Instinct & Consciousness: How animals experience the world (#418)

For centuries, humans have drawn a sharp line between instinct and consciousness.

René Descartes, in the seventeenth century, argued that animals were mere automatons. Biological machines responding mechanically to stimuli. Only humans, he insisted, possessed souls capable of thought and language.

That view, deeply embedded in Western philosophy, still echoes in the language of science today. When a dog feels pain, we often speak of responses to stimuli. When a human does, we call it suffering.

Rebekah Humphreys, in Animals, Ethics, and Language, traces this mechanistic legacy and challenges it head-on. She shows that describing animals as purely instinctive creatures reflects not reality, but a lingering bias. A refusal to admit that the inner lives of other species may, in some ways, resemble our own.

The Roots of Mechanomorphism

In what Humphreys calls mechanomorphism, the projection of machine-like qualities onto animals, scientists such as J.S. Kennedy tried to liberate ethology from empathy, warning that anthropomorphism was a dangerous infection. To him, attributing intention or purpose to animals was a scientific sin. Yet his attempt to purge science of anthropomorphic language only replaced one prejudice with another.

Humphreys notes that empathy and emotional attunement can act as moral compasses, not as corruptions of reason. When we see a chimp cradle her dead infant, or an elephant return to the bones of a fallen herd-mate, our empathetic response is not naïve projection. It is an acknowledgment of continuity.

Science without compassion risks blindness.

Compassion without science risks sentimentality.

The challenge lies in holding both.

Beyond the Cartesian Divide

A pivotal section of Humphreys’s work examines Higher-Order Thought (HOT) and First-Order Representation (FOR) theories of consciousness.

Higher-order theorists argue that a creature is conscious only if it can think about its own thoughts. An idea that conveniently excludes most animals (and, by implication, human infants or patients with dementia).

By contrast, first-order theories see consciousness as awareness of the world, not necessarily of the self. An animal that perceives, reacts, and learns from its environment can be said to experience. A raven caching food, a rat navigating a maze, or a dolphin recognizing a companion. All exhibit purposeful, flexible behavior suggestive of phenomenal consciousness.

Humphreys aligns with this more inclusive view, emphasizing that consciousness need not mirror human self-reflection to be genuine.

To demand self-awareness as proof of consciousness is to set the bar higher for animals than for many humans.

Instinct as Intelligence

We tend to admire human intuition, yet we dismiss animal instinct as automatic.

Humphreys invites us to reconsider instinct as a sophisticated form of intelligence honed by evolution. A spider weaving its web or a migratory bird navigating thousands of miles is not merely executing a reflex. It is expressing inherited knowledge encoded through experience across generations.

The human tendency to romanticize our own abilities while trivializing animal behavior reveals more about human exceptionalism than about animal minds.

As Humphreys writes, the bias runs deep:

That a human being has the propensity to be good at something, is seen as a natural gift, whereas an animal’s propensity is seen as purely instinctive.

Language, Empathy, and Moral Vision

Our language shapes our ethics. When scientists describe a rat’s distress call as a response to aversive stimuli instead of a cry of pain, moral distance widens.

Humphreys argues that reforming our vocabulary is not a sentimental gesture but an ethical necessity. To speak truthfully about the lived experiences of animals, we must recognize consciousness where it exists. And it exists widely.

Ethologists such as Frans de Waal and Marc Bekoff have used anthropomorphic language deliberately. Not to humanize animals, but to normalize empathy within scientific discourse.

As de Waal famously wrote:

Denying emotions to animals for the sake of objectivity often hides discomfort with our own evolutionary kinship.

Toward a Continuum of Mind

Instinct and consciousness are not opposing forces. They form a continuum.

Evolution did not leap from reflex to reason. It sculpted gradations of awareness suited to each species’ needs. A cat’s play, a crow’s tool-use, a rat’s empathy for a trapped peer. All occupy points along that continuum.

Recognizing this continuum reshapes our ethical obligations. If animals act with intention, feel with depth, and learn with flexibility, then they are not objects of study alone but subjects of moral concern.

Rick’s Commentary: The Language of Respect

Rebekah Humphreys’ philosophical journey leads us back to humility.

To understand animals, we must first unlearn the arrogance that denies them inner life.

Instinct is not the absence of mind. It is mind in motion.

Consciousness is not a human invention. It is a shared inheritance, pulsing through the veins of life itself.

By changing how we speak about animals, we begin to change how we treat them.

In that linguistic shift from it to who, and from reaction to experience, lies the quiet revolution of animal ethics.

Sources

Inspired by Rebekah Humphreys’s Animals, Ethics, and Language (Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series 2023) on instinct and consciousness in animals, integrating key philosophical insights and current ethical reflections.

1.      Animals, Ethics, and Language by Rebekah Humphreys (Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, 2023). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rebekah-Humphreys

2.      JS Kennedy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._Kennedy

3.      Frans de Waal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal

4.      Marc Beckoff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Bekoff

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