Certain Habits

You may remember reading about or watching the documentary “The Cove” in which former dolphin trainer Richard O’Barry tells a story of watching the former star of Flipper kill herself by drowning. For some, the story is unremarkable: of course animals can commit suicide. To others, the story is impossible, with the only relevant question being: “Why is Richard O’Barry lying?”

Time Magazine this week recaps a paper in Endeavors that explores the history of animal suicide.

Animal suicide may seem absurd, yet the concept is as old as philosophy. Aristotle told a story about a stallion that leaped into an abyss after realizing it was duped into mating with its mother, and the topic was discussed by early Christian theologians and Victorian academics. “The questioning of animal suicide is essentially people looking at what it means to be human,” says Duncan Wilson, a medical historian at the University of Manchester and co-author of a study in the March issue of the British journal Endeavour on the history of self-destructive animals. “The people talking about animal suicide today seem to be using it as a way to evoke sympathy for the plight of mistreated and captive animals.”

Changes in how humans have interpreted animal suicide reflect shifting values about animals and our own self-destruction, the paper argues.

Read the whole article. It’s fascinating.

The question of animal suicide is a different way to approach the issue of what if anything is distinctively human. And what does that mean for ethics, both with regards to humans (especially people with diminished capacity) and animals.

If animals can commit suicide, three things are probable: animals are conscious of the state of being (versus the state of not being); animals are capable of agency; and animals are capable of calculation beyond instinct. If any, let alone all, of these hypotheses are true, then animal life has more moral weight than it does if we assume that animals are no more than a bundle of appetite.

We shouldn’t forget how prone we are to implying personality or humanness to inanimate objects (like the Volkswagen Bug or Allessi tea kettle). The famous Pixar lamp illustrates just how much personality can be imbued in an inanimate object. We’re also too quick to connect outcomes with intentions. Combine the two heuristics and we’re very likely to impute awareness and agency where there is none.

At the end of the day, experiments and empirics will only take us so far. Our answers about these questions will remain rooted in philosophy of mind, ethics, and belief. We may have more examples to call upon and more facts with which to sharpen our theories, but being is ineffable, beyond the reach of absolute proof. As it should be. Despair the moment we believe there’s no room left in the universe for wonder or awe.