Tag Archives: conscious

Animals are Conscious, but Do Hunters Have a Conscience?

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Not that it should come as a surprise to anyone who’s ever befriended a dog or cat, or watched birds in their backyard, but in July 2012, respected scientists met in Cambridge and went on record to affirm that non-humans are conscious. Belated as the matter has been in gaining acceptance, their “Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness” was a welcome step in the right direction for the world’s most continually oppressed and victimized—those born of species other than human.

The declaration asserts:

The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates. …

Okay, that may sound like a bunch of academic hullabaloo, but in layman’s terms, animals are indeed conscious beings. Though not really a profound revelation, the fact that non-humans are not automatons runs counter to hundreds of years of accepted belief (thanks to the fifteenth century French mathematician, Rene Descartes) that’s been used to justify untold animal cruelties for far too long.

In recent decades, the science of cognitive ethology has clearly put to rest grandiose notions of human superiority—besides perhaps the extent of human narcissism.  Nowadays, none but the most agenda-driven or willfully ignorant can claim unfamiliarity with the fact that non-human animals exhibit awareness and have the capacity to experience pain and fear, along with pleasurable feelings and emotions.

So if irrational Cartesian rationale for cruelty to animals is outmoded thinking, how then do hunters justify the virtually unprecedented abuse of our fellow Earthlings going on in the name of sport today? Could it be that sport hunters lack a conscience for all but our own kind?

As you’ve probably heard, British rocker and staunch animal rights activist, Morrissey, canceled his scheduled performance on the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” show this week due to a planned appearance on the same night by the cast of “Duck Dynasty” (a “reality” program which focuses on a family that became wealthy by making tools for their fellow duck hunters.)  The singer released a statement on Monday saying he “cannot morally be on a television program where the cast members of Duck Dynasty will also be guests.”

Morrissey also stated: “As far as my reputation is concerned, I can’t take the risk of being on a show alongside people who, in effect, amount to animal serial killers.”

Serial Killers? How can he liken avid, good ol’ boy duck hunters to serial killers, one might ask? Well, easy. Both serial killers and duck hunters act without conscience toward their multiple victims, whom they depersonalize and objectify. And both kill others to boost their self-esteem, some even going so far as taking trophies of their victims’ body parts.

The next question scientists need to address is, assuming that hunters are conscious animals, why don’t they have a conscience?

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

That Dog Don’t Hunt

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Since the dark ages of Descartes, certain people have tried to keep non-human animals down and justify their exploitation with the absurd and arrogant allegation that animals don’t really care what happens to them because they aren’t capable of feeling, choosing, or perceiving—they aren’t “conscious”.

Say what? What are they, unconscious?

To borrow a redneck phrase I promise I’ll never resort to again, that dog don’t hunt!

Of course, neither does our yellow lab, Honey. But she definitely can think and feel, and on Wednesday night she felt bad, clearly perceiving that things weren’t right. She must have eaten something unsavory that didn’t sit well. Normally Honey sleeps like a log, choosing to sleep on the bed, but that night she didn’t sleep a wink and instead lay on the floor with a pained expression and a hang-dog look (sorry, again, but it seemed to fit); she was worried, fearful and subdued—obviously uncomfortable.

By morning, her stomach must have settled and she slept soundly until 11:00 a.m. Honey hadn’t been outside since the previous afternoon, and my wife and I had been growing quite concerned, but when we asked if she was ready to go for walk, the answer was plain as day. She jumped for joy—leaped, in fact—in jubilant celebration of feeling like her old self again. Her recovery was dramatic, almost startling, and she pulled against her leash with renewed vigor and intensity.

How anyone can still subscribe to the agenda-driven assertion that non-human animals don’t experience life every bit as—if not more—richly as our species, is beyond me. All of the other animals we share the world with—dogs, cats, pigs, cows, horses, rabbits, parrots, pigeons, turkeys, turtles, deer, elk, mink, salmon, or moose–have each evolved the wits and sensations needed to survive, or they surely wouldn’t be with us now.  

Regardless of what you believe about whether animals should have rights, we humans don’t have the right to make them suffer. Any attentive dog owner knows that their best friend can go through a full spectrum of emotions, from fear and sorrow to love and joy—on any given day. Rene Descartes must have been short changed when god was handing out empathy. A lot of animals have needlessly suffered for his convenient, but lunatic theories on the lack of animal consciousness.

Conscious or not, Descartes must not have had a conscience. His theory could have been put to rest long ago had his peers applied one simple equation:   If it looks like poop and smells like poop, it must be bullshit.