A slightly longer post today due to a particularly full and significant question!
The previous post of this blog looked at the human mind and consciousness. We saw that the mind is the centre or ‘seat’ of our mental life, and all our mental states are built upon the 5 primary states: sensations, beliefs, thoughts, desires and purposings / willings. Consciousness is our being aware of the mental states occurring in our mind.
When considering these five fundamental states of the mind, one of the things that is noticeable about them is that none of them are specifically unique to humans; (certain) animals – particularly of the higher mammalian species – also experience these five, having comparable (though less complex) configurations of their brains, and apparently minds.1 A dog for instance will have sensations such as of smell, thoughts such as ‘this man is an intruder’, have desires to run about, believe that their master is pleased to see them, purpose to catch that rabbit as it darts across the plain. But what marks humans out as distinct is the particularly high degree of certain of our mental states, specifically those of our beliefs and desires (and, later to be seen, our will).
Self-consciousness
Whilst a number of higher order mammals have beliefs and indeed also have desires, humans have second order beliefs – or ‘beliefs about our beliefs’ – and second order desires - ‘desires about our desires’. This gives us a self-conscious status that other animals don’t have.
Beliefs about our beliefs (rationality)
Taking ‘beliefs about our beliefs’ first, thinkers often term this feature ‘rationality’; We constantly use logic to work out whether we need to alter our beliefs and whether some beliefs are false amidst ones that are true. For example, I used to believe when I was younger that you got to a certain age in life and when you reached that age you basically got life sorted, and from that point onwards it was just steady from there on in; Having grown up in a loving stable home, with also a number of family friends regularly dropping in who seemed to have got life together, I gained the impression that at some point – maybe around your mid-20s – you hit the age and from then on, things were plain sailing. But then having gone through my mid-20s and not reached that point, and from having had subsequent conversations with people in their 70s and 80s (who told me quite clearly they hadn’t got it sorted), I came to believe that my previous belief of a younger year was false – a deduction arising from subsequent experience – so the former belief was adjusted by the latter. In the same way, rationality like this is something common to humans. Though there might be hints of what could be termed ‘proto-rationality’ in a handful of other advanced animal species, this rationality, or ‘belief about belief’ is a distinctive of humans.
Desires about our desires
Similarly, humans have second order desires – that is desires about our desires. You might, for instance, have a long-term desire to live a healthy life, be in good shape, eat sensibly…but then you get home and get a pang for a Mars bar – a shorter term urge or desire that suddenly creeps up on you. And you might give in to the shorter-term pang but all the time desiring that your shorter-term desires were more under control to allow you to attain your longer-term desire of being in good shape. Animals don’t have that. They obviously have the desire to kill and eat but a cheetah, for instance, doesn’t look at a gazelle and halt their attack thinking ‘I desire to eat that gazelle, but maybe I shouldn’t do so because it’s quite a big meal, and I want to stay in good shape’. They don’t have desires about desires. And so, as another instance of having ‘higher order’ mental faculties (like having beliefs about our beliefs), this example of a ‘second order’ desire is illustrative of something unique to humans, namely that we are self-conscious beings. Self-consciousness is the being able to be aware of oneself, what’s going on in our minds, being able to have desires about our desires and beliefs about our beliefs – being aware of oneself in the world. We’re able to introspect, consider more deeply the mental states we have, or, as others have termed, are able to ‘transcend’ ourselves.
Morality
Another way in which we’re different to animals is that we’re moral beings. Again, whilst there might be a proto-morality in certain higher primates, humans have beliefs about what is universally good, ethical, and what’s not. You might for instance believe that it’s good to bring up children well, or that part of our role in society is to protect the vulnerable. Animals don’t have that universal morality. In fact, although sometimes expressing altruistic behaviour towards those that are part of their species, they’ll often aim to attack those more vulnerable to maintain their status in the group. We don’t condemn them for it because they are acting on instinct, not from a framework of morality. When a cheetah hunts a gazelle, it kills it but doesn’t murder it. We don’t put the cheetah in prison because it’s fallen short of the ethical standard to which it’s committed. Or when a salmon mates with another salmon but then mates with a different salmon the following year, we don’t accuse that salmon of being unfaithful to the mate he was previously with. Words of morality are not the right words because animals aren’t moral beings – they don’t have ethical values or therefore ethical duties, just instincts; in contrast, humans – who certainly have instincts (see below) – also have moral beliefs and act on them according to what they believe is ethically right or wrong.
Character
Humans, then, are distinct in that we have self-consciousness, rationality, morality; and what is sometimes described as ‘character’ is made up of a combination of these. A person’s moral beliefs, the centrality of them in her belief system, combined with her longer term desires – and within that how able s/he is to handle the shorter term pangs / desires, comprise a person’s character.2 So by way of an example, if you believe that all humans are of equal value and desire to treat them as such, a good measure of your character is how you react immediately when someone later cuts you up on the road. Or if you believe that being faithful to your spouse is a good thing and desire his / her best in the longer term, how you handle pangs of attraction you feel when someone younger and more physically attractive joins your team / shares an office with you is a reflection of your character.
Free will
And this leads into a further area in which we’re different to animals – we have genuine free will to act in ways that we want. Animals often can’t help but act on instinct, humans can. And although a human’s actions will be somewhat constrained by their character, we are still genuinely free to do what we want to do. We have a much richer freedom of the will than animals, so as well as having rationality, morality, self-consciousness, this faculty of the genuine freedom of the will is another uniqueness we possess that distinguishes us from animals.
Summary
So, when thinking about this fundamental question as to what is unique to us as human beings, it’s our nature as self-conscious beings that makes us unique. Whilst certain animals share the 5 foundational mental states we experience and might express proto-versions of some of the following, humans are unique in our having beliefs about our beliefs (rationality) - likewise for our distinctive moral beliefs - and we have desires about our desires; this self-reflective nature about us being called self-consciousness. This combination of (the centrality of our) moral beliefs (in our belief system) and (longer term) desires – plus how we respond to pangs – makes-up and cultivates our character; We also have genuine free will – our decision-making being influenced by our character. So, in summary, humans are those with self-conscious minds and free will. The question that this naturally raises and which will begin to be explored next time is what exactly is the part of us that is self-conscious and expresses free will?
For that reason, lower species, with brains not sufficiently advanced to allow (for instance) for capacity of belief, may have less than the five articulated above (though all animals will, at the very least, the capacity for sensation).
Again, I am indebted to the work of Richard Swinburne for elucidating this point (cf. ch. 14 of R. Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).