Neuroscience and the Problem of Other Animal Minds: Why It May Not Matter So Much for Neuroethics

ABSTRACTA recent argument in the neuroethics literature has suggested that brain-mental-state identities (one popular expression of what is commonly known as neuroreductionism) promise to settle epistemological uncertainties about nonhuman animal minds. What's more, these brain-mental-state identities offer the further promise of dismantling the deadlock over the moral status of nonhuman animals, to positive affect in such areas as agriculture and laboratory animal science. I will argue that neuroscientific claims assuming brain-mental-state identities do not so much resolve the problem of other animal minds as mark its resolution. In the meantime, we must rely on the tools available to us, including those provided by such behavioral sciences as cognitive ethology, comparative psychology, and ethology as well as the neurosciences. Focusing on captive animal research, I will also argue that humane experimentalists do not doubt that many of their research subjects have minds (in some substantive sense of that term). In that light, to suggest that the resolution of the problem of other animal minds would change the scientific use of animals misses the point at issue. Instead, what is required is a 'sea change' in the perceived grounds for human moral obligations to nonhumans. It is difficult to see how brain-mental-state identities could be the deciding factor in this continuing issue in applied ethics.1. IntroductionThe epistemological problem of other animal minds is a subspecies of the problem of other minds familiar to any undergraduate philosophy student (or science fiction aficionado). Given that I only seem to have direct access to my own mental states (e.g., my beliefs, desires, emotions, feelings), how do I know that others, including other nonhuman animals (hereafter animals), have minds1 or minds relevantly different than, or similar to, my own? The epistemic uncertainty implied by these questions remains even after granting minds to fellow humans. The practical implications of this problem seem clear. Animal welfare efforts in conservation biology, agriculture, scientific research, and the pet industry (and this list is not exhaustive) are predicated on understanding the needs of the relevant animals qua subjects who can fare well or badly (Dawkins 2005; Grandin 2010; McMillan 2005; Orlans 2002; Sherwin 2006; Sherwin et al. 2003). To fare well or badly as subjects presumes subjectivity and this brings us to questions (much like those above) about their minds (e.g., Dawkins 2005; 2008).A recent argument in the neuroethics literature (Farah 2008) receiving increasing notice (Allen 2010; Buchman and Reiner 2009; Fins et al. 2008; Wu 2008) (hereafter the Cognitive Neuroscience or CN Argument) has suggested that an assumed metaphysical materialism, common in the contemporary cognitive neurosciences and elsewhere, implies that neuroscientific evidence provides (note the present tense) a different kind of evidence that is in principle more informative than what traditionally grounds ascriptions of mental states to others. This evidence, which assumes certain brain-mental-state identities, can settle epistemological uncertainties about animal minds once and for all. Such a monumental event, it is argued, would dismantle the deadlock over the moral status of animals and so morally advance their treatment in such areas as captive research (e.g., the laboratory) and agriculture (Farah 2008).In what follows I will contend that neither of these claims is particularly persuasive, though not because of a skepticism of animal minds. The apparent strength of the CN Argument arises from both the assumption that certain brain states are identical to certain mental states and that evidence of such brain states provides direct evidence of minds, in contrast to the kind of indirect (largely behavioral) evidence traditionally used to justify ascriptions of mental states. I will argue that the attraction of this claim for proponents of the CN Argument is grounded in a confusion of epistemic and metaphysical considerations relating behavior, brain states, and mental states. …