Delving into the World of "Pain": Understanding, Experiencing, and Reacting to “Pain”

Chimp Off the Old Block

Chimp Off the Old BlockIn his classic justification of free enterprise capitalism, Adam Smith assets that “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another… is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.” Is this true? Private property was proposed as the central difference between humans and others animals by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, and by Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth. Is this true?Chimpanzees are fond of trade, and understand the idea very well: food for sex, a back rub for sex, betrayal of the leader for sex, spare my baby’s life for sex, virtually anything for sex. Bonobos take these exchanges to a new level. But their interest in barter is by no means restricted to sex:[Chimpanzees] are famous for their tradesmanship. Experimental studies indicate that the ability comes without any specific training. Every zookeeper who happens to leave his broom in the baboon cage knows there is no way he can get it back without entering the cage. With chimpanzees it is simpler. Show them an apple, point or nod at the broom, and they understand the deal, handing the object back through the bars. [Shadows, 366-367]

…It is worth remembering that Descartes solved the problem by fiat: only humans were conscious; animals were mindless automata…If we shrink from his verdict, we still have to draw the moral line somewhere in the meantime, and let’s err on the safe side, but unless we suspend scientific judgment until we have a better idea of what we’re judging, we have no grounds for confirming, or moving, chatline when we learn more. In the United Kingdom, the law since 1986 rules that the octopus (but only Octopus vulgaris - not any other cephalopods) is an “honorary vertebrate” entitled to legal protection. You may legally throw a live lobster or worm or moth into boiling water, for instance, but not an octopus; it has the same protection enjoyed by mammals and birds and reptiles. Should that law be expanded or retracted, or did the legislators get it right the first time? If we want a defensible answer to that question, we need to identify - and then bracket - our gut intuitions. We mustn’t let our moral intuitions distort our empirical investigation from the outset. [Minds, 338-339]

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