Who are we? Animals or Not?
Student’s Name: Ammar Alkhafaji
Date: 11/05/2021
Introduction
When you walk across the street and come across a person, be it a stranger or a familiar face, and ask them, are you an animal? After overcoming the shock and wondering why someone might perceive them as an animal, more often than not, such an individual will quickly and firmly point out that they are not an animal but rather a human being. This question has for a long time elicited intense and controversial debate, going back to the days of Plato, Augustine, Aristotle, Hume, and Kant. On the one hand, some argue that human beings are indeed animals. On the other hand, critics vehemently deny this claim. As such, the crust of this paper is to provide a philosophical analysis of why people should not be seen as animals. When doing this, I will also highlight and analyze the objections made to this claim.
Are we Animals or Not?
Like most people, I often contend with questions related to my identity. During such moments, the main questions I focus on are; who am I or what makes me who I am? I persist through time, or rather the persistence question. The response I arrive at to these questions is, more often than not, informed by the neo-Lockean perspective. However, animalism takes a different approach by arguing that every individual is an organism because we belong to Homo sapiens. The conditions underscoring people’s existence are these animals classified as Homo sapiens. This is a position adopted by animalists such as Olson (2003), who argues that human beings are a form of an animal, considering they belong to the primate species referred to as Homo sapiens. Based on this, Olson (2003) asserts that indeed human beings are animals.
The claim I associate myself with, which is that persons are not animals, has not only been in existence for a long time but has also been propagated by numerous revered scholars and philosophers. According to Olson (2003), individuals such as Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel were avid proponents of this claim, considering neither believed nor argued that people are animals. Locke is one of such acclaimed philosophers who waded into this debate. Locke drew a sharp distinction between the human-animal or “man” and a person. According to Locke, unlike matter, which is predominantly a combination of particles, living organisms are structurally complex material objects whose functional organization allows them to live a continuous life (Simendić, 2015). In contrast, a person can think and possess intelligence and express these abilities in diverse locations and times through consciousness, which cannot be separated from their thinking capacity.
Even though animalists do not agree with this, it is vital to note that they never deny an inevitable divergence between persons and human animals. Animalism argues that human beings are animals and further adds that such conceptualization is in tandem with the existence of non-animal persons (Olson, 2003). The distinction made between a human animal and a person is premised on the notion that being considered a person means that an individual has particular mental attributes, such as the capacity to be rational, intelligent, self-conscious, morally responsible, and possess free will. When critiquing this school of thought, Olson (2003) argues that using this criterion to make this distinction means that angels or even gods should not be perceived as animals and instead should be considered people. Olson (2003) eventually concedes that although animalism argues that all people are animals, human animals cannot be regarded as people. This is because people experiencing a persistent vegetative state, although alive, do not possess the requisite mental capacities and cannot be perceived as people but rather as human animals.
Although many animalists such as Olson (2003) disagree with Locke’s assertions and arguments, they are sympathetic to his conceptualization of the person. Such acquiescence emanates due primarily to a divergent comprehension of the concept of personhood. The net effect of this miscomprehension of Locke’s account of personhood is the endorsement of Locke’s account. Their main contention with this conceptualization revolves around the perception of “person” as a sortal concept. Animalists disagree by intimating that “person” only denotes a phase sortal concept rather than a sortal concept. The terminology “phase sortal concept” generally refers to a temporary phase in a person’s life, such as teenagehood. Based on this, an animalist will argue that reaching a particular stage in a person’s life, such as becoming a teenager, occurs without the individual ceasing to exist. Furthermore, an individual who was a teenager can move out of this phase of their lives without dying or ceasing to exist. Based on this, animalists posit that personhood is a phase instigated by acquiring some of the psychological abilities Locke alludes to, such as rationality and self-consciousness. This phase ends when an individual loses these abilities (Simendić, 2015). From this, one can deduce that animalists perceive personhood as being informed by what a person can do, instead of who they are, an aspect evidenced by Olson’s conceptualization of a person as a “functional kind.”
Despite this, Olson (2003) embraces the conceptualization of personhood enunciated by Locke by intimating that a person is an individual with the ability to think in a particular way, considering they are rational, conscious, and morally responsible for their actions. I agree with this, considering I ascribe to the school of thought that human beings do not become persons when they are conceptualized or during birth, but rather when they get to two years and after they develop the psychological abilities mentioned earlier. In addition to this, I also agree with the notion that a human-animal can continue living even after they stop being a person. An illustration of this is when a person goes into a persistent coma. In essence, human beings should not perceive themselves as animals, considering we are inherently different from them, primarily due to the possession of particular psychological abilities that animals, and indeed human animals, lack, such as rationality, self-consciousness, and moral accountability for our actions and decisions.
Conclusion
From the discussion and analysis in the paper, it would be amiss if one fails to deduce that I do not ascribe to the school of thought propagated by philosophers such as Olson (2003) that human beings are animals. I believe that the fact that I possess the capacity to think is what sets me apart from the human-animal that constitutes me. The various arguments I make throughout the course of this paper against animalism. Specifically, matters related to animal thought are pretty complex and require further interrogation and discussion, perhaps in a different forum other than this. Despite this, my main assertion is that human beings cannot be perceived as animals, mainly because animals are incapable of consistently thinking, being rational, or self-conscious. In addition to this, since people are rational, thinking, and self-conscious beings, we cannot categorize ourselves as animals since they lack these psychological abilities. Even though this is my position, to some extent, I still believe that every person is a human animal, albeit derivatively. What this means is that every individual has an essential and non-derivative first-person perspective. During development, a human-animal will adopt various psychological capacities. When such development leads to the emergence of a first-person perspective, they cease to be human-animal and thus transform into a person.
References
Olson, E. T. (2003). An argument for animalism. In R. Martin and J. Barresi, eds., Personal Identity. Blackwell.
Simendić, M. (2015). Locke’s Person is a Relation. Locke Studies, 15, 79-97.
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