to the ancient Greek ψυχή (psukkhe, Psyche), meaning “breathe”, is usually used to describe the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life.[1] It also refers to the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory perception, and thinking.[2]  The soul is considered either mortal or immortal, depending on the philosophical system in question. In Christian theology, the latter is the case; hence, it conceives the soul not only as the spiritual or immaterial part of man, the seat of human personality, intellect, will and emotions, but also as a spiritual entity that survives after the corporeal death, and is capable of redemption from the power of sin through divine grace. The immortality of the soul necessitates a conscious disposition for ethical conducts, as such actions guarantee one’s eligibility for a blissful life hereafter. In Christian theology, therefore, the soul makes man an agent of moral action in the sense that he is culpable for his actions and inactions.[3] 

From the philosophical point of view, the essence of the concept of the “rational soul” is particularly captured in the philosophical thoughts of Plato and Aristotle. In his tripartite conception of the human soul, as described in the Republic and Phaedrus, Plato conceives the human soul as a composite of the logical or rational, the spirited, and the appetitive parts. For him, justice is ensured, and proper ethical actions can only be posited, when each part performs its proper function.[4] In the dialogue, Phaedo, Plato advances a view in favour of the immortality of the soul, drawing especially from Socrates’ insights. Arguing that the soul is the principle of life as well as participates in the eternal and unchanging forms, he maintains that it is necessarily “imperishable.”[5]

Against the backdrop of his distinction between matter as a principle of potentiality and form as a principle of actuality, Aristotle conceives the soul as the form of any living thing. According to him, it is “the first actuality of a natural body that has life potentially.”[6] He distinguished three degrees of the soul, namely, the nutritive soul (for plants), the sensitive soul (for all animals), and the rational soul (for human beings). He also identifies a hierarchy of functions performed by these. Plants basically participate in growth, nutrition and reproduction. In addition to these functions, animals are associated with locomotion and perception. In addition to all the aforementioned functions, human beings have the capacity to think.[7] For Aristotle, therefore, only human beings have rational souls, which he associates with immortality. Highlighting the ethical concern of the human soul, he maintains that by acting in accordance with “right reason”, that is, “the working of the soul in the way of excellence or virtue,”[8] the soul achieves its ultimate happiness. By implication, the possession of soul makes man essentially an agent of moral action.

The Scholastic tradition advanced the views of Plato and Aristotle, especially in its description of the soul as the animating principle of human life that can have an independent existence apart from the body. Following Descartes, whose dualist arguments favour the existence of the soul as a separate substance, most philosophers identify the soul with the mind and highlight the fact that mental contents survive in an incorporeal state.[9] The rational soul, therefore, as a faculty proper to human beings is not limited to thought or expression of intelligence but includes the capacity to outlive the corporeal existence. Depending on the cumulative consequences of one’s actions, the soul attains eternal life in heaven as postulated by the Scholastics and Christian theologians, especially Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. On the contrary, plant and animal souls do not survive death; they are neither rational nor spiritual and cease to exist at death. In addition, animals cannot be considered responsible agents of moral actions. When they err, for instance, one cannot impute moral guilt to them.

Within the purview of modern science, which considers humans only as one of the many animal species, humans are still considered to enjoy some privileged status. Granted that some animals express high level of intelligence and a variety of emotions, they can neither engage in abstract reasoning nor conceive abstract notions or concepts. As a matter of fact, self-consciousness, in contradistinction to mere consciousness, is ordinarily considered an innate endowment of humans. Only human beings have the cognitive capacity to introspect or examine their inner self, feelings and actions especially in relation to life’s ultimate purpose or end. Indeed, the attribution of self-consciousness to humans is consistent with the theory of evolution; hence, it is only analogously attributed to animals to the extent their actions approximate to those of human beings.

Some Identifiable Contentious Assumptions

Deducible from some basic assumptions of Emily Cannon’s discourse is the fact that it operates extensively within the framework of Christian understanding of the human soul. Hence, finding firm footing in the book of Genesis and John’s account of the gospel, she acknowledges that being created “in the image of God” does not presuppose a resemblance in appearance or physical shape,” but in “spirit” or “soul”. The assumption of this paper that the animal soul is ontologically the same as the human rational and immortal soul that is created in God’s likeness and destined to live in eternity is obviously gratuitous. An excerpt from the paper reads:

In the creation story, God makes all creatures, so the difference cannot be that humans were made by God and other creatures are merely incidental. From a semi-literal perspective, animals are created just like us. From a metaphorical perspective in which we understand an omniscient God to have created us all through a process of evolution, any distinction between the method of creation of man and animals is meaningless. If these rational souls are present in other creatures, ethically speaking, we must consider them to also be made in the image of God. In other words, in our treatment of them, we must consider them “man”.

The above extract, which captures the essence of this paper, implicates an incompatible mixture of the biblical account and the evolution theory of creation neither of which justifies the attribution of an essentially immortal soul to the lower animals. No doubt, all creations issued from God’s creative power, and so, their coming into being was neither accidental nor incidental. Yet, God’s conscious decision to create a being in his own image and likeness was only and specifically expressed at the creation of man.[10] Thus, the assertion that “animals are created just like us” is definitely not scriptural. The creation of man in the first and second biblical accounts of creation differed in method from that of other creatures.[11] The infusion of the spirit of God in man is critical to his ontological constitution and definitely not negligible. Methodology is, therefore, never a meaningless consideration in the creation story. One would therefore inadvertently slide into a gratuitous assumption to conclude as, Emily Cannon does in this paper, that all other creatures were also created in the image and likeness of God.

The attribution of rational soul to animals on the basis of certain observable similarities between their actions and those of humans may have some obvious merits, but asserting that such rational soul is an exact equivalent of man’s soul is hardly justifiable. The human soul is not only a cognitive faculty that apprehends essences or kinds of things; it is subsistent and outlives corporeal existence. Its unique link with God makes man an eternity-oriented agent of moral action. Mere expression of intelligence cannot, therefore, determine its whole essence. The level of intelligence being manifested by animals may differ according to their kind and capacity, and can approximate to man’s, depending on their peculiar nature and features. It is not surprising, therefore, that such animals as chimpanzees and gorillas with larger brains would manifest higher intelligence than other animals. Their capacity to express high intelligence notwithstanding, they can neither be equivalent to humans nor possess the exact kind of spiritual souls possessed by humans as responsible moral agents. Indeed, the expression of intelligence, irrespective of its degree, does not exactly imply the possession of a soul; otherwise, with their high level of imbued intelligence and capacity to mimic human actions, robots could also be said to possess rational souls.

Frans de Waal’s insights especially as represented in Emily Cannon’s paper is unarguably very laudable. Insights in his work, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society, demonstrate the ability of some animals to express gratitude, play, contemplate nature, act to save a fellow creature, or react mournfully to the loss of family members or other close companions.[12] Indeed, save the common sense observations and conclusions, scientific investigations of the behaviours and study of the brain anatomy and physiology of some animals provide some compelling basis and justification for arguing in favour of the possibility of animal self-consciousness in relation to animals.  However, this possibility is only limited to animals that are biologically similar to human beings. Indeed, the fact that it may be very difficult to access the mental states of animals that are much lower than humans makes one skeptical of the universal applicability of the conclusion that animals possess rational souls. Moreover, the expression of intelligence and emotions do not wholly capture the essence of self-consciousness and cannot be regarded as absolute indication of the possession of a soul equivalent to man’s rational and spiritual soul.

More still, with the dawn of civilization, the wave of education and its wide-range of social consequences affected virtually every being in the human society, including plants and animals. The domestication of animals constitutes one of the imports of this phenomenon. One observable feature of this development is that the domesticated animals posit actions that can approximate to those of human beings. Hence, one observes some significant traits of human intelligence being expressed by such domesticated animals as the different species of primates, dogs, horses, dolphins, snakes and so on. It could be immediately imagined that De Waal’s research was based on his observation of some chimpanzees that have undergone some measure of domestication or have learnt and appropriated some human expressions and modes of communication. Little wonder, even while they differ from humans in kind, these chimpanzees, as objects of the study and supposedly in a controlled environment, make use of signs and symbols almost as humans do. These may not necessarily represent their appropriate modes of communication in their natural habitat outside the controlled environment.

In essence, some intelligent actions or emotions of the animals alluded to in the study may, therefore, be the results of classical or operant conditioning. If this is the case, such arguments in favour of animal self-consciousness and the justifications for ascribing rational souls to animals, as expressed in De Waal’s study, would lack objectivity. The peculiarity in the usage of some gestures to a particular individual chimpanzee, as alluded to in Emily Cannon’s paper, also exposes this possible limitation. Gestures used only by a particular chimpanzee, even with some considerable consistency, may lack universal applicability; what is more, it may never be understood by chimpanzees outside the controlled environment.

Notably, too, whereas the ratiocinative faculty is generally seen as a major distinguishing factor between humans and the lower animals, whose actions basically issue from instinct, the fundamental objective of Emily Cannon paper is to establish the fact that animals also share this faculty. Relating the experience of chimpanzees interchanging the use of bottles and breastfeeding of their young ones, she attempts to demonstrate that “they have a grasp of purpose of the act.” This act of using bottles, as already observed above, may issue from a learned behavior from humans. Moreover, the instinct of self-preservation is undoubtedly inherent in virtually all creatures. In animals, this instinct also finds vivid expression in the acts of nurturing and protecting their off-springs. Hence, the act of parenting, as observed in chimpanzees, may not necessarily provide an objective demonstration of their possession of a sense of purpose in every kind of action they posit.

Conclusion

Emily Cannon’s paper, like most pro-animal right-discourses, accords a pride of place to animals within the human society. Its attempt to raise the bar by attributing rational souls to animals, using Frans de Waal’s study of chimpanzees as an anchorage, makes it an enlightening and worthwhile academic endeavor. However, the obvious limitations of this effort, especially, by equating the mere expression of intelligence and the temporal qualities of the “rational soul” with the ontological essence or nature of the human soul, poses some critical challenges to the thesis of this paper. Indeed, the great passion for the promotion of animal rights as expressed in this paper, notwithstanding, the equation of human life with those of animals is to accord them more rights than they deserve. Humans have no moral obligation to lower animals; they remain ontologically inferior to humans and so cannot be treated as humans only on the pretext that they possibly possess a rational soul. In a word, the animal soul is neither essentially rational nor an exact equivalent of man’s immortal soul; hence, it cannot outlive its corporeal existence.

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[1] https//www.merriam-webster.com

[2] James Murray, ed., Oxford English Dictionary. Online Edition.

[3] The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Nairobi: Paulines Publications African, 1994), 366.

[4] Plato, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (Paris: Basic Books, 1968), 433a.

[5] Plato, Phaedo in Plato in Twelve Volumes, trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge, MA & London, UK: Harvard University Press & William Heinemann Ltd., 1966), 69e – 72d.

[6] Aristotle, De Anima, trans. R.D. Hicks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), 412a27.

[7] Aristotle, De Anima, 413a23.

[8] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. M. Oswald (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1971), 22.

[9] Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1980), 87.

[10] Genesis 1:26

[11] Genesis 2:7

[12] Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society. www.amazon.com