In conversations about animal exploitation I inevitably come across the idea that animals aren’t smart. It’s often one of the first things said and is repeated throughout the conversation. The usual tactic for animal rights advocates is to let the claim slide and move on to explaining why this doesn’t justify what people hope it does, but this approach has always bothered me. There are unexamined assumptions underlying that idea that I dislike ignoring, and truthfully I think the arguments there are weak enough that the claim can be countered on its own terms. Of course, my interest in this idea is not merely a desire to engage in intellectual debate. The idea that animals aren’t smart leads people to ignore the horrific things that various people and industries do to them on a daily basis, and as long as people continue to believe in it they will be reluctant to demand change.

That idea usually comes up in the context of a thought process that goes a lot like this:

– Humans are much smarter than animals.

– Because we’re smarter, our needs and interests outweigh the needs and interests of animals. In other words, treat the smart things better.

– Despite that principle, we still shouldn’t treat the smart thing better all the time. Namely, we shouldn’t compare every individual to every other individual. Instead we should do something like treat the general categories of things that are smarter better, or after some threshold of intelligence treat everything with a baseline amount of respect.

– Humans meet that threshold, but animals do not.

This is not a complete philosophical argument in that it’s not made up of premises which support a conclusion, but that’s okay. That’s not what I’m addressing. I’m just addressing some of the common thoughts and misconceptions that people have about animals, and those don’t take the form of a complete argument. Instead, like most of our thinking, they’re made up of deep-seated biases, half-remembered facts which may or may not have ever been true, repressed guilt, and knee-jerk resistance to new ideas and perspectives. Nevertheless people are prone to treat the conclusions they reach this way as significant, and in most cases they will justify them until the ends of their lives.

For ease of reference, I’ll call this the “Layman’s Argument (about animals).” I call it the Layman’s Argument because it’s what I would expect to find if I asked a random person about this, but really it is not limited to so-called average people. This also describes what people with varying kinds of formal training and education believe, be they philosophers, scientists, lawyers, doctors, etc. Many people’s arguments make explicit references to religious doctrine- I’ll incorporate those later.

The Layman’s Argument has a problem. Actually, it has several, and after reading Animal Liberation by Peter Singer and Introduction to Animal Rights by Gary Francione, I’ve been thinking about all the problems with this line of thought. They are both decent books in their own way, but I thought there was something missing from their accounts. It’s related to the first bullet point of the Layman’s Argument, which is mostly what I will focus on: “Humans are much smarter than animals.” This is usually the most uncontroversial part of the way we think about animals (neither Singer nor Francione really dispute it), but it is this point more than any other that I want to address right now. It is almost never expressed correctly or adequately supported, yet it’s permitted a place in our discussions anyway. I want to discuss it because in addition to being worth addressing on its own, it exposes a wider problem with this argument.

The Layman’s Argument is fundamentally unscientific. You could present it differently, with better and more complete philosophical scaffolding perhaps, but it wouldn’t solve this problem. “Unscientific” is a vague complaint, so I will make it more specific and claim that there are two main scientific problems with the Layman’s Argument. One, it is not founded on observation, and two, it does not hold up to observation.

The explanation of why merely showing an argument to be unscientific is enough to undermine it, and what proper scientific analysis requires, merits many dozens of books, so I cannot go through it now. I will give a brief summary this way, though: there are no systems of knowledge or knowledge creation that rival the success of scientific inquiry, and unless an argument comes with one, it had better be scientifically valid.

So, a quick explanation on my two complaints.

Not founded on observation

What I mean by this is not intuitive. Saying that an argument is “not founded on observation” implies to me that all scientific inquiry is experimental science- that is, directly observing phenomena, recording the results, and explaining what was observed. Obviously I don’t want to imply this, since it’s not true. So here’s what I do mean: being based on observation requires two things.

The argument’s premises are based on something in scientifically accepted theory- either direct observation, which is always valid, or the vast body of scientific knowledge we have collectively accumulated. Basically- you have some reason for hypothesizing what you are hypothesizing. You’re not just taking a shot in the dark. In theory you could obtain legitimate scientific knowledge through random guessing, but there would be good reason to doubt your claims without ample evidence. You would also be quite unlikely to succeed. In the interests of better leveraging our limited resources, scientific inquiry should be held to a higher standard than random guessing. The argument must only make reference to phenomena which can, in principle, be observed. The “in principle” part is important- we needn’t be able to observe it immediately, nor must everyone be able to observe it. There is no requirement that anything actually be observed to be “founded on observation” in this sense (which is why I am unsatisfied with that terminology, but oh well). If you remember the recent buzz about gravitational waves, it’s a good example. They were predicted by General Relativity despite never being directly observed- but we knew that we could observe them, and as it turns out we now have. As science doesn’t posit a way to “know” anything about the universe except through observation and inference, though, arguments which make reference to or draw conclusions about fundamentally unobservable things are unscientific. (Technical clarification- we also needn’t observe anything directly. Indirect observation is also covered- i.e. observing the concrete effects of a phenomenon but not the phenomenon itself. It’s unclear what it would even mean to observe something like gravitational waves without this)

Doesn’t hold up to observation

This one you’re probably familiar with, so I won’t dwell on it. If we observe things which conflict with a theory, it must be modified to account for the conflicts. Depending on the severity of the conflicts and our confidence in our observations, it may be tossed out entirely, or its scope will simply have to be narrowed- for example, Newtonian Mechanics is now seen as a useful approximation of a certain class of phenomena rather than a description of the fundamental forces of the universe.

Now let’s see how these complaints apply to the Layman’s Argument. As you’re reading, I hope that you will try to honestly evaluate whether you think in any of the ways I’m about to describe. It’s easy to have an instinctive defensive reaction to this kind of analysis and forego any critical evaluation of your own thinking. Please try not to conflate my attacks on these arguments with attacks on individuals. Not only am I generally not interested in attacking individuals, but such a conflation would also mask the fact that anyone is capable of committing these errors. As much as I try not to I still fall back on some of these erroneous lines of thought when put on the spot. They’re insidious, and that’s what makes them so important to recognize and root out.

What makes the Layman’s Argument unscientific?

Before I get to the argument itself, I want to go back a few thousand years to a guy named Plato, who unfortunately is an enormously important figure in Western thought. The aspect of his philosophy that is relevant to us now is Platonic Idealism, which can be understood pretty well by reading Plato’s Cave, and which I’ll do my best to briefly characterize for those of you who don’t want to go read several-thousand-years-old Greek philosophy right now.

According to Platonic Idealism, there is a world beyond what we can see, which is not just as real as what we can see- it’s even more real. There’s no way to directly observe it, but through philosophy we can come to a greater understanding of it. As a simple example, let’s say you look at an equilateral triangle. Any observation of an equilateral triangle with a physical form is, according to Plato, necessarily imperfect. The triangle’s sides won’t be exactly the same length, there will be a scratch on it, your eyesight or measuring tools aren’t infinitely precise and accurate, or the triangle won’t stay in its shape forever. So, far better than looking at a triangle would be imagining an equilateral triangle- an immutable perfect one, one that will exist that way forever. This, he says, is the best we can get to observing his proposed world of Platonic Ideals. Which, again, he says is real.

I hardly need to explain why this is not founded on observation, but I’ll spell it out. By definition a Platonic Ideal cannot be observed. It exists in a realm “above and beyond” the world of observation and matter. Nothing about the existence of a bunch of physical triangles in itself would suggest that this world of Platonic Ideals exists, but Plato says that it does because he thought about it- explicitly in defiance of what we can observe.

This is a highly toxic strain of thought that has nonetheless permeated Western intellectual culture up through today and informed our ideas about what kinds of entities we are permitted to propose the existence of. Plato is not singlehandedly responsible for this of course, but he is a good example and shows how far back it goes.

It’s probably high time I explained how this is relevant to the Layman’s Argument. Well, one of the ways that people often try to explain why we are smarter than animals is through appeal to a vague idea of The Power of Reason. This may or may not be divinely imbued, but regardless it is unscientific in exactly the same way that a Platonic Ideal is. This Reason is a characteristic only humans have that is purported to be qualitatively different from anything animals are capable of. It is not based on anything physical and in fact ignores our real history- that of evolving alongside animals and in many cases from the same sources. The Power of Reason is not tied to anything observable. Whatever ways that we can observe its presence in humans are outright rejected for animals with no explanation. Humans have language, but animal calls are ‘not real language.’ When animals demonstrate abilities to remember, recognize patterns, and solve puzzles, they are ‘not real problem-solving skills.’ When animals show affection, fear, grief, or anxiety they are ‘not real emotions.’ If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It’s no coincidence that the distinction between Plato’s ‘real’ world of Ideals and the observable world is the same as the distinction between the ‘real’ world of human thoughts or actions and the observed behavior of animals. This attitude about animals goes largely unquestioned in part because it’s based on an idea that has been around for thousands of years, and even if we don’t subscribe to Platonic Idealism in the modern age we are still affected by it. If you need a more recent example, take Descartes’ labelling of animals as “automota”- beings that look like they have similar reasoning faculties as humans but are nothing more than organic machines. It is poor science to think this way- positing something “above and beyond” what we can observe. If an animal looks like it has emotions or intelligence, then there must either be a scientifically rigorous and valid theory to explain that behavior some other way (currently there isn’t one), or we must conclude that our observations are evidence of something significant- the existence of emotions and intelligence.

There are other forms of this appeal to The Power of Reason, but they fall apart for the same reasons. One that I hear commonly is that animals “act on instinct” but humans “make decisions.” This is without any proposed way to distinguish between the two through observation; it is merely posited and defended as truth. The same goes for appeals to a Soul, or other purely religious qualities. If they can’t be observed (ever, by their very nature), they are unscientific and thus unsound bases for beliefs.

Okay, so what if we don’t try to say that we are qualitatively smarter? There’s nothing about the Layman’s Argument that makes that claim necessary. What about plain common sense? Obviously we’re quantitatively smarter, the argument goes. Just look around. Look at me, then look at my dog. How can you say that I’m not much smarter than him or her?

First of all, the onus of proof is the other way around. Comparisons are not made by assuming the direction of the comparison then looking for absolute, incontrovertible proof that things are different. The relative intelligences of two animals is taken to be unknown until a thorough analysis is done. We must look at each as objectively as we can and see what can be observed, then make a judgment, keeping in mind that theories and comparisons can always be better, more complete. In real life, the comparisons we do perform are some combination of misguided in their conception and inadequate in their execution.

In an important sense, this whole idea of comparing intelligences is flawed. There can be no scientific conception of “better or worse” intelligences. All science can ever tell us is the degree to which they are different and the manner of that difference, and generally speaking all different kinds should be assumed to have their own unique sets of benefits and detriments. This point falls by the wayside, though. The important aspects of intelligence are invariably and without question deemed to be those we judge ourselves to have to a greater degree. Some animals may demonstrably have (off the top of my head) greater perception, memory, neuron count, social cohesion, or interspecies cooperation, but these are regarded as little more than neat tricks or biological oddities. Rarely if ever are they seen as important qualities which drastically alter how we should view and treat the creatures that have them- an unscientific value judgment stemming from our own sense of self-worth. Even without normative statements on the worth of certain kinds of intelligence, it’s incredibly difficult to do a comparison of intelligences with much scientific weight behind it. We understand remarkably little about our own intelligence for how quick we are to wield it as the source of our authority over the whole of life on Earth, to say nothing of our ability to run fair comparisons to other species.

As for the comparisons we do perform, they fail on all accounts. First, we overstate the intelligence of humans. Second, we understate the intelligence of animals. And third, we fail to compare likes to likes. I could go through these one by one, but in fact a lot of these failures come down to the same point, the elephant in the room when it comes to comparing humans to animals, as it were:

If animals are smart like we are, why did we “win?”

That is to say, where are their cities, agriculture, cars, computers, and so on? Why are we the only ones with a global civilization?

Again, as with different kinds of intelligences, there is an implicit value judgment here. We created civilization, therefore we think it must be some sort of end goal for all intelligent life. The kind of development that we favored is considered the best or most desirable, just like our kind of intelligence is considered the most significant. However, making civilization isn’t necessarily “better” from the standpoint of intelligence. It’s the route we went, but it is pure arrogance to say it is the only route intelligent life could evolve along. Observation shows that there are any number of ways to reliably survive and have an adequate food supply, which is all that evolution requires of a species. You could be an apex predator. You could be fast and resourceful. You could live as part of a hive, or somewhere remote where you won’t be bothered. You could develop symbiotic relationships. The list is as long as nature is diverse. Additionally, civilization need not be understood only as “civilization of the kind that humans have historically made,” and we can observe that other animals have indeed already made their own civilizations, the difference being that theirs don’t lead naturally to global dominance like ours.

That’s not a very satisfying response to a lot of people. They probably still think that there are important differences between our civilization and the civilization of, say, ants. I am not pretending that they don’t exist, but it’s necessary to recognize our underlying assumptions about this matter and how they cloud our judgment. By trying to relate everything to our own civilization, we narrow our view of how intelligent life will act and thus hinder our ability to recognize it where it exists. We rarely examine other species on their own merit, but in order for conclusions to be based on observation that is exactly what we must do.

Even if we choose to believe that other animals of similar intelligence to humans would want to make our kind of civilization (a claim which would not hold up to observation), it remains to be proven that we “won the race” because of our intelligence, although this is the standard explanation. There are barriers to the creation of civilization apart from intelligence. Does the absence of agriculture among dolphins mean they’re not as intelligent as us? It could just mean that it’s very difficult to do something like farming underwater. Maybe it takes greater intelligence to create a human-like civilization for dolphins than for hominids. Likewise for small rodents or carnivorous felines. However, none of the additional barriers these animals face make being a hominid “better,” only more expedient to a very specific end. When these barriers are taken into account, the connection between civilization and intelligence comes into question. Our thumbs are useful, but they don’t make us smarter. Same for being land-based, or bipedal, or hairless, or any number of other biological characteristics that are widely recognized as having contributed to the success of our species and which led us to create our civilization. The success of Homo Sapiens is not solely the result of our intelligence, and the fact of our success does not guarantee that we are the smartest.

Nevertheless, the faith we place in our species’ success leads us to greatly overestimate our own intelligence. It is well-documented that there are many kinds of thinking we are bad at, but we take it in stride because we’re confident in the significance of the technologies and societies we created. Do we view it as a serious blow to our intelligence that we are bad at reasoning with uncertainty? Or that we fall prey to logical fallacies like confirmation bias? What about our various irrational fears and phobias, addictions, and obsessions? Our susceptibility to emotional manipulation? The answer to all of these is: not really, no. We have it ingrained in our minds that the case for our superior intelligence is airtight, and there’s no need to examine it critically when evidence is presented to the contrary. In other words, we fail to hold our own intelligence up to observation.

When we do observe ourselves as beings, we fail to separate what is inherent to our species and what can be attributed to our modern, civilized way of life. We take the intellectually lazy route of pointing to cars and supposing that this is good enough. There’s little evolutionary difference between modern humans and our prehistoric ancestors, but of course they didn’t have things like cars. We mostly look and act differently now because of the benefit of thousands of generations of people living in civilization, not because we as a species are that much smarter than we used to be. Many of the behaviors we cite as evidence that we have an intelligence-advantage do not apply to humans 200,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens are estimated to have first arrived on the scene. They had a very poor scientific understanding of the world. The tools they had (and it’s unclear how widespread their use was) were primitive, as were their societies. There is scant evidence that they had language at all, and if they did we have almost no idea what it was like. The education they received was minimal by our standards. I’ll hazard a guess that their ability to recognize things like cause-and-effect relationships is nowhere near as sophisticated as ours today- again, not because of any biological difference but because of the difference in environments. If you don’t look at an animal and see an intelligent being, you would probably also fail to see an intelligent being in early humans (except perhaps because of their superficial resemblance to you).

When looking at these early humans, there are two main behaviors that people cite as being significant: their use of tools, and their displays of grief (burying of their dead). There is no scientific question, though, that animals engage in both of these behaviors. Their tools and signs of grief don’t look identical to ours, but why would we expect them to? It’s more remarkable that we can recognize them for what they are despite the species gap. Our civilization leads us to understate the intelligence of animals, to be reluctant to take them seriously at all and give much weight to our observations. When we really try to take animals on their own terms and learn about how they think, more often than not we are amazed and impressed with what we find. There are complexities to their reasoning and social arrangements rivaling our own. Moreover, their actions make sense to us. When birds in cities learn where there is food and where there is danger, for example, it is immediately recognizable to us, based on the way we approach situations ourselves, what they are doing and why. Yet we stop short of admitting that they are truly thinking in the same way that we do out of an unscientific prejudice. Our beliefs about animals are not based on observation because we discount or seek to explain away behaviors like these rather than admit that they are what they look like: complex learning and decision-making witnessed all throughout the animal kingdom, including but not limited to humans. We do not have any special claim to these things, and it takes only very simple observations to show that this is the case.

Improper Comparisons

There is another shortcoming in the way we reference technology like cars as proof of our intelligence, and it is related to the more general problem of setting up improper comparisons when thinking about animals. We stack the deck in favor of humans in various ways when we make comparisons, whether we realize it or not.

We know that early humans would go on to create cars and various other technological marvels, so we view them as our intelligent predecessors. We don’t ask questions like “Will these creatures create complicated technology?” but “How did these creatures end up creating complicated technology?” While it’s valid to use the benefit of hindsight when we can, we cannot do so one-sidedly. If we choose to draw comparisons between humans and animals that make reference to our technologies, we are implicitly claiming to know what animals would have gone on to make in our absence. That is to say, if we are willing to use what we know about humans today to draw conclusions about our species as a whole (which includes early humans hundreds of thousands of years ago), we must imagine just as far into the future for animals in order for the analysis to be symmetrical. Early humans are to humans now what modern animals are to a hypothetical version of them 200,000 years in the future. If we aren’t confident in our assessment of what would happen on that timescale (and it is hard for even the most knowledgeable of us to be too confident about that), we should be similarly uncertain about the conclusions we draw from comparisons based on the existence of our civilization and technologies.

There are also various problems encountered whenever we try to compare individual humans to individual animals, although we seem intent on doing so anyway. To demonstrate why, let’s take two individuals right now: Stephen Hawking, and an animal. For the moment let’s say it could be any animal at all, it doesn’t really affect the way things will proceed. Stephen Hawking certainly looks much smarter as a first pass, and as individuals go I’m sure he is. We could fill whole bookshelves with the ways in which he is capable of thinking and conceptualizing that the animal isn’t.

As far as science goes, though, this is a laughable way of learning about the differences between humans and animals. We are comparing Hawking to an animal that has been bred in captivity, kidnapped, or living in the literal jungle, whose families and larger societal structures have almost certainly been devastated by human activity on earth. Stephen Hawking has been insulated and protected, nurtured by a socially generated surplus of food, energy, manpower, and expertise built up over the course of over 10,000 years, which has not only kept him alive despite significant obstacles to his survival, but has allowed him access to a wealth of knowledge along with the time and circumstances to ponder it. I don’t mean this as any sort of insult to Stephen Hawking- on the contrary, I think it’s a wondrous accomplishment and is to be celebrated. But it is ridiculous to think that we can draw any meaningful conclusions about species as a whole by comparing him to an individual animal, apart from basic biological mechanisms.

I didn’t just choose Stephen Hawking because he is an extreme example of modern humanity, I chose him because of the myriad of ways in which an animal comparable to him simply could not exist. Instead of learning to find food for himself, Stephen Hawking attended the best schools his parents could afford. Those schools existed because we carved out roles in society specializing in teaching to young humans. We were able to have specialized roles in society because our food production reached high enough levels that a few could provide food for many. When Hawking became ill, he had access to doctors and hospitals. When his paralysis became severe, he was able to continue communicating with other people because of technological devices. He was able to push the boundaries of human knowledge of the physical laws of the universe because we have a global community and a historical record of other people’s work on the subject. It goes on. Yes, of course Hawking is a smart individual, but that explains relatively little about how it was possible for him to discover Hawking Radiation when compared to all the other prerequisites I just described.

What would a fair comparison look like?

If we do want to cite things like cars and cities as evidence for our own intelligence, or reference modern humans who have benefitted from these things, then to make a fair comparison here is what we must imagine. Bear with me, I’ll aim to keep it as simple as possible while still tackling a very complex issue.

Take a species whose intelligence we want to compare to our own. I’ll go with dolphins, as they seem to have become my example of choice. Go back 200,000 years, maybe longer, to before humans irreversibly changed the shape of the planet and animal kingdom to suit our needs. Now, imagine that we gave the dolphins all the biological advantages that Homo Sapiens had, apart from our intelligence, and removed all of their own biological disadvantages. Basically, let’s take the heads of all the dolphins and transplant them onto the bodies of all the first Homo sapiens. Then imagine we let them loose to develop for (at least) 200,000 years. If we really wanted to isolate for intelligence, that is the comparison we must imagine, not a simplistic comparison like: “Here’s a human, here’s a dolphin. Which do you think is smarter?”

I’ve never heard anyone describe anything even remotely like this comparison before, and it’s not even a good scientific way to isolate for intelligence. There are still problems, to be sure, like the fact that their intelligences are adapted to their own unique situations (not ours), or that we have no reason to expect those animals to want to develop human-like civilization. If they failed to do so, the result of our thought-experiment would be merely inconclusive. But let’s take it as face-value. How would the dolphin-human hybrids fare in this scenario? As well as us? Better? Worse? Whatever you think, you’re probably a lot less certain of your answer to this question than you are about how much smarter you are than a dolphin.

If that’s because of the strangeness or silliness of the scenario, that’s understandable. We could also go the more scientifically rigorous route of describing both dolphins and humans as completely and precisely as we can, then seeing how they compare. Or, rather, we could if human scientific endeavor cared about studying animals at all except as analogues to humans. To some extent we can forgive the scientific community for this because the tools we have to study thought are so weak- we have a lot to learn about ourselves before we take on the additional complexities of dealing with separate species. On the other hand, the scientific community has a lot of blood on its hands that it doesn’t deserve to be forgiven for. It has inflicted its own brand of misery on millions of animals because of the same self-centered, unscientific attitudes that lead everyone else to discount the well-being of nonhumans. Where it should be correcting misconceptions about animals, it’s fallen victim to them itself and, even worse, developed its own vested interest in seeing them perpetuated. Scientists could and should view animals as beings worthy of respectful study instead of killing them by the hundreds of millions in hopes of developing a better understanding of human biology. We’ve known for a while that other animals are capable of communication with us through sign language, but in a blatant act of disregard for animal intelligence, the scientific community doesn’t view this as an exciting opportunity to establish contact with other animals and learn more about them. It sees it as little more than a way of testing theories about our own language development.

Human vs. Animal intelligence: What we do know

Now, to the second elephant in the room. We must be honest and say that given what we know about other animals, we have good reason to suspect that many of them will compare unfavorably to us in a proper comparison of intelligences, assuming we could surmount the difficulties associated with comparing such a quality. That doesn’t make the bad arguments I discussed any less fallible. The point of everything I’ve just said isn’t to feign ignorance, it is to ensure that this intelligence discrepancy is viewed as it really is. That is to say, it is not a qualitative difference; it is not as vast as people tend to think; it is usually not thought about in a scientifically valid way; and our conclusions about this matter are uncertain. However, as inadequate as our study of animals has been, we have nevertheless managed to learn some things about them in the process, and from what we know we ought to conclude that Homo Sapiens is likely a relatively smart species.

That still begs the question: how should we treat those less intelligent than us? This is more so the question that most animal activists concern themselves with. I understand why. There are plenty of logical errors in most people’s answers to this question, and they certainly have the worst ramifications. It’s still important to first step back and examine what the differences between humans and animals actually are before discussing how each should be treated. Again, I part with the way most activists and theorists want to approach the matter. Typically the question of intelligence will again be sidestepped, and an appeal will be made to “sentience,” which is generally defined as something like “the phenomena of having a subjective point of view, such that a being with sentience can be said to prefer some things to others.”

I’ve always had issues with the idea of sentience, too. It doesn’t strike me as being a very scientific concept- exceptionally difficult to observe (depending on how it is invoked, it can even be impossible), based primarily on our own subjective experiences rather than observation, and generally detached from the concrete reality of the things it is describing. It provides no explanation of the mechanistic functions that supposedly give rise to it and doesn’t offer much guidance for how to detect its presence. It doesn’t tie in to any other bodies of scientific theories and evidence. It is merely posited as something of philosophical importance and assumed to exist as it is described. We must rely on “common sense” to “know” that some beings have it and others don’t.

The reason to invoke sentience is to move the conversation away from the differences between humans and animals (our intelligences) to our common ground (our mutual ability to suffer). I don’t see what is to be gained by introducing a confusing new term here, though, especially one with a shaky theoretical grounding. It doesn’t add anything to our scientific understanding of the situation- with or without the idea of sentience, it is clear from observation that animals suffer. It is equally clear from our understanding of biology that it is similar, if not identical, to our experience of suffering. Is there anything more profound going on here than that? It seems pretty clear-cut to me without any additional categories.

Here is how I would approach the same question without any mention of sentience.

Anchoring effect

Suppose I ignore all the technical problems of measuring intelligence. Suppose we did examine it adequately- and the result was, as many expected, that humans are much smarter than other animals. For the sake of simplicity, let’s even say all of them, as implausible as that may be (there are a lot of species to compare to, after all).

This is where the “baseline” part of the Layman’s Argument comes in. Above some level of intelligence, creatures are recognized as intelligent and should be treated as such. Basically, even though you’re probably not as smart as Stephen Hawking, in many ways you should both be regarded equally. You don’t need to be a theoretical astrophysicist to be intelligent enough that we recognize the harm in brutally murdering you, for example. There might be other reasons why we wouldn’t want Stephen Hawking to be murdered as opposed to you (his scholarly contributions), but as far as the personal harm to you and Hawking goes, both brutal murders are presumed to be equally bad, absent evidence to the contrary.

I don’t have the time here to fully describe how beings above that baseline should be treated. For reasons stemming from other arguments, I think it should be something like granting them the right to life, the right to self-determination, the right to pursue meaningful relationships, the right to participate in larger systems of management, etc. Most people broadly agree, and as I’m trying to address the common Layman’s Argument I’ll assume that we are indeed talking about granting an array of rights. There’s room for multiple baselines at different points, but what I’m really interested in is the highest-level one: essentially, the one we reserve for humans.

I have never encountered (and doubt that I ever will) a version of this argument making reference to the baseline that examines in a satisfactory way why it should be where it is. The baseline is always ourselves, because we are ourselves. In other words, the important amount of intelligence is based entirely on humans for no scientifically valid reason. At the risk of getting cliche, this literally (literally) has all the scientific merit of saying the Earth is at the center of the universe because of a narcissistic desire to have a worldview that makes us look important. Why do we say humans have the requisite amount of intelligence- even though intelligence is a difficult quality to even define, let alone measure; that there are barriers other species face to its manifestation such that it’s recognizable to us; that our knowledge of organic life and intelligence is bound to remain narrow so long as the only life in the universe we know is Earth life? Not for any scientific reason, certainly.

If you’ll indulge me in another thought experiment, imagine a future in which humanity is a spacefaring species. We’ve been exploring the galaxy for centuries, and amazingly we’ve found all kinds of other lifeforms. However, none of these alien lifeforms exhibit much intelligence from what we can tell. We have a sample size of hundreds of worlds to go off of instead of just one, and the most intelligent species we can find anywhere in the galaxy are all on Earth.

I don’t presume to know what we’ll find if we do ever explore the galaxy, or what alien life will be like if we find it. The point is that we have no idea, which means that we have to consider the possibility that other animals on Earth are extremely smart on a galactic scale, even if we don’t think they are all that smart on a planetary scale. Believing otherwise would be to make numerous unfounded assumptions about what does and doesn’t exist. At the other extreme, we also have to consider the possibility that we will find hyper-advanced alien life, and that they don’t regard us as any more intelligent than the animals we share a planet with. Our arguments that our baseline doesn’t apply to other Earth animals would seem absurd to them. We might even be primitive enough compared to them that we would be hard pressed to make the case that we ourselves possess significant intelligence.

This is just one way to think differently about where the baseline should be and how little we know about where it belongs in the grand scheme of things. We need to remind ourselves that we are quick to assume we are special and reluctant to question that assumption. In truth, though, it doesn’t much matter what other life is out there in the universe. We can use what we know already to argue that many animals are deserving of the baseline we reserve for ourselves, on the basis of what we can observe about them directly. The more we learn about animals and intelligence in general, the better we can define what baselines there are to establish and where, but right now a few things are already obvious.

One, animals should not be slaughtered, sold to humans as property, forced to ovulate or produce milk, painfully experimented on, forcibly impregnated, mutilated for our convenience, bred in numbers that lead to their euthanization, bred in ways that serve our purposes but harm the animals themselves, imprisoned for our entertainment, or otherwise used solely as means to human ends. Just about anywhere that animals are incorporated into industry or our daily lives, their interests and well-being are neglected. It’s obvious why- practically no one thinks they matter. Many people, even those who try to think progressively, doubt that there even is such a thing as animal interest. I can’t possibly give a full account of all the ways the use of animals unjustly deprives them of things they deserve as intelligent beings, just as I can’t do so for the billions of humans who are oppressed. Nor should I have to- as an intelligent being yourself, no doubt you can imagine some of the ways you would be deprived if you were kept in a cage 24 hours a day, purposefully given malignant tumors, had the tips of your fingers removed, and so on. To feel like I had to articulate every specific way in which a dairy cow is deprived would be to ignore everything I’ve been trying to say in this article. It’s obvious the ways in which industry deprives animals, we have only to take that deprivation seriously.

Two, the habitats of wild animals should not be destroyed unless there is a pressing need to do so. Again, it is obvious why. Even if we aren’t directly killing animals, we are fully aware that destroying their habitats will cause them to starve and disrupt ecosystems. Currently we pollute oceans and rivers, clear-cut forests, put highways through migration paths, and so on. Thankfully there is some worldwide recognition that these activities are harmful, though not enough and often not for the right reasons. The mass extinction we are causing is not bad just because humans benefit from a diverse planet, it is bad because animals are driven to extinction.

Three, the ways animals are taught about and portrayed in media should change because they are disingenuous or outright false. The cow who produced your gallon of milk was not happy to do so. The pig you dissected in high school was not one of Descartes’ automotons. Farms are not idyllic places for animals. Animals products are not necessary for human health– they may not even be particularly healthy. We do not treat the planet or the other creatures who occupy it with respect. Messages to the contrary are everywhere, and they account for a lot of the resistance people have to the ideas that animals are intelligent or mistreated. The many lies and misleading explanations out there should not be allowed to bias even more people to prop up our current unethical institutions.

Concluding thoughts

I think I’ve been thorough in the points I’ve tried to make, so I just want to say one thing in conclusion regarding the issue of animals rights as a whole.

Far too often animals rights is taken to be an issue of compassion, when, as I hope I’ve discussed, it goes well beyond that. The well-being of animals should not hinge on how much compassion we decide to mete out. Fundamentally, this is an issue of viewing the world more accurately and adjusting our ideas of justice to accommodate beings we have unjustifiably ignored for so long. It’s about fighting ideas thousands of years old about what defines a person and how we decide that. It’s about identifying systems of oppression and figuring out how to fight them. And finally, it’s about getting over ourselves. There’s dispelling the notion that we aren’t the center of the universe, of course, but there’s something else, too. Except for those lucky enough to be raised vegan, all of us were complicit in this system, and we don’t want to believe that what we’ve done is wrong. Neither do we want to give up comfortable habits. But this isn’t about any one of us, and our obsession with our sordid pasts, while understandable, is actively harmful to billions of animals. As much as it is easier to find ways to rationalize animal exploitation and ease personal guilt than confront the causes of exploitation, it’s a pointless exercise. We didn’t choose to inherit this, and you don’t need to justify your participation in it in the past. None of us had a real choice until we learned enough to know better. However, although taking part in it wasn’t our choice, it won’t do to throw our hands up and let it be someone else’s problem. If we do that, it becomes no one’s problem. Animals have no way of advocating for themselves. There is no one else except individuals like you and me, people living in a system not of their choosing. The people who change the way we think and act have to be those where you are now: people who stand to gain nothing and lose much by choosing to reject tradition, people who didn’t have a choice in the past but do now. It has to be people who know that they’re just one individual but resist the temptation to let that keep them from acting.

It has to be them because there is no one else.