Resolving discontinuity: A minimalist distinction between human and non-human minds

Resolving Discontinuity: A Minimalist Distinction between Human and Non-human Minds1

SYNOPSIS. Our genotype is so similar to those of the African apes, and our last common ancestor with them so recent, that it seems impossible that human and non-human cognition should differ qualitatively. But the outputs of human cognition are unique in their limitless creativity and adaptability. Exaption resolves the apparent paradox. Assume that the power to create symbols emerges from stimulus-stimulus linkages and is latent in many animals, and that the structural side of language emerges from the argument structures inherent in the social calculus associated with reciprocal altruism. These adaptations confer the potential for language. However, creating complex messages requires uniquely long-lasting coherence of neural signals, which depends in turn on the large quantities of neurons unique to Homo. The only difference between human and non-human minds is that we can sustain longer and more complex trains of thought All else (emotions, rational processes, even consciousness) could be exactly the same.

Apart from discursive consciousness and the reification of self, it seems highly likely that our consciousness is identical with that of other animals. That is, we would be subjectively aware of our experience in exactly the same way. Animals would be conscious of what philosophers call "qualia"-the redness of a rose, the sweetness of a lump of sugar-in just the same way that we are; they would experience pain, hunger, thirst just as we do; they would have a similar subjective experience of emotions like fear, anger, sorrow while the constant bombardment of sensory stimuli all animals receive and filter appropriately would appear to them (allowing for differences, in some cases, of sensory modalities) much as it does to us. If such is indeed the case, it would seem to have significant implications for the ways in which we feel about, and behave towards, other species.

1 From the Symposium Animal Consciousness: Historical, Theoretical, and Empirical Perspectives presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, 6-19 January 1999, at Denver, Colorado.

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