Phenomenology is a philosophical approach which claims that the suspension of all value judgements and preconceptions are necessary prerequisites to understanding the desired object of study. It is in fact an invaluable approach in disciplines such as anthropology where students are expected to step outside their familiar world-view and attempt to adopt the position of the native "other". However, few phenomenologists have ever attempted to extend this approach to a consideration of the altogether more remote subjectivity of the animal world. One such exception was George Bataille.
In his "Theory of Religion", written in the 1930's, the condition of animality is given to us straightforwardly as immediacy or immanence. Immanence itself is an interesting choice of words. It comes from the Latin root "in manere" which means "to remain within". But to remain in what? Bataille explains to us that for the animal, in the absence of language, in the absence of values the world is undifferentiated, unsymbolised, and in many respects largely unknowable;
"Nothing, as a matter of fact, is more closed to us than this animal life from which we are descended. Nothing is more foreign to our way of thinking than the earth in the middle of the silent universe and having neither the meaning that man gives things, nor the meaninglessness of things as soon as we try to imagine them without a consciousness that reflects them."
So immediately there is a distinction drawn between the world of humans and that of animals based upon the presence or absence of language. The immanence of animality is best exemplified for Bataille in the situation where an animal eats another animal. Given that there are no meanings in play to distinguish one from the other, no transcendence between the eater and the eaten, the animal eaten by another, "is consumed, destroyed, and this is only a disappearance in a world where nothing is posited beyond the present".
The animal is in the world he says, like water in water. The apathy that the gaze of the animal expresses after the combat, the chase or the kill, is the sign of an existence that is essentially on a level with the world in which it moves like water in water. There is nothing but "an empty intensification limited by terror, suffering and death, which give it a kind of thickness". The object of the animal's vision "is a movement that glides from things that have no meaning by themselves to the world full of meaning implied by man giving each thing his own".
At this point there is an obvious objection that may be made. Isn't Bataille downplaying the role played by animal's own communication systems? Surely, they cannot be living entirely in an undifferentiated visceral realm if they too have command of a means of exchanging information between one another, however fundamental it may seem to us. The killer whales for instance have more distinct sounds and articulations than any human language. Their haunting sonorous echoes and pitches as yet remain a mystery. Bees are known to dance a looping figure of eight in the silhouette of a setting sun indicating to other hive members the precise location of precious deposits of pollen. Vervet monkeys, it is now recognised, have separate calls for distinguishing between a "snake", "eagle" and a "leopard". Indeed, they have been known to use such calls to trick rival bands into abandoning vital food reserves.
The complex social hierarchies that exist among Bonobo monkeys are also well attested. One team of researchers played a tape of a baby monkey crying and immediately the other female monkeys looked towards the mother, indicating that not only could they correctly identify the baby itself along with the mother but were bracing themselves too for possible protective action Also, in a group of some thirty wild chimpanzees it was observed after a fight that the sister of a defeated chimp snuck back and bit the tail of the sister of the victorious chimp. Again, indicating an acute and complex awareness of kinship relations, not to mention a strikingly human sense of loyalty.
But advances in neurolinguistics in the past thirty years have demonstrated that Bataille was essentially right in demarcating a separate visceral domain inhabited by animals. We now know that human language is processed in a phylogenetically later neural structures contained in the cerebral cortex; more particularly the area surrounding Broca's region in the left hemisphere. The vocalisations of primates and other animals on the other hand are subcortical, linked to the limbic system which is concerned with the emotions. Subcortical structures are also involved when humans cry, laugh or shout out in pain but language itself is controlled via the neocortex and this vital decoupling allows us to think in our uniquely abstract way. It does not mean we are capable of a Spock-like detachment, having a tight rein on our emotions. Ask any Freudian and he will quickly tell you that it is the passions which lie at the seat of reason. But the neocortex predominance in humans is enough to ensure that we can sustain the concentrations of thought required to master grammar and syntax - and this ultimately is where we depart from all other members of the animal kingdom.
In "The Language Instinct" Stephen Pinker says that nonhuman communication systems are based on one of three designs; (1) a finite repertory of calls; one for warnings of predators, one for claims to territory and so on (2) a continuous analog signal that registers the magnitude of some state; the livelier the bee dance, the richer the food source and (3) a series of random variations on a theme such as a birdsong repeated with a new twist each time.
Human language by contrast is a "discrete combinatorial system" which is "infinite" (as in our extensive vocabulary), "digital" (there is no limit to the combinations allowed) and, what he calls "compositional" (each of these different combinations has a separate meaning based on the arrangements governed by the rules of syntax).
In fact, the evidence before us indicates a vast gulf between the communication systems of man and animal. One researcher, reviewing the body of animal communication systems summed it up as "repititious to the point of inanity". The experiments with teaching chimps sign language, whilst they were much vaunted, demonstrated they could only understand isolated elements of grammar; words. The command "Bobo, go fetch me the milk in the fridge" showed they understood "milk" and "fridge" and that they would be rewarded immediately with a banana. But try and tell them; "I will give you ten bananas if you take from the fridge the apple to the right of the pear which I have injected with cyanide ( I'm being "scientific") and clean it off properly in the sink before handing it to me."
There are so many physical neural processes involved in understanding this order it isn't funny - and none of them are actually present in a chimp's brain. Sad, but there you have it, this is all down to the interweaving complexity of bundles of neurons, axons and synaptic junctions in the tiny area of Broca's region, which we alone possess. The difference here in comprehension is so vast that the one enables you to use sticks to seek food in a termite's nest whilst the other gives us capacity to dispatch rockets to the moon or, more perversely, create structured investment vehicles and send trillion dollar economies down the tubes.
However, there is a surprising caveat. In Broca's aphasia where there are lesions to the speech centre it is known that those affected are perfectly capable of comprehending what is being said and show the ability to absorb complex impressions from the world around them. It is just that the speech circuit required to translate these impressions and concepts into linguistic form has been immobilised. The lights are on, everybody's at home, only somebody's lost the keys and the party of thoughts cannot escape. There is a communicative jam here not on account of the lack of any innate "intelligence" or comprehension, but because of the absence of a final decoding circuit that would seek to translate the myriad thoughts there occurring.
So, perhaps our pets are destined to be bound "in manere" like Emile Zola's "Therese Raquin" trapped forever within her paralytic state and unable to utter a word against her persecutors - or in their case, be spared the endless gibbering of their owners. Now, Toby, where did I leave this year's 10-K report, dear God.
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