Quiz 13

If Midgely were to respond to Budiansky's Still Red in Tooth and Claw, she would probably start by explaining that the best human explanation for the action of the gorilla would be to relate to the dog playing fetch. Saying the gorilla went over to the boy because he could see the boy was in distress would be accepting the idea that gorillas have a complex ability to interperate emotions and states of mind just as people do. If this were true than there would go longer be a barrier between species and a "mixed community" that Midgely describes would exist. The issue comes because men do not want a community where animals are none to experience the same emotions that people do. If animals can experience the same pain when pricked with a needle or the same emotional pain when there children are ataken away, then those actions then have a larger emotional efect on us. Its easy to put a dog down when his life means less than our own, but when his life means as much to him as ours do to us then putting the poor guy down turns into a holocaust of innocent animals. The things that we belive seperate us form the animals, may in fact not be as unique to our species as we believe them to be. For example, while animals have never developed a voicebox and the ability to communicate through speech, the have developed a complex sequence of facial expressions we have observed them use to communicate. Really, the only thing that can truly seperate us from animals is our ability to use logic and reason; however, this argument can really hold its ground. There is no evidence for or against this argument, but the way Midgly sees it is that we can not see the logic and reasons of other people and yet we say they experience it. So how does the idea that we can see the logic of animals mean they don't have any? The more logical response is to say, animals have this logic or even the sense of emotion, but just as they cannot understand or see ours, we cannot understand or see theirs.