“But the greatest of all the prejudices we have retained from infancy is that of believing that brutes think.” (Rene Descartes, 1649)
“When a Creature has given such convincing and undeniable Proofs of the Terrors upon him, and the Pains and Agonies he feels, is there a Follower of Descartes so inur’d to Blood, as not to refute, by his Commiseration, the Philosophy of that vain Reasoner?” (Bernard Mandeville, 1723)
Rene Descartes (1596-1650), “the father of modern philosophy,” believed that humans have two components: body and mind. Most of what we do can be explained by unthinking responses, or “passions” to our environment. But animals, lacking mind, act and interact through passions only. They are, in short, organic “automata” (machines) – “much more splendid than artificial ones,” but machines nonetheless.
For Descartes, the immaterial mind is manifested by the use of creative language, and creatively using language is exclusive to humans. To be sure, animals communicate, but they are merely relaying instinctive desires (food, water) or demonstrating involuntary reactions (pain, excitement). In other words, they are conscious but not self-conscious. They cannot think and then convey, “boy, this hurts,” or, “I wish they would stop doing this to me.” And so, animal pain, because it is not true pain, is morally irrelevant. It simply does not matter. Rene Descartes had given man the sanction to brutalize with impunity.
Gary Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights: “Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner. When the animals reacted as though they were suffering pain, Descartes dismissed the reaction as no different from the sound of a machine that was functioning improperly. A crying dog, Descartes maintained, is no different from a whining gear that needs oil.”
Rene Descartes was an intellectual giant – scientist, philosopher, mathematician – in his time (and, for many, for all time). Added to that, he was working in a Europe that was roughly 80% illiterate. When Descartes said animals are incapable of real suffering, what were the unwashed masses supposed to think? And if he was doing what he was doing to animals, how do you suppose those wretched beings were being treated by the rest of society? It’s too horrible to even contemplate.
While Descartes’ view reigned supreme for at least the next couple of centuries – the first anti-vivisection society didn’t debut till 1875 – the truth is his influence persists to this day. While the existence of animal pain is beyond reasonable debate, most humans still see that pain (suffering) as somehow different from ours. Never mind that the supposed efficacy of experimenting on animals rests entirely on our common anatomies, including, obviously, the nociceptors, spinal cord, and brain that make pain possible.
In the final analysis, and despite all we have learned about the animal mind – its intellectual capacities, social complexities, emotional depths – we continue to torture animals in laboratories in the name of scientific progress simply because we can (which, incidentally, is why some supposedly weaker, lesser-than people were once used for the same purposes). For shame, humanity. For shame.
Thank you, Elizabeth.
Descartes didn’t just get animals wrong. He provided a philosophical excuse for centuries of cruelty. His claim that animals were mere machines incapable of real suffering became a convenient moral shield for people who wanted to exploit them without guilt. Modern science has dismantled that worldview. Mammals, birds, and many other animals possess the neurological structures that process pain, fear, stress, and emotion. They don’t need to speak French or English to prove they’re suffering. A horse trying to escape a whip, a dog crying out after injury, or an elephant mourning a dead calf isn’t a broken machine. S/he is a sentient being responding to pain and loss. The irony is staggering. Industries that rely on animal experimentation insist animals are biologically similar enough to humans for research to be meaningful, yet those same similarities are too often ignored when discussing the animals’ capacity to suffer. You can’t have it both ways. Descartes’ legacy survives wherever animal suffering is dismissed as the cost of entertainment, profit, or convenience whether in laboratories, factory farms, or racetracks. The real moral progress of the past several centuries has been recognizing that the ability to suffer, not the ability to speak, is what demands our compassion.