Descartes and Animal Cruelty
I've just learned the René Descartes used to conduct horrific public vivisection of dogs, literally flaying them alive and nailing them to boards, to 'demonstrate' his conviction that animals are incapable of suffering, due to not being rational.
Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner. When the animals reacted as though they were suffering pain, Descartes dismissed the reaction as no different from the sound of a machine that was functioning improperly. A crying dog, Descartes maintained, is no different from a whining gear that needs oil."
The references are not absolutely conclusive, one that I found is here https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/01/scientists-can-be-cruel.html
However if true it causes me to dramatically revise my opinion of Descartes.
//UPDATE March 2024 - there has been revived interest in this thread, please note that the blog post on which this OP was based was later determined to be fallacious. See this post for a clarification.//
Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner. When the animals reacted as though they were suffering pain, Descartes dismissed the reaction as no different from the sound of a machine that was functioning improperly. A crying dog, Descartes maintained, is no different from a whining gear that needs oil."
The references are not absolutely conclusive, one that I found is here https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/01/scientists-can-be-cruel.html
However if true it causes me to dramatically revise my opinion of Descartes.
//UPDATE March 2024 - there has been revived interest in this thread, please note that the blog post on which this OP was based was later determined to be fallacious. See this post for a clarification.//
Comments (156)
Whether true or not, can you judge the philosopher/mathematician without judging the anatomist?
Much of the never-ending debate about 'qualia' and consciousness can be traced back to the consequences of Cartesian dualism. As can the 'cartesian anxiety' which is subject of philosophical debate. Previously I had always admired Descartes - he was the subject of the first philosophy course I ever attended at University as 'the first modern philosopher'. But I'm now beginning to wonder whether he actually might have closer to an evil genius. It would explain something of what is wrong with the world today.
Ehhhh .animals were generally treated differently in those days, so its consistent they would think of them as medical experiments. I mean, nobody got upset by spearing horses in battle just to get the rider on the ground to make it easier to bash his head in, so ..
Bottom line it wasnt to the participants, which were legion in those days. Lots of literature on the doing, but hardly any on objecting to the doing.
Cant use our moral compass to judge the righteousness of bygone eras. Well actually we do, but, legitimately, only as comparison.
I think they were no more disconnected then we are, what with the present population endlessly fingering keyboards or joysticks on the one hand; on the other, the past population taking a bath once or twice a year.
Benefit of the doubt: what do you mean by disconnection from reality?
Admirable, to be sure.
I submit, it is only the two world wars and the Holocaust that reformed our empathetic conditioning to its present state with respect to us as humans. While additionally the Civil War changed Americans alone; the others changed everybody.
And really, to the extent you're trying to dissect him, he is quite different from someone who knowingly injured an animal. From what is written, he thought he wasn't causing any harm. There are different levels of intent here from the person who knowingly versus who unknowingly causes suffering.
And of course how I might fare should you impose the ethical standards of 2523 instead of 2023 I couldn't say, but doubtfully very well.
They say a movie can depict human suffering and death to no end, but showing a dog getting its head blown off cannot happen. I think that's what we're seeing here.
In conclusion, the Rene photo on my nightstand will stay.
If you believe that someone is acting immorally, yet they believe that they aren't, in the absence of an ultimate arbiter of morality, why should your opinion outweigh theirs ?
Personally, I believe that animals are intelligent, can reason, feel pain, experience emotions and have propositional attitudes, though not everyone agrees.
Are you really sure? Because according to the following quotes I guess Descartes was a bit aware of causing suffering to animals or at least he had lack of empathy:
1. Quoting Wayfarer
2. Quoting Wayfarer
As @L'éléphant has pointed out, I am no longer a "fan" or "follower" of Descartes philosophical theories. I will not discredit his works and contributions to modern philosophy, but in my own view there should be limits towards "scientific researchs", specially when they are dangerous to innocent animals.
I would be even surprised by all of those who in XXI century do not believe that animals can reason and have pain...
He believed they were not experiencers. It's a kind of monumental stupidy and denial of the obvious. It doesn't mean he's a sadist. But such denials are problematic and for the animals this difference doesn't matter much.
Well, we can, especially if other people at that time were different. IOW we can say that he had the failing of his time, which others did not. Which might or might not put them on a higher moral ground. But we can also judge him for the quality of his brain/mind. How could he not realize this? I doubt anyone here would spend any time judging some cruel to animals person who was a cobbler then. But here we have someone who goes down in history, more or less as a great person. And for what? Well, for his perceptions and thinking. He would certainly have heard of St. Francis of Asissi. He certainly could have talked to people who train and work with animals to see what they thought of animals. I am sure many, many of these people assumed that animals were experiencers and acted based on that assumption. (yes, some of the criticism aimed at descartes could be aimed at his category in general, and scientists had it as pretty much taboo to indicate that animals were experiencere up into the 70s. ) He had other philosophers with similar ideas: Aristotle, Aquinas, after him Kant. I think it might say something about people who spent too much time up in their heads. This can produce all sorts of great stuff...but at the same time it can manage to make you miss the completely obvious.
He didn't say sentio ergo sum, for example. I feel therefore I am. His bias toward animals may be connected to oddities and biases in his philosophy. He may have felt compelled to have a dualism, for example.
But there are other passages which are less clear. In a letter to his friend Mersenne, I believe he said something to the effect that he cannot know whether animals are automata or not, because we cannot see into their hearts, roughly stated.
It is true, however, that many of Descartes followers did think of animals as mere machines and participated in animal cruelty. Though barbaric to us - the reasoning they had was not completely crazy, it had some merit.
But it was also evident to others that this was insane, like Hume, for instance.
We can say he wasn't a sadist, but at least a psychopath when he didn't felt any emotion or empathy towards a dog crying.
Agreed. Descartes is very often ridiculed in pop-science books, and sometimes even in philosophy. I think it's quite an ignorant view, because for one, he was highly respected at the time and for another, it's not as if were alive back then, we would have known that, say, his dualism is known to be false or that we do not believe experience to be the thing we are most certain we have.
If we assume body to be mechanistic, his metaphysics were quite sensible. But it is also true that viewing animals in such a manner intuitively looks quite grotesque.
This, in spite of the fact that he was doing actual science as well, and by then everyone knew the similarities between canine and human anatomy. He said animals have no feelings or sensations - they only act as if they did. But never explained how non-feeling machines could act as if, or why they should, or why God created human-like machines before man.
And he's said to have started with his wife's dog, which means he must have believed women had no feelings, either. No, it's all lies - egotistical, bombastic hypocrisy.
But it was hugely influential on the science of succeeding centuries: encouraged callous men to let their worst nature rule their actions in the name of Holy Science, in the same way that St. Paul encouraged ambitious men to let their worst nature rule in the name of Holy Church.
Those two were the reigning evil spirits of the modern era.
Whether Descartes liked to harm animals and created an argument that they didn't feel pain so as to justify his sadism is possible, but that's not consistent at least with what he said.
I wouldn't want many ancient scientific research conducted today, like bloodletting that was practiced for over 2000 years and helped no one and killed many. If we're looking at outcomes, the bloodletters were far worse. If we're looking at intent, then we have to try to figure out what they really thought, and unless you can show Descartes knew the dogs felt pain, you can't condemn him for that harm in the same way as someone who didn't know.
It's not that it was okay to harm animals years prior, but the fact is people weren't aware of its immorality as they are today, so imposing that level of condemnation seems inappropriate. This decontextualizing behavior and imposing future standards on people retroactively will condemn all of humankind for one thing or another. I guess it's possible, for example, that a Neanderthal fully appreciated the 2023 concept of human rights and looked on in horror as his cave-mates engaged in prehistoric barbarity, but I don't think we can hold everyone in that time period to such an enlightened standard.
Nonetheless, to be honest, I think it is not a good excuse to say that "Descartes was not aware of his immorality" as we are today. If you hit a dog with a stick, you would hear a painful scream and probably tears in his eyes. Whenever someone (who at least his mind works correctly) sees this terrible action, would be feel sad and bad because it is not funny neither entertaining look at the suffering of an animal. It is a basic thought and the principles of ethics and morality come from Ancient Greece, where all the philosophers already debated on "the harm done to others and animals" and even Aristotle also wrote some paragraphs about...
So, no I will not excuse Descartes.
My sentiments as well.
The author of the SEP article on animal consciousness, re: It would be anachronistic to read ideas about consciousness from today back into the ancient literature. , seems to hold a similar inclination.
He denied reason and soul to animals, in First Principles .., as distinguishing conditions. I find little support for the notion that animals were generally treated as conscious entities.
That is the definition of hypocrisy. And why did he "believe" that this "belief" of his required demonstrating over and over? How would that have served science? What was to be learned from the crucifixion of yet another helpless animal?
Quoting Hanover
Sure I can! He repeatedly demonstrated the exact opposite of his claim. He committed deliberate cruelties to show that he didn't believe animals have souls. Well, who doubted it in the first place? And if animals really don't count, and their screams are the mere screeching of drooling, shitting, steaming, bleeding machines, which bear no imaginable resemblance to mechanical constructs, you still have to discount the harm to his wife and whatever human children had loved his other victims.
Quoting Hanover
What evidence that Neanderthals engaged in brutality toward other people? Renaissance Europeans certainly did, lavishly and inventively, that we know. Stone age peoples hunted with crude weapons, but the objective was to serve an existential necessity, not a side-show.
And... If we are to equate known Enlightenment sensibility with an unknown Paleolithic sensibility, also look in between, at the attitudes of African and North American native peoples. Somehow, they were able to discern the similarity between humans and other animals, thousands of years before educated Europeans discovered the same thing.
Descartes held to a view that human beings alone were able to reason and that reason arose from their immortal soul, distinguishing humans from animals, that were purely corporeal machines. That was integral to his philosophy and he could not depart into a theory that offered immortal souls to animals, as that would be contrary to Christian teachings.
From this he was led to the necessary conclusion that animals didn't feel pain, but were simply machines responding to stimuli and reacting, as noted, like a squeeky wheel.
See:
https://www.friesian.com/jowers.htm#:~:text=According%20to%20Descartes%2C%20if%20animals,prove%20that%20they%20have%20souls.
https://webs.wofford.edu/williamsnm/back%20up%20jan%204/hum%20101/animals%20are%20machines%20descartes.pdf
To the extent we consider bloodletting primtive medicine (the releasing of bad humors), we should similarly consider Descartes primitive philosophy (even referring to the pineal gland as the seat of the soul). He tried to hammer out the physical world in a way consistent with his philosophy and it led to an unacceptable result by today's standards.
Quoting Vera Mont
I note the evolving moral sensibilities that have occurred in my lifetime and I extrapolate backwards to draw the conclusion that today's ethical adherence is higher than yesterday's. Is that controversial?
I will add, my overall estimation of Descartes has always been very high. He was subject of the first unit I ever studied in undergrad philosophy as 'the first modern'. I have always shared his estimation of reason and frequently refer to his writings. I'm also very interested in the assumed connection between reason and the soul, it is a topic I'm researching.
But I'm dubious that these acts can be rationalised merely by the fact that they occured in the past. I have no doubt that if I did enough research I could find examples (other than Buddhism, already mentioned) of ancient philosophies that abjured cruelty to animals.
So dogs eyes don't tear up when they cry, but aside from that, animal welfare in developing countries is far worse than in developed countries. That's just part of the evolution of humanity, to start to see animals as those of a different degree of creature and not a wholly different type of creature.
The 1600s were not a time of great human rights, and I'd suspect the opinions of those during that time wouldn't at all sit well here. That a Martian might find it hard to figure out appropriate conduct on Earth probably arises at least in part in that he's never been to Earth before. The same holds true for 1600s man, who can't be held to today's standards, nor neither can I be held to the standard of 500 years from now, that I don't even know.
We read the Bible and hear of tales of young daughters having had their heads dashed against rocks. I'd submit that book is far more foundational to our society than is the Meditations. We needn't jettison either book, or whoever their authors might have been for that matter, but just realize it was from another time and place, far worse than where we live today.
In any event, if this is the path you wish to take, provide me the name of any of your heroes who lived 200 or more years ago, and I'll do the research to show you why you need to despise him.
Quoting Hanover
I have important examples of philosophers who lived 200 or more years ago and it is not necessary to despise them due to his obscenity or cruelty or whatever ethical issues in any event.
Laozi: author of Tao Te Ching. Taoism is a peaceful philosophical doctrine. The Zhuangzi in turn urges one to imagine a world free of cages, corrals, hooks, lures, nets, pens, snares, and traps (chapters 1, 3, 10, 18, 20, and 23). These have both literal and symbolic meanings, and the corresponding liberation must occur on both cognitive and behavioral levels: Animals and Daoism
Confucius: his analects made the system of thought called Confucianism and still persists nowadays. One of the key points of Confucianism is "humaneness". "Ren" (?) I want to share an interesting paragraph regarding to it: There have been a variety of definitions for the term ren. Ren has been translated as "benevolence", "perfect virtue", "goodness" or even "human-heartedness". When asked, Confucius defined it by the ordinary Chinese word for love, ai, saying that it meant to "love others"
We can be agree with the point that Confucianism and Daoism are far away of being cruel in any event, right?
There is some sophisticated argument, or rather, some sophistry, deployed in defense of Descartes dogma, but it strikes the modern reader, I think, as manifestly absurd, and not just on humanitarian grounds. Even in the 17th century, it would be easy to demonstrate, I would have thought, that all living beings possess attributes which are entirely absent in non-organic substances.
This reads to me like apologist garbage. If Descartes did as it is said, he was a psychopath, lacking any compassion or real wisdom. Perhaps he couldn't help that, but it is impossible to admire such a man.
I always found his philosophy absurd anyway, so I have no conflict over whether to think his behavior should disqualify his philosophy. Is it that his philosophy explains his behavior, or that his total lack of compassion explains his philosophy?
I think, more to the point, it's not a large jump from Descartes' conception of the mind, to Dennett's eliminative materialism. First, define 'mind' in a way that is completely unfeasible. Then, declare that only humans possess it. Gilbert Ryle and Daniel Dennett take the next step of saying it's something that doesn't exist at all.
You mean to say Descartes' conception of body. For Descartes the mind and creativity could not be explained by materialism.
Dennett on the contrary that everything can be explained by science.
What they do share in common, I think, is that they both thought they knew enough about bodies to reach such grand conclusions.
Descartes had good reasons to posit res cogitans, and to believe he understood bodies. Dennett (and company) have no good reason to think we understand matter to a minute fraction of what they believe we actually do.
He didn't need to depart from anything. Nobody asked him to prove that he believed what the church preached; it was already taken for granted. The demonstrations were entirely gratuitous.
Quoting Hanover
No, it's just wrong. There is no straight line from here back through European post-colonial, pre-colonial, christian, and pre-christian history, including other continents and cultures, through tribal social organizations of the Americas, Oceania, and Asian steppes. There have been many and various belief systems, moral and legal codes, religions, attitudes and practices. The time-line is by no means from the abyss to the pinnacle of human sensibility.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think they see mind as an activity of the body, "minding"; more verb than noun. I wonder if Dennett and Ryle have no feeling for animals, or deny that animals feel pain and pleasure.
I read Concept of Mind so long ago (maybe thirty years but it's still on my shelves somewhere I think) that I don't remember much about it other than it's rejection of the idea of a "ghost in the machine":
Dennett, as I read him, does not deny the existence of mind, he just thinks it is not what we naively, intuitively take it to be.
Quoting Manuel
Spinoza, his younger near contemporary, was smart enough to realize that there was no good reason to propose mind as substance.
But they're defined in opposition to each other. Body is only extension with no thought, mind is only though with no extension. Even the human body is conceived of being like clay or earth, nothing alive about it, and the bodies of animals collections of mechanical parts. Man is different solely because of the divine gift of reason.
Quoting Janus
We've been through that umpteen times. He does not deny it straight up, he says something like 'of course, I don't deny the existence of mind, but.....' - and then what comes after the 'but' amounts to denying the existence of mind. That is what eliminativists seek to eliminate. See The Consciousness Deniers.
The connection between Ryle and Dennett is that the former taught the latter, at Oxford. (Incidentally, this is a great profile of Ryle, who took over from Collingwood after the latter's untimely death. The article argues that Ryle pretty well single-handedly engineered the 'analytic-continental divide' in philosophy.)
To Descartes animals were p-zombies (he refused to accept that outward displays of pain in animals - their writhing, crying - were signs of an inner life). This belief greatly undermines his thesis that God is the one who provides the rock solid foundation - as a being who would not deceive us - for philosophy, because it's obvious that the distance between us and dogs is dwarfed by the distance between us and God. To God, we're not even a dog and if we can vivisect a dog, God could certainly do any damn thing He wishes to us, including but not limited to deception.
According to my reading of Consciousness Explained (which I have read, although a while ago now) Dennett's argument does not amount to a denial of the existence of mind, but of mind as it is often still naively conceived by "folk"; as a kind of ghostly substance.
If Dennett seeks to eliminate anything I think it is qualia, not mind. And I tend to agree with him on that point, because I don't see that there is a separate quality to experiences in addition to the experience, even though on reflection it may seems as though there is. On the other hand experience is most certainly qualitative, and this is similar to saying that mind(ing) is a necessarily embodied activity, because all qualities are, in one way or another, felt bodily.
You seem to be, and to have long been, on some kind of moral crusade against Dennett and other materialist thinkers, whereas I have no objection per se, although I see all metaphysical views as being under-determined and inadequate to lived experience. I do object to views such as that animals do not feel anything, but materialism has no reason to assert that, and Descartes who apparently did assert it, was no materialist. Anyway, since we have been over this many times, we are just going to have to agree to disagree on that point.
Yes, I was aware that Dennett studied under Quine and then Ryle.
BTW, I skimmed 'The Consciousness Deniers' and I could find no quotes from "the deniers" themselves which show that they actually are denying the existence of any kind of consciousness, which is telling. I'm no fan of Galen Strawson; I think his father was a much better philosopher.
Watch any frightened or injured creature for two minutes, and you know exactly what's going on, how it feels, what it needs. You know, because as an animal yourself, you cannot not know. You can deny, declare, theorize and construct elaborate philosophical arguments, but you cannot not know. Not in the 21st century, not in the seventeenth, not in ninth and not before time was reckoned in numbers.
Descartes never explained how non-feeling machines could act as if they were hurt, or why they should, or why God created human-like machines before He created man and very long before man created machines.
Every anatomist could see with his own eyes and smell with his own nose that this philosophy linking physical pain to a soul was invented nonsense. Bodies feel pain, not souls - else, why bother to torture the bodies of heretics and rebellious slaves?
Yes, many people of that time were often cruel, both to other species and to their own, for many reasons - just as so many people are today. But they didn't all set up elaborately sadistic displays to illustrate a mainstream belief. It's spectacle - like bull-fighting and public hanging - in which all the participants came for the blood and screaming.
All the apologetics are BS. Enlightenment era scientists, just like churchmen and noblemen, wanted an excuse to treat all the world and all its denizens as their property, to do with as they wished. The Bible gave them leave to sacrifice on the altar of God; Descartes gave them leave to sacrifice on the altar of Science; the national aspiration of kings and queens gave them leave to despoil other continents and enslave their peoples.
Quoting Hanover
Ad hominem means 'attacking the man not the argument'. I'm criticising the metaphysic which can overlook or endorse such activities. It's not an ad hominem argument. To my mind it indicates a serious deficiency of the understanding, especially significant because of the role which Descartes occupies in the formation of the modern mind.
Also, as I stated, I'm not one who favours indiscriminately judging past actors by present standards, but this seems a different kind of case (although I must admit I did say it lowered my opinion of him.)
That's right. Though a distinction is drawn as you note: the principles of body were well understood, according to Descartes and the Cartesians.
The mind was more problematic. No principles could be given that accounted for our creative aspect of language use and free will, though apparently Descartes wanted to write a book about this but never could - the Church and all.
Dennett doesn't see the mental as you and I see it, for him it is an illusions "a trick", as he says, "there's no real magic" (meaning the experience you and I, and almost everybody in the world take as self evident, as they should, is somehow magical or woo, if you like).
That's a downgrade from Descartes, because Descartes was not crazy enough to think we doubted consciousness - while Dennett does.
Let's explore this then. Was Descartes a product of his time or was he fucked up even for someone living in the 17th century?
This article indicates that the animal rights movement, especially as it pertains to anti-vivisection sentiments, seems to have sprung forth in the 19th century. The article links the lack of concern for animals on the same thing Descartes did: that animals lacked souls.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513717/
Correct, but it was Descartes who was more influential, up to Newton he was considered a scientist of the highest order. Spinoza's fame was different, as far as I know.
Gassendi too and Hobbes didn't agree with Descartes. But Descartes made significant contributions to mathematics - and his view have had - and continues to have - an enormous grip on the imagination, even if we now think he is wrong.
There's scientific evidence that we are natural born dualists, very interesting literature with experiments done by Iris Berent in The Blind Storyteller, that seem to give good evidence to this view.
For good or ill (I happen to think Descartes has merits few after him have, such as attributing "common sense" - good sense - to people, that given enough evidence, nobody should be thought of as a fool and should be treated with respect), he happened to have quite horrible views on animals, but not of people, is a sad fact of the times.
Quoting Janus
You do try to defend Dennett quite a bit, I remember you telling me that he couldn't really believe that consciousness was actually an illusion, because that would make him an idiot - and he's not an idiot. But the statements are there:
The elusive subjective conscious experiencethe redness of red, the painfulness of painthat philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion."
Ok, he doesn't mean that, he means that consciousness is not what we take it to be. Then he is using the word unlike most people - including scientists - use it, so the onus is one him to give a clear definition of what he's talking about.
I imagine both. All his defenders keep conveniently overlooking the wife. I never met the man, so I can't know how crazy he was. It is widely known that cruelty of various kinds was and is a perennial crowd-pleaser in civilized societies, from the Roman gladiatorial combats, through cock-fighting, witch-burning, bear-baiting, the guillotine and the modern horror movie. I'm sure Descartes' act was popular.
And yet, many scientists of the 16th through 20th centuries were able to get through quite productive careers without nailing any living bodies to boards or sticking their fingers into any beating hearts. Even some philosophers lived their whole lives without demonstrating their convictions in such graphic fashion.
Quoting Hanover
Yes. He was a very influential philosopher, just as Paul was a very influential theologian. They both told a segment of the population (bishops and scientists respectively) what they wanted to hear and the target audience lapped it up. And yet opposition did arise, and did become popular enough to win the day. ( A few days, anyway. They have little sway over industrial farming) And the people who opposed cruelty were also Christians who believed in souls.
I quite agree, but I think this discussion is helping to understand the progression from Descartes to Dennett. Dennett's major foil is Descartes, and many of Dennett's critics note that he seems to act as if philosophy begins with him. Perhaps Descartes' metaphysical schema is such that one of it's consequences would inevitably be something like eliminative materialism, because of the way it depicted mind as a kind of ghostly substance (bearing in mind, what Descartes means by 'substance' is really nearer to 'being' or 'subject').
All that said, I recognise Descartes' genius. The invention of algebraic geometery alone provided one of the fundamental tools in the arsenal of modern scientific method.
Oh, and I agree with you about Janus' 'straw Dennett'. ;-)
That sounds interesting, but I don't think we need scientific experiments to confirm the dualistic nature of human thought; all we need to do is look at language.and its formalization in propositional logic.The dualistic nature of human thought says nothing about the nature of reality in my view.
Quoting Manuel
Right, but I don't think he is denying that we see red or experience pain. He is rejecting qualia which, as he says, an additional 'thing': is the redness of red, the painfulness of pain; these are reifications of post hoc conceptualizations, not something we experience. We experience red and pain, not the redness of red or the painfulness of pain.
Do you think most people think of consciousness in these qualia-type terms? Even if you think they do, do you think they experience consciousness this way or just unreflectively think of it this way? Also Dennett is quite clear that he is rejecting the folk-conception of consciousness, which is naive in a very similar way that naive realism is naive. You could even call it naive realism about consciousness, where that which is reified is not objects of the senses but qualities of experience.
I think the main reason people reject Dennett's philosophy is that they think it rules out spirituality, meaning personal transformation and altered (non-dual) states of consciousness, but I don't see why that would necessarily be the case at all.
Quoting Wayfarer
:rofl: My "straw-Dennett": that's a rather rich irony considering you haven't even read Dennett, and you seem incapable of hearing reasonable accounts of his views from those who have read him that don't agree with your anti-Dennett campaign.
It seems the question was whether Descartes' position regarding animals was consistent with the times, and an article from the National Institute of Health says it was, so that settles it, despite your general observation that maybe some folks were ahead of their times on the matter.
It is not as if he was hammering dogs' feet in the last year, which, if you don't admit would be worse, would only be to further deny the obvious, which is that his behavior then is measurably different than now.
How does the additional fact of now knowing of Descartes' predilection for dog hammering affect your previous understanding of the Meditations?
This just seems such an aside held out for outrage.
That it indicates his philosophical dogma is radically insufficient in a way which I hadn't previously understood. It's one thing to argue abstractions, quite another when infliction of actual suffering is involved.
Quoting Hanover
I have no particular axe to grind against Descartes. Up until this disclosure, I had no reason to think ill of him, and frequently refer to him in discussions.
I didn't say it was inconsistent with the times - just well above beyond the call. It wasn't disregard or unconcern; it was deliberate, methodical torture. There was a lot of torture going in the times, and most people didn't object, as long it wasn't done to them. Heroic Galileo took one short stroll around the inquisitor's workshop and recanted on what he knew to be true. The times don't make torture any better; they just made worse people, and the church was a major contributor to the coarsening of people - but at least it had a purpose, something to gain. Whether he was demonstrating his religious zeal out of fear that somebody would remember his espousing of Copernican theory, or just having fun, Descartes' exhibitions served no useful purpose.
Quoting Hanover
Are you really so naive as to believe that his kind don't exist anymore? That that kind of activity is not taking place, right this minute, in hundreds of basements, garages, barns and prisons?
:lol: Voltaire has his place, but Descartes is our guy. How would you feel if you get stabbed (in the back) by the very knife you gifted your "friend" to protect himself? :cry:
Descartes made us philosophers and we're using philosophy against him. :chin: The invention kills the inventor. Frankenstein's monster, to wit us.
I started the thread as a kind of :yikes: - so far, the most significant further discovery has been the article that Hanover linked to on the Friesian school website. There's probably a lot more to be discovered.
I'm kind of a dualist, myself - but as far as I understand it (which is probably not far), I'm much more persuaded by the matter-form dualism of 'A-T' (Aristotelian-Thomist) than by Descartes'.
Anyway, yeah, Descartes made a silly mistake, a mistake which implies he didn't quite grasp skepticism. So much for radical doubt. He also didn't write any ethical treatises to my knowledge, being more interested in the natural sciences, perhaps betraying his ineptitude on the subject.
:up:
For example, in a possible future world, it may well be accepted that plants feel pain and should not be picked and eaten whilst still alive. Not an unlikely scenario, as many people discuss this situation even today. That well known left-wing and progressive newspaper The Guardian included the following in its notes and queries section: "A number of studies have shown that plants feel pain, and vegetables are picked and often eaten while still alive. Animal rights activists are often in the news, but has anyone ever protested for vegetable rights?"
This raises the question whether veganism should be promoted today if in a possible future world the eating of plants is considered by society to be morally reprehensible.
Perhaps we could all become Jains
Or, as an article in The Guardian newspaper proposes, perhaps we should talk to our plants rather than, as the vegans propose, eat them.
"As we edge into 2021, my orchid is still thriving. And because my fingers are not yet green, I can only attribute this to our daily interactions: the adoring looks, the greetings and check-ins, and the attention (both intentional and incidental). She listens in on my telephone conversations and is often my only audience for pre-dinner renditions of I Will Survive. She doesnt join in, my orchid, but I think shes feeling the love. I know I am."
True, in that talking to dogs is preferable to torturing plants.
Descartes reasoned that as animals didn't speak or philosophise, they lacked souls and minds and so were mechanical objects that didn't feel pain. With 400 years of hindsight and accumulated knowledge, today's prevailing view is that animals are not mechanical objects and do feel pain.
Today, the prevailing view is that as plants don't speak or philosophise they lack souls and minds, and so are biologically mechanical objects that don't feel pain. In 400 years from now, in a possible future world, the prevailing view may be that plants are more than biologically mechanical objects and do feel pain.
Is it right that today vegans in eating plants should be judged evil, in the event that in a possible future world, and after 400 years of accumulated knowledge, the prevailing view may be that plants are more than biologically mechanical objects and do feel pain.
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Sure. And what's a bit ironic is that if you look at modern physics, say, quantum physics, it does look rather ghostly and weird. Yeah I can see how Dennett misreads the situation and ends up with his weird views.
Quoting Janus
Of course, the nature of reality is different from our intuitions. Just that it's good to have some experimental evidence to back up our intuitions.
Quoting Janus
This sounds to me as word play. The red thing or pain and the speaking about the "redness" or the "pain-ness" is simply to highlight the quality we see or feel. If I say "look at how beautiful the ocean looks
today" - I'm highlighting the various aspects of the ocean, which includes blue-ness. But if you want another term, then I'm happy to say blue.
Quoting Janus
Sure, I do.
I don't think the naive argument works so well with experience as it does with naive realism in terms of how the world is.
I think the way we experience consciousness is the way it is. However, if you want to find out how the brain produces this property, you can do neuroscience of psychology of perception. Doesn't alter at all our experience in the least.
Quoting Janus
I mean, if you were correct, there would not be SO many articles arguing against Dennett's view, including Searle, Block, Zahavi, Tallis, etc., etc.
So either he is being deliberately tricky or he can't explain his views well. He explains his views well, so I think he's being tricky.
Perhaps not so much discovered, in that you may already know of it, but Im thinking Part V Discourse on Method of Rightly Conducting ., prior to the paragraphs quoted in the link, might be entertaining for its gross inaccuracies, but Im also thinking that in the time of its publication, and with respect to those few academics exposed to it, must have been absolutely fascinating. I mean .generation of animals spirits like very subtle winds .musta given them something to talk about over mead and mutton.
As to discoveries, I finally found the 3rd objection to the 6th Meditation, and reply, to the section on animal thought, in which we see the background for some of the early modern thinking that seldom, if ever, occurs to we post-moderns:
. As for dogs and apes: if I conceded that they have thought, that would imply that ·in this respect they resemble men·, not because in men as well as in animals there is no mind distinct from the body, but rather because in animals as well as men there is a mind distinct from the body. This was the view taken by the very Platonists whom my critics were taking as authorities a moment ago, as can be seen from their following the Pythagoreans in believing that a soul could move from one body to another .
(https://homepages.uc.edu/~martinj/Rationalism/Descartes/Descartes%20-%20Objections%20VI%20and%20Replies.pdf)
Odd innit? We think in terms of space, time, quantum probabilities, while they think in terms of gods and older philosophers, which is merely a reflection on the state of empirical knowledge.
How about by the constant standards of cultures that understood the evident kinship of humans and other animals long before gentlemen in stiff collars cerebrated that radical idea?
Quoting RussellA
Did Descartes eat the dogs he tortured? I really don't think he was forced to choose between that and starvation. Even if people of the future are able to produce all their food directly from sunlight and earth, they will know that we didn't have that capability. They will know that we had to choose from a range of sentient life to sustain us, and a range of methods whereby to kill them. Will they then decide which of us made the more reprehensible choices.
Of course we will be judged by our descendants, if we have any. And most of the statues we erect will be knocked down a lot sooner than 4 centuries hence. All the big elaborate tombs were looted, and all that loot in modern museums will someday be trashed. Which is one reason we shouldn't waste resources on idolatry.
I also don't think the modern world benefitted all that much from Christian schizophrenia or obsessive Eurocentrism.
It seems a pity that the father of modern philosophy is being discredited for something he probably never did.
In the article Descartes on Animals in the Philosophical Quarterly, Peter Harrison argues that the view that Descartes denied feelings to animals is mistaken.
Apparently Descartes had a pet dog called Monsieur Grat who used to accompany him on his walks, on whom he lavished much affection and probably loved quite dearly.
As Descartes's philosophical starting point was to consider everything a matter of doubt, we should perhaps start by doubting unsubstantiated stories about the man himself.
Where do they come from?
Britannica says and Richard Watson, the author of the article, seems to have some pretty thorough background work, to go by the bibliography.
The sentence from the Britannica: "He argued that, because animals have no souls, they do not think or feel; thus, vivisection, which Descartes practised, is permitted" gives a different impression to the OP whereby "They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner".
As vivisection is still legal, can we attack Descartes for a practice that is still carried out today.
Peter Harrison writes "The view that Descartes was a brute to the brutes is, above all else, historically myopic" and "Descartes is commonly portrayed as one whose view of animals is morally repugnant. Such moral indignation is misplaced".
Descartes position regarding the soul is more complex that suggested by The Britannica. The Britannica writes "He argued that, because animals have no souls, they do not think or feel", however Peter Harrison writes " Descartes, we must understand, did not deny the existence of animal souls per se: animals might well have "corporeal souls". It was this view that animals had spiritual souls, of "substantial material forms" that Descartes was at pains to refute".
Before cancelling Descartes and tearing down his statues, I think first the truth should be discovered regarding his position on animal testing.
Then we can judge him having 400 years of hindsight.
YES. And all his acolytes. Quoting RussellA
Actions speak louder than 'positions'. The father of modern science gave moderns science license to torture, degrade and use all other species to serve its own ends.
It's kind of futile. I agree with your correct characterization.
If people want to feel morally righteous with people that lived 400 years ago, that tells you something about them.
Not really. Descartes was not 400 years ago: Descartes is among us, still exerting influence. As you have seen in this very thread.
What you characterize as 'moral righteousness' is something quite else. The father of modern science gave moderns license to torture, degrade and use all other species to serve their own ends. He provided the philosophical [moral, ethical] basis for much of the atrocity that has taken place ever since his time and continues today.
I'm sure people who torture animals have Descartes in mind, and his conception of body too.
Quite what Descartes means by 'thought', why humans have it and animals don't - I have a rough idea, but I'll do some more reading. But one point is that I'm sympathetic to the idea that the faculty of reason is (in Descartes' terms) 'an incorporeal power', i.e., something that cannot be explained in physical terms (contra the philosophical materialists.) Reason comprises the ability to grasp the relationship of ideas, and is not reducible to any notion of physical causation (a theme I'm exploring under the 'argument from reason'.) I'm of the view that when h. sapiens evolved to the point of being able to reason, speak and tell stories, then a new horizon of being opened up which is not reducible to the physical domain, including the biological domain. In other words, that humanity transcends biology. I think that is a modernised version of Descartes' belief.
But it seems to me that Descartes' understanding of the mind or soul is too narrow. It's not that I would rather say that 'dogs have souls', but my conception of what 'the soul' stands for is much broader than Descartes allows. There is mention of the Pythagoreans belief that souls transmigrate between different species (there's a famous anecdote that Pythagoras recognised the departed soul of a friend in the bark of a dog), which Descartes dismisses. He's on firm ground there, of course, because reincarnation is anathema to the Church. But me, I'm not so certain......
Quoting RussellA
It is not available for free online reading, but I do know and respect Peter Harrison's work.
Quoting RussellA
Please notice I've already stated that:
Quoting Wayfarer
and also
Quoting Wayfarer
Criticism is not cancellation! In fact the inability to make this distinction is one of the primary drivers of 'cancel culture'.
So you think we experience redness in addition to red or painfulness in addition to pain? The point I'm making is that Dennett doesn't deny that we experience red or pain; I think he's arguing against the reification of those experiences as redness or painfulness, causing us to imagine something additional to the experience of red or of pain.
Quoting Manuel
Naive realism says there is a world of objects "out there" independent of us, which is a reification of the concept of persistent and invariant objects which follows naturally from our visual and tactile impressions. Naive experientialism says there is an inner world of qualia, which is a reification of the concept of felt qualities of experienced visual and tactile impressions. I don't see much difference between the two reifications: one "outer" and one "inner".
You say "the way we experience consciousness", and I think the only way we can hope to get any idea of how we experience consciousness, as opposed to how we naively think about it is via meditation. And my experience, and the extensive literature about meditation tells me that consciousness is non-dual, and that there is no "we" experiencing it at all, which means that our naive intuitive, dualistic views don't capture the nature of consciousness any more than our naive dualistic views of reality capture the nature of reality.
Quoting Manuel
I'm just talking about how I read Dennett, not about how others read him. Only Dennett could say who is reading him more accurately, or maybe even he could not, since the subject is so murky through and through.
Perhaps try watching this video of Dennett explaining why he thinks the distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness is misguided, and then see what you think:
Perhaps there are no "correct" views of consciousness, since consciousness is non-dual and all views are necessarily dualistic. In that case the whole debate is just the airing of different perspectives, all of which are under-determined and inadequate.
For what it's worth I am no materialist...or idealist...or pragmatist...I don't hold any metaphysical views...but I do think some things make more sense to say than others do in the dualistic context of our discourses and arguments.
If I talk about redness, I am talking about an aspect of the experience, which includes other factors such as smell, sound, distance, etc. Though I usually speak of red, blue, etc.
Of course, I'm not going to say that there is something red-like on top of the colour red, that statement has no meaning.
Quoting Janus
That's not how my intuition of experience feels at all. I don't think of an inner world of qualia, I think of objects having colours.
Just saw Wayferer's comments, we can continue this on another thread.
On to the OP, I think there is significant amounts of nuance, involved in Descartes view. Which interestingly enough, is being revived by fanatics of AI, who apparently think we know enough about the mind to build a computer that can mimic it.
So, you agree there are no red quales?
Quoting Manuel
Then I'm not seeing where you disagree with Dennett. If you want to make another thread I'll participate.
All the generations of vivisectionists and sponsors use his philosophy as their justification, yes. Plus:
That is rather chilling! You can see how it dovetails with the Biblical 'dominion over beasts' dogma. (I think I prefer pagan philosophy, overall.)
If there is an existing thread where the topic can be discussed, that's fine with me.
But I'm not interested enough in the topic (at the moment), to start a new thread about it, because I don't think I'll be able to participate in it with the proper consideration an OP should have...
Be pretty hard wouldnt it, when everything at university from which the disputes arose, was fundamentally predicated on what we now call classical philosophy but was standard at the time, on one hand, and good old fashion theology on the other. I think this matters, because we got Discourse, but we didnt get Le Monde, simply out of fear of church reprisals, a la Galileo.
Rumor has it Le Monde had originally contained a treatise on animals, among others, which would probably have shed some horses-mouth, first person light on his attitude directly towards the worthiness of moral implications with respect to the treatment of them. So saying, I never once would have disagreed with your standing on animal abuse; I do have a different opinion nonetheless, over such implications, relative to our own civil and post-Enlightenment evolution.
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Quoting Wayfarer
As in Kant, Ive found it best to go with the cut-and-dried definition, and thats in First Principles, 1, 9.
For whatever thats worth.
Quoting Wayfarer
As for understanding mind .absolutely. As for soul .ehhhh, Im not a soul kinda guy myself. In the world of pure metaphysical abstractions, Im ok with drawing the line at mere consciousness.
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On Dennett: hes accessible. Why bother researching moldy tomes when a video is right there. Nuff said?
Sure - if it comes up again, we can continue whenever that happens. As you say, I don't think much hinges on this, but something could come up.
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Following the Descartes SEP article embedded within the blog I pulled the following quote:
[quote=SEP]In mechanizing the concept of living thing, Descartes did not deny the distinction between living and nonliving, but he did redraw the line between ensouled and unensouled beings. In his view, among earthly beings only humans have souls. He thus equated soul with mind: souls account for intellection and volition, including conscious sensory experiences, conscious experience of images, and consciously experienced memories. Descartes regarded nonhuman animals as machines, devoid of mind and consciousness, and hence lacking in sentience. (Although Descartes' followers understood him to have denied all feeling to animals, some recent scholars question this interpretation; on this controversy, see Cottingham 1998 and Hatfield 2008.) . . .
[/quote]
I think that the parenthetical comment supports @Vera Mont 's and the blogs contention, and I'm curious how those scholars square away their belief with the already quoted portion of the SEP article on Animal Consciousness, part 3:
Rarely do we get such a clear cut relationship in a historical document of a person's thought directly advocating something so pertinent to the question at hand. How can you rationally advocate vivisection while believing animals feel pain? (If he believes they feel pain, isn't that even worse?)
**
One thing I'd push back a bit on, though, is that social structures don't need philosophical justification. Treating animals as a resource is something we still do, even if we now recognize that it's wrong to cause unnecessary suffering. Something I'd like to see is the connection between Cartesian philosophy and how we still treat animals. Many people will acknowledge that animals feel pain these days, so it's not obvious that Descartes philosophy is connected to how we treat animals even though there are some Christian traditionalists still about. At least, not as obvious as the above connection that I'm in support of -- at least as I see it.
I don't think anyone has said we should cancel Descartes, only that people feel different about the man. And I'd concur -- I didn't realize until doing this dive that Descartes practiced vivisection. I'd guess that the people of the day who didn't agree with vivisections would agree with me, but who knows. I have no problem judging the people of the past in accord with my ethics -- but certainly, I believe in reading one who is not only influential, and so you can begin to draw traces from his thinking to now (I'm more noting that it's going to take some work), but also an incredibly intelligent mind.
But in cases of judgment on the ethos of a man and his philosophy -- I think actions taken [s]counts as[/s] are an important part of the judgment.
Id be careful here. Try finding that historical document, which is in truth the only way to glean from it some personal thought. As far as I have been able to find, all we have is he said he said, but we dont have what he himself said.
While it may be sufficient to accept as given that Descartes practiced and advocated vivisection, because some referenced letter apparently says so, and the historical record supports period-specific occasions in general, re: Boyle, Malabranche, the personal thought with respect to it resides in the context, which is not determinable from the claim alone.
Also, in letters to Mersenne, 1632, in following Vesalius 1629, he talks of dissection, which may or may not be the linguistic precursor to vivisection. If we grant he used the word as it stands today, we can say he didnt do the latter, having instead admitted the former, and if he used the word as we use vivisection today, we still dont have evidence of his personal thoughts regarding its ethical/moral implications. Scientifically, yes its fine, animals dont feel pain like humans, which is probably true. But that doesnt say they dont feel something which is pain to them, the truth of which science can never prove, and the implications of which he didnt address.
Anyway ..fun to think about.
I was lucky enough to find a translation of the letter on the internet.
[quote=Descartes, Letter to Plempius, Feb 15 1638]
You object that sometimes even in a heart that has been taken from the body and dissected, individual parts of it go on beating although no blood is flowing into or out of it. Well, I once made a rather careful observation of this phenomenon in fish, whose hearts after removal from the body go on beating for much longer than the heart of any terrestrial animal. But I could always judgeand in many cases I could seethat some remaining drops of blood had fallen from higher up into the lower part where the pulse was occurring.
[/quote]
How could Descartes see the heart of terrestrial animals beating after removing them from the body other than vivisection?
Cool. Youre a better keyword-er than I, I guess. Got a link?
Better than that .how can dissected individual parts go on beating.
That was in the back of mind when I started this debate, although since joining forums ten years ago I've become aware of how deeply influential Descartes is in modern culture (much more so that most people are consciously aware.) But his mechanistic view of organisms is deeply embedded in today's culture although being seriously challenged now by (for example) semiotics in biology, embodied cognitivism, and other more holistic philosophies.
(He was also an exceedingly lazy dog, although it turned out he might have been suffering from diabetes for the 3 years that we cared for him.)
It doesn't have to be directly connected to have an influence. A whole powerful movement's mind-set was established in that time, though not by Descartes alone, he was very distinctly a leader in his own day, and has been revered ever since. He told his colleagues and students exactly what they wanted: with his blessing, they could pretend that they were not doing anything wrong. Our entire world-view, attitudes and approach are, to a considerable extent, the result of what was decreed by Descartes' generation and immediate followers.
Once a structure of thought and organization of knowledge is established upon a set of principles, it will take another revolution in thinking - and probably in physical conditions, as well - to change it. Some cosmetic touches have been given to the surface, but the edifice is still solid. Not least, because it supports the vested interests of wealth and power.
I did find a copy of that work, and scanned it, but it doesn't make any mention of the allegations that I found in the post I linked to, about Descartes actually mounting demonstrations of torturing dogs. Towards the very end, Harrison says 'Whether Descartes' hypothesis encouraged such practices as vivisection remains an open question', so presumably Harrison is not aware of such claims. Now this thread has attracted so much attention, I'll put some more time into double-checking the substance of it.
It seems to me that on further reading, the story about Descartes appalling treatment of dogs is apocryphal at best, but that he certainly was interested in vivisection, not least because of his theory that the mind and the body interacted via the pituitary gland.
But, as far as the story that opened this thread is concerned, unless someone has better information, I'm somewhat relieved to report that it probably is not true.
Ahhhh .excellent. I gave you objections, you gave me letters. Tip of the pointy hat.
I guess it is established Descartes did vivisections in the spirit of anatomical science, but more than likely without the embellishments of the modern sensationalists.
Perhaps we shant quibble over the editing of supposedly verbatim correspondence in assuagement of delicate constitutions on the one hand, or, being informed of that which we dont need to know, on the other, re: Bennet 2017 vs Letter to Plempius 1638.
The early-modern philosophical question remains: given the intrinsic duality of mind and body necessarily conditioned by their respective substances, how to determine the substance of the mind, unless to eliminate the substance of the body; how to eliminate the substance of the body from substance of the mind, by determining exactly how the substance of the body performs, such that it is proven to have no effect on the performance of substance of the mind; how to determine exactly how the substance of the body performs, unless by observing it as it performs.
Where is the fault, exactly?
The Philosophical Quarterly Vol 42 No 167 April 1992 "Descartes on Animals" Peter Harrison - www.jstor.org/stable/2220217
Peter Harrison remarks that John Cottingham has suggested that the passages in the Cartesian corpus don't support the common view that Descartes denied feeling to animals. As also mentioned by the SEP on Rene Descartes, which refers to Harrison and Hatfield. See also Chapter X "Descartes' Treatment of Animals" of John Cottingham's book Descartes (which I cannot find online).
Quoting Wayfarer
Totally agree.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't believe that there was a sharp cut-off between animals and humans as regards intelligence, feelings, reasoning, propositional attitudes, etc, but there was a gradual evolutionary process over millions of years. After all, humans are animals. For me, a dog has the same "quality" of reasoning as a human, even if the "quantity" is less. There are many examples where the behaviour of certain animals seems to clearly show that they are reasoning through a problem, and thereby have propositional l attitudes.
However, some disagree. For example, Donald Davidson denies that animals have propositional attitudes, though doesn't deny that they have no mental life at all.
The problem with treating animals as being of a different kind to ourselves is the consequence that we may treat animals inhumanely.
At the conclusion of this paper:
.Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory. Schedule treatments like you would lubrication. Breeding season like the first step in an assembly line. And marketing like the delivery of finished goods .
Although this admonition from an American pig farmer conflicts with our widespread belief that animals differ from inanimate objects, it is this type of Cartesian thinking that allows agribusiness corporations to offer low-cost animal foods to consumers. The corporate ownership of animals has had a devastating impact on animal welfare, particularly through factory farming .
(https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2728&context=facpubs)
What this demonstrates is coherency, though, and not historical cause, or even a trace.
For instance, prior to Descartes we also used animals as a resource. As has been pointed out, the Christian worldview from which Descartes was building his philosophy already allowed the mistreatment of animals, at least by our sensibilities (which, I'd note, are far from universal even today) informed by the notion that them feeling pain -- even if it is their own kind of pain rather than human pain -- is enough to warrant them as having moral worth, or are worthy of moral consideration.
Not only that, given that Descartes is being used here as an example of a philosophy that denies pain to animals (though it looks like there's scholarly controversy there, so who knows, we're not in a good position to judge), and we here believe that animals feel pain, and yet we also treat animals as a resource, it's even more unclear that Descartes philosophy is the reason we treat animals the way we do.
Which isn't to say it cannot be demonstrated. There's definitely a coherency there I can see. So, in some way we might say that this is the thought-component which happens to live on for awhile to justify treating animals as resources (to varying degrees, of course, but that general principle still holds) -- but I'm thinking it's not Descartes philosophy as much as a much longer historical practice.
Hell .maybe its just us. The way we are as a species.
His intention is quite clear. Here it is again: [My] view is not so much cruel to beasts but respectful to human beings whom it absolves from any suspicion of crime whenever they kill or eat animals
Obviously, it's not the reason we do it; we had always done it. In the bible, they figure prominently as wealth and as sacrifice. Even Jesus, who didn't seem to offer sacrifices, had no compunction in chasing demons into a herd of swine and driving them off a cliff (a stranger's entire livelihood - but the stranger wasn't an Israelite, so who cares?) In the seventeenth century, as it had been from the beginning of civilization into our own times, the sadistic appetites of emotionally stunted humans were satiated with spectacles of bloodshed; the taunting, harassment, degradation, torture, mutilation and killing of both animals and other humans.
This is not about killing to obtain meat for survival, though some people keep trying to conflate the two concepts; this is particularly and explicitly about the suffering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfighting https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335345/
https://wildlife-rescue.org/services/advocacy/animals-in-entertainment/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071402/
Humans have always been cruel, as well as kind. Since they know - instinctively and empathetically - that it's wrong to abuse any sentient creature, they find cover stories for their dark craving. The invention of machines, automata, was one such (evidently absurd) story, used by Descartes.
During the Enlightenment, some scholars were beginning to doubt the divine right of man and the dumb bestiality of beasts. Because scientific study had recently shifted to direct observation and experimentation, some observers were writing about the similarities they could no longer overlook. (They were approaching dangerously - and in those days, the danger was clear and present and looming - close to an inkling, if not a theory, of evolution.)
And so, reassurance from their spokesman-hero was extremely welcome to anatomists of that time, and even more so, to the 18th and 19th century ones who faced more social opposition. For Descartes himself, it may also have been another layer of insulation against the wrath of the church; he had been skating on some thin ice for years.
But not everyone was convinced, even then.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8365.00183
This is the part I want more details on. Rather than some scholars, or rather than a most vigorous set of debates held within a 100 year period, I was curious if there's a more direct connection between Cartesian philosophy, including those following along in his path (rather than just the man alone, but actual instances of his philosophy), and these scholars who were beginning to doubt and were then either suppressed by the popularity of Cartesian philosophy or convinced by it.
If the Wiley article doesn't give enough references, here is another possible source: https://www.animallaw.info/article/detailed-discussion-philosophy-and-animals
and a correspondence https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/Descartes_versus_Cudworth_On_The_Moral_Worth_of_Animals
Cudworth is the kind of example I'm looking for, but I'm a bit skeptical about the trace from Descartes to us still. For instance, the article on Cudworth ends on:
So while there were people other than Descartes at the time who'd disagree with his animal experiments -- the people I imagined before who I figured probably agreed with me in spite of the spirit of the times -- it doesn't seem like it was Descartes' philosophy, to me, as much as the influence of the church which made his ideas unpopular.
This isn't a small thing to consider. One of the reasons Descartes may be cited isn't because he gave people permission to do what they wanted, but because he wrote them for other people. If it wasn't Descates that gave them an excuse, it may have been someone else after all. As you note, we have the capacity for both kindness and cruelty.
So I think I'd maintain that while I see the coherency between Cartesian philosophy and our present way of treating animals as a resource (even our pets are just resources for our joy, and have owners), but still maintaining some skepticism with respect to the causal claim.
Can't be helped, I'm afraid. Some people on this thread have demonstrated his influence on modern times, but you can only go by what people say. You can find something useful in here, maybe.
Quoting Wayfarer
Except that dissection of human corpses were generally open to the public.
So why would the public be barred from vivisections?
Ehhh .I just found that cuz you asked.
I dont think any rational thinker is going to discriminate against Descartes philosophy because of his anatomical science. Like hoeing a crooked row only to blame the dirt.
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Makes one wonder about the agenda residing in those that promote undocumented nonsense, resting assured somebody or other will take it for gospel.
Of course, its abhorrent, but it is still a niche below nailing dogs to boards and flaying them alive while saying their cries of agony are like squeaky wheels. Im beginning to think that its an Internet myth.
Quoting Mww
As said above, Im coming to the view that the passage referenced by the RealClearScience page that I quoted is not true. Its the old story, dont believe everything you read on the Internet, although the subsequent discussion of treatment of animals and the implications of Descartes dualism remains interesting in its own right.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree, totally different actions.
I wouldn't be surprised if the people inspired by Descartes did something along those lines. (though that's not the same as demonstration, either -- something about knowledge. it's hard to obtain sometimes!)
I'm thinking it's a mixture of things, which is why the details start to matter. I can perceive a through-line of coherency from what Descartes said about animals to how we treat animals now. I'm questioning the specifics, but I'll still say that it makes sense, even if we grant Descartes believing in animal pain. (as I noted -- isn't it actually worse if he believed animals have their own kind of pain, but thought because it's not human pain it's not morally worthwhile? Not named dogs with a relationship, but just "animals", as one might say). I think the thing I've been digging at more is how the choice of Descartes is somewhat arbitrary for the question at hand, and is probably chosen because the thought is that modernity is the cause of our treatment of animals, whereas I'm contending that our treatment of animals has more to do with a deeper history of how we've always treated animals. (trying to take a descriptive approach, here -- not taking a side as much as describing ethical commitments and actions)
How do you think they could study circulation and the working of muscles? And how do you keep the subject still while you're uncovering organs and muscles?
Quoting Moliere
It was a university dissecting theater. The demonstrations were for doctors, students and the paying public. In the quest for knowledge. This is from later, but the method hasn't changed much since the the 1600's.
But maybe Descartes didn't, and people just think he did.
From the article above it seems that at least in the medical profession there was an attempt to justify animal vivisection as a "better" alternative to human experimentation; unlike Cartesian vivisection which was based on the belief that animals were mere automatons, medical vivisection acknowledges that animals do feel pain, but that must be ignored for the greater good (humanity's well-being).
That said, opposition to vivisection came from the public and even from within the medical profession; in the case of the latter, some scientists were of the view that it (vivisection) was/is unnecessary. :up:
Right. So, all the anatomists were doing it; Descartes gave them philosophical absolution, but did not practice it himself, because A He was too nice a guy or B He was too busy doing math or C He didn't want to tarnish his reputation with future fans. Well, that's all right then.
(By way of antidote to the above, see this tear-jerker:
https://wapo.st/3Y1hqOb
Nobody gets out of the history books. If they're influential, they're in there, for good or ill, whitewashed or besmirched, nailed to the past forever, subject to scrutiny and judgment by future generations.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's the reason I hate the bastard. For what he did to our culture. Not all by himself, obviously: Paul and Constantine did more and worse.
Here's what to me is a point in favor of Descartes - at least he was being consistent. We, on the other hand, allegedly love dogs and cats, but meat is on the menu. Perhaps this is a transitional phase, we're moving towards a more enlightened ethics and part and parcel of that is the meat paradox (our love of animals while we farm them in what can only be described as cruel conditions for meat).
Yes, we're certainly more hypocritical. We have anesthetics, but we're still experimenting on cats, dogs, rabbits, monkeys and countless rodents. We're still being entertained by spectacles of pain and degradation. We're still causing unimaginable, unimagined, completely invisible and inaudible suffering to whatever is trying to live in the lands and forests and waters we lay waste with our wasteful consumption. The harm we do hasn't changed since Assyria. We're just better isolated from it by technology. (That doesn't excuse Descartes' philosophy.)
Is it true that Descartes set up a strict dichotomy between the thinking life of humans and the mindless existence of animals?
Not according to John Cottingham is his article "A Brute to the Brutes?": Descartes' Treatment of Animals". He writes "To be able to believe that a dog with a broken paw is not really in pain when it whimpers is a quite extraordinary achievement even for a philosopher." and "Now from none of all this does it follow that when Descartes calls some- thing a 'mechanism' or 'machine' he is automatically ruling out the presence of sensations or feelings". He concludes "At the end of the day, Descartes may not have been completely consistent, but at least he was not altogether beastly to the beasts"
Is it true that even if there was a strict dichotomy between animals and humans, as the author writes, there could be no sense of kinship?
From John Cottingham's measured argument, we can conclude that not only for Descartes but philosophers today, feeling and sensation is not part of any dichotomy between animals and humans.
Yet today many believe that only humans have the ability to reason, whilst animals are driven solely by instinct, though not an opinion I share. Even if this dichotomy between instinct and reason was true, it clearly doesn't in practice preclude any sense of kinship between humans and animals, in that even amongst those who believe in this dichotomy, there is still a sense of kinship with animals either as pets or in the natural world.
IE, the paragraph in "Philosophy Now" is according to John Cottingham's argument not only mistaken in its critique of Descartes but also in its conclusion that a sense of kinship cannot override any dichotomy (whether it exists or not) between animals and humans.
Are you saying that, even though Descartes didn't, in fact, torture dogs, the myth that Descartes did torture dogs has a value as a symbol that sends an important message to society, and, as a myth, is something that only the rationalist would object to?
Sounds kind of like washing the clay feet of one's idol. At the time, vivisection was considered normal and necessary to the advancement of science, and Descartes explicitly declared it all right, and that had an influence on scientists of later generations, whose anatomical work is well documented. So, why nit-pick what he may have really meant or thought - unless you think he shouldn't have?
If it turns out he didn't actually participate (Though it would seem odd for someone so active in scientific endeavour to refrain from participation in cutting-edge science, writing have been p[resented here that cast doubt on my previous reading.), that wouldn't mitigate his philosophical influence on the modern age.
Because this thread was initiated asking the question whether Descartes was an "evil genius", which can only be about what he meant or thought.
Okay. He may not* have been an evil genius, but he was an evil influence.
(* I don't find the apologists very convincing; it's hard to imagine a thought or meaning so at variance with what he actually wrote... unless those were fake documents and letters... but if that were the case, his entire body of work is called into question.... and in that case, whether he was personally evil would be of secondary importance to the question of whether his work should really be attributed to John Locke... See the problem? )
I found this:
Quoting Descartes' Tests for (Animal) Mind
Which seems like he is not speaking literally, but it raises some eyebrows. He is talking about building habits rather than vivisections.
The thing about dogs in the village seem to come from father Gabriel Daniel's Voyage du monde de Descartes (1690) which makes a parody of a Cartesianist:
"Before becoming a Cartesian, I was so soft that I could not even see a chicken being killed: but once I was convinced that animals had neither knowledge nor feeling, I thought of depopulating the dogs from the city where I was, to do anatomical dissections, where I worked myself, without having the slightest feeling of compassion."
Though there was this:
Quoting La place de lanimal dans luvre de Descartes
"Descartes left us no treatise on the animal, but he was an enthusiast for dissections and vivisections, who was accused, one day, of 'going through the villages to see pigs killed'. As if it were a crime, he replied, to be 'curious about anatomy'"
Apparently the claim about Descartes and his apprentices doing vivisections is taken from Gary Francione's "Introduction to Animal Rights Your Child or the Dog?" an idiotic title I want to add. I took a look into the book and unsurprisingly there is no reference for it. Here is the sensationalist piece from Francione's book:
The closest to anything like that is that Descartes admits in a letter to Plempius in 15/02/1638 to cutting open a live rabbit and possibly a fish:
Though vivisections were very common in the Early Modern Period it seems:
Quoting https://hpsc.indiana.edu/documents/faculty-articles/meli/dbmPaper_EarlyModernExperimentation.pdf
All in all, Descartes opened up live animals himself at least once, but he wasn't doing anything that is too different from the other scientists of his time, and his motivation seemed to be purely scientific. The outrageous claim that him and his followers (what followers?) boiled animals alive is yet to be proven. Descartes' philosophy recognised the concern of inflicting pain upon living beings and dismissed it as animals "don't have a soul", while other scientists might not have recognised the concern at all. Even at the time, many were troubled by the fact of the animals' pain. Maybe Descartes used his philosophy to cope with that discomfort.
In a letter to the Cambridge philosopher Henry More, Descartes said The view is not so much cruel to beasts but respectful to human beings whom it absolves from any suspicion of crime whenever they kill or eat animals.
It seems easier to talk about massive slaughters of humans over the years, but 500 year old accounts of animal torture don't sit well.
If I posted a picture of a man on a rack having his limbs pulled from his torso I'd likely get fewer objections than if I posted a dog yelping in pain as he was dismembered.
Just an observation. My recommendation is that neither be tortured, just for the record.
Aye, and perhaps the hero in Man of Steel was not Superman but rather his father, Jonathan Kent, who sacrificed his life for the family dog. 's "idiotic title" is presumably addressing those people who refer to their dog as their child. The world is changing in "interesting" ways.
But you can castrate pigs without anesthesia and leave them to wallow in pain, or pack chickens so closely together that you need saw their beaks off (also without anesthesia) to prevent them from pecking each other to death for lack of space, and people will consume them with every meal.
Surgical procedures on live animals is still the norm for most animals raised today.
Richard M. Weaver defined obscenity as the exposure of that which should remain private. The routine exposure of intense human suffering, or gratuitous depictions of it, would be the paradigmatic example in that it is both something that should remain private, while also being seemingly everywhere in modern media.
Descartes reduction of animals to machines has something deeply wrong with it, but the if anything the modern trend to be more shocked by animal suffering seems to suggest an even greater deficit.
Animals are machines.
Humans are animals.
Therefore, humans are machines.
...is a correct syllogism at any rate. I am reminded of Alan Moore's depiction of "Jack the Ripper," in from Hell. A man caught up in high flying esoteric ideas about history and the destiny of man nonetheless sees his victims as machines to be taken apart and examined, a total displacement of wonder and respect to the merely mechanical.
Quoting Wayfarer
And also the blog entry reproduced in this post.
I think the problematic legacy of Descartes is the depiction of res cogitans as a 'thinking substance', which is an oxymoronic conception. By objectifying the mind, he renders it susceptible to the image of 'the ghost in the machine' which, of course, was a popular criticism. Descartes' dualism in some ways like an economic model or an allegory which has tended to be misinterpreted as an actual hypothesis, leading to the absurd notion of 'thinking things'. Deeply problematical idea in my view, and has become one of the deep foundational problems of modern culture.
But something from the webpage caught my attention:
This piece of text in the website is a quote, so I am not sure who he is quoting, if at all, but the quote references Clarke 2006, a book, not a primary source obviously. I was not planning to do any more source hunting, but Clarke 2006 is "Descartes: A Biography", I went to page 332 for the quote and the webpage is unsurprisingly dishonest, cutting out the book to make things seem other than they are. I will preface this by saying that the book does not give any source to the statement that follows, simply "iv. 555", which I will not bother to find out what it is:
The animal was already dead, Descartes simply took the remains for investigation. Clarke quotes what seems to be a letter or note by Descartes, but I don't know what iv. 555 refers to.
What a shock, English guy writes a webpage about a French intellectual, spends most of the text talking about England, and manipulates information to claim that Napoleon was 10cm shorter than he really was while he was too busy introducing the metric system to the world.
I have seen many texts that mention supposed followers, apprentices, pupils of Descartes. Descartes was not a university professor, sometimes a private tutor, he avoided publishing some of his works and his ideas were instutionally banned a few times. I wonder if those "followers" of Descartes were truly students of his work from around his time, like the Hegelians of Hegel, or complete strangers who watched a lecture about animals having no soul and went "Hey, that is pretty useful".
May well be! After opening the thread, based on the quote in the OP, I then went searching for further sources, confirmations and disconfirmations, and that is one that I found. The broader point, of the frequency of inhumane treatment of animals by scientists, I'm sure remains intact.
Either he was extremely stupid or extremely cruel. Either way, for some reason, it doesn't surprise me about Descartes.
Vivisection was a very common form of experimentation and demonstration in medical colleges of the time - and in various forms, up to the present. Whether Descates himself conducted any such lectures using dogs has been the subject of debate, but he was a practicing physician, so he must have at least attended those lectures. He certainly didn't invent or initiate them, but he was famous, and his apologetics did help to legitimize vivisection as sound scientific practice.
He bent some little way to accord animals sensation and emotion, but still considered it legitimate for humans to use them like objects.
I wish I was shocked that a crazy liar can become professor emeritus at a respected is it really? institution.
I'm not sure what to believe regarding the accuracy of this. Of course, I know what I think about it if it is true, and for some reason, it would not surprise me if it was. However, I also believe that nothing in life is 100 percent certain, (ironically, something that Descartes refused to accept) and so, I will probably never know for sure.
I don't think he was nearly as certain of anything as he made out. Remember, there was a powerful Catholic church to watch out for; you had to be pretty careful what opinions you expressed, not to end up like Bruno. He spent a lot of time in the more liberal Protestant Netherlands, but returned to Paris and wanted to be safe there.