What If Animals DO Think?

In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abrams reviews the history of dualism, and the ongoing human activity of justifying our uniqueness in the created world. He mentions the ancient notion of the rational or intellectual soul, something that neither plants nor animals possess. He discusses this in his introduction to the work and thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, one of the main authors of modern phenomenology. Abrams argues that Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the body and the lived experience of reality - as opposed to the merely rational contemplation of experience - brings us closer to a lived engagement with the non-human world. If we let go of our obsession with the rational view of reality, and are more aware of our lived experience, we will find a whole field of non-human nature waiting there for us.

As I read this, it occurred to me that Abrams' recommendation of Merleau-Ponty's approach depends on the very distinction he says is a false one: the distinction between human and non-human nature with regard to rationality. He implies that in fact we have it and non-humans don't, and therefore the only way to directly engage non-human nature is via the body, via lived experience, without thought as we experience it.

But what if non-human nature is in fact rational? In other words, what if we keep the notion of the rational or intellectual soul, or capacity, within human nature, but also grant that same capacity to non-human nature? Also, of course, we grant the correlative to this rational capacity: reason, as an aspect of reality. Then the body - that is, lived experience - isn't the only way to engage non-human reality. We can engage non-human reality with our rational faculty - our minds.