I remember the year when I knew that, more than anything else, I wanted to study animal behaviour. I was 11 and we had a guest coming to stay, which meant I had to vacate my room for a tiny box room at the top of the house. As many of the animals I kept in my room were to go with me. The fish in tanks could stay, but everything else, stick insects, snails, silk worms, and above all the hamsters with their noisy nocturnal habits, had to go.

I was seriously displeased and decided to retaliate by leaving my hamsters behind, hidden so that they escaped my mother’s notice. Tucked away in the attic that night, I had a perverse pleasure at the thought of the guest occupying my room but kept awake all night by my hamsters. I had, however, reckoned without the guest: one Leonard Waight from the British Treasury.

Two days after he left, I received a book with the inscription “To Marian, from one animal lover to another”. The book was King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz, and it was full of compelling details about the lives and behaviour, not only of hamsters, but of water voles, jackdaws and geese. The message was that if you were prepared to be patient, watch and listen, you could really enter their worlds and communicate with them in their own language.

Everyone – parents, uncles, aunts, school – told me that it was impossible to study the behaviour, psychology or minds of animals because these were not “proper” subjects. I resigned myself to earning a living as a vet while keeping a houseful of animals, as Konrad Lorenz had done.

Then, when I was 14, I came across Herring Gull’s World by a Dutchman called Niko Tinbergen, this time in library. To judge by the amount of time Tinbergen managed to spend watching gulls, people were more enlightened in the Netherlands and saw animal behaviour as a proper subject. At first, I did not realize he spent much of this gull-watching time in the north of England, and it was only when as I was returning the book I noticed a single electrifying sentence inside the front dust jacket to the effect that Tinbergen was teaching animal behaviour at Oxford University.

To my astonishment, I discovered that it was possible to go to Oxford, spend three years reading a whole degree in zoology and go to lectures in animal behaviour given by Niko Tinbergen. I did – and it was my idea of heaven…

TURNING Ludwig Wittgenstein’s dictum “If a lion could talk, we would not
understand him” on its head, Stephen Budiansky argues that if a lion could talk,
we probably would understand him. It’s just that, through being able to talk, he
would not be a lion anymore. Budiansky follows philosopher Dan Dennett in
arguing that there are two kinds of mind: minds that function—often highly
efficiently—without language and minds that have the qualitatively
different capacity for language. The minds of lions, and all other nonhuman
animals, are of the first kind, incapable of mastering language. This includes
those chimpanzees that have, as he puts it, been “trained to within an inch of
their lives and bribed with M&Ms to master a few dozen learned associations
between symbols and things they want”.

Furthermore, he argues that a widespread refusal to acknowledge that there
are different kinds of minds has led many people to what the late animal
behaviour researcher John S. Kennedy called compulsive anthropomorphism: the
overwhelming desire to see other animals as “like us” or as slightly defective
versions of what we are. This, in turn, leads to an overinterpretation of what
we see animals doing. Horses that count, pigeons that form concepts and bees
that have maps in their heads have all been held up at one time or another as
examples of animals performing tasks in essentially human-like ways. All have
subsequently been shown to be cases where the animals had found their own, much
simpler ways of achieving the same results.

Although a horse may not be able to add numbers or count up to ten, it is
undoubtedly highly remarkable that it notices subtle cues from its trainer and
gives the impression that it can. Rather than being disappointed that the horse
can’t “really count”, we should stand amazed at its ability to put two and two
together, so to speak.

Using Dennett’s phrase “unthinking intelligence”, Budiansky shows how innate
capacities, combined with an ability to form rapid associations between events,
can go a very long way towards mimicking tasks that we might accomplish by
reasoning. Some who train or observe primates get excited when they interpret
behaviour as “lying”: surely this means the primate has an idea about instilling
false ideas into others? “Deceit” in general, however, does not have to involve
a theory of mind. It can be as simple as a flash of an eye spot on a butterfly’s
wing.

Plants can “like” shade without any sort of mind at all. Bacteria can steer
towards “goals”. The problem is that words that we use initially as a short-hand
description of behaviour can end up seducing us into attributing motives and
foresight where none exist. Budiansky does an effective job of demolishing the
more extravagant claims that have been made for animal
intelligence—showing how building nests or using tools can result from
following very simple rules, for example.

So where does that leave consciousness? Would a talking lion be conscious?
More worryingly, are our present-day roaring versions not conscious through
having the wrong kind of mind? While Budiansky acknowledges that pre-linguistic
children are conscious, he nevertheless sees language and consciousness as all
but inseparable—and as uniquely human. “Consciousness is a wonderful gift
and a wonderful curse that, all the evidence suggests, is not in the realm of
the sentient experiences of other creatures”.

The problem with this is that “the evidence” for simple mechanisms giving
rise to complex behaviour, which is admirably laid out in this book, is not the
same as “the evidence” (whatever that might be) for the evolution or
non-evolution of consciousness.

EACH one of us knows only one mind from the inside and no other. But what we
know and what exists are two separate issues. Our lack of “inside knowledge”
about other minds—any other minds—doesn’t stop there being
plenty of
other minds around. Perhaps spider-minds build webs. Perhaps plover-minds draw
predators away from a nest. A great many people believe that dog-minds are
overjoyed when they come home.

In his latest book, Kinds of Minds, Daniel Dennett raises the
questions that we have to confront if we want to know which other entities are
“mind-havers”. He admits that most, if not all, of these questions cannot
yet be
answered, but argues that putting the right questions is a crucial step
forward.
This works extraordinarily well: his book is thought-provoking, entertainingly
written and, quite literally, mind-blowing.

The most intriguing of Dennett’s questions, one that recurs throughout, is
whether there are perhaps two distinct kinds of minds: minds without language
and the quite different sort of mind when language is added. This question
arises when Dennett discusses the issue of how we know that other people have
minds, given that we cannot know in the special way we know about our own
minds.

His answer here is clear-cut. We know that other people have minds because
they can tell us so. We talk to each other and through questions and answers
come to the conclusion that we share a subjective world. He even goes so far as
to upend Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous dictum “If a lion could talk, we
could not
understand him”. According to Dennett, we would understand such a lion because
if he had language, we could ask him about anything we did not understand.

But this only raises a further question. What of minds that don’t have
language? Perhaps language is not just a tool for finding out about other
minds,
but tells us something more profound about the possessor of that mind. Dennett
tackles the contentious question of whether a mind that cannot talk actually
isn’t a mind at all. Perhaps, he suggests, talking is not merely a means of
knowing about other minds, but a prerequisite for consciousness itself. This is
because the ability to talk is not just a question of producing a string of
words: the true use of language involves the ability to reflect on what is
known
or believed. Dogs respond to cats and they may distinguish cats from other
sorts
of animal. They may search for cats or develop a close relationship with an
individual cat, but they cannot ask themselves whether they know what cats are.
Language sets us free to ask ourselves about our own thoughts. In so doing, it
may give rise to a kind of mind that is quite different from all others. Thomas
Nagel asked the famous question: “What is it like to be a bat?” Dennett’s
question is whether it is like anything for an animal without language.

Linking consciousness to language in this way immediately raises all
sorts of
questions about which entities have thoughts, and especially thoughts about
their own thoughts. One of the difficulties we set up for ourselves is that we
have a habit of describing all sorts of phenomena in “intentional” ways. Even
molecular biologists slip into such language when they describe molecules as
“needing to repair themselves” or a virus as “arranging for the
proliferation of
its information”. Here, words like “needing” or “arranging” are just a shorthand
way of describing what is going on “as if” the entities had minds when we all
know perfectly well that they do not.

So an intentional stance, then, is the strategy of interpreting the
behaviour
of something, whether a person, animal or machine, as if it had beliefs and
desires. We could, for example, describe the behaviour of water in terms of
physical laws (physical stance) or we could describe it in terms of water
“wanting” to find its own level (intentional stance). The intentional stance is
particularly useful in describing very complex machines, such as chess-playing
computers, when it becomes difficult to avoid saying that the machine
“wants” to
win or is “determined” not to allow a particular piece to be taken.

When we are confronted with a computer that speaks or shakes us by the hand
or follows us round the room, however, this distinction can become blurred. It
is easy to be fooled into thinking that there is “somebody in there” which we
take to mean that there is a conscious mind even though the mechanism involved
may be very simple. So we often dodge the issue of whether there really is a
mind there by using mind-like language as a real description rather than as
shorthand. In Dennett’s words, we adopt an “intentional stance” without
thinking
too hard about the implications.

We might think at this point that the next question Dennett was going to ask
was whether machines could in fact have minds. But it is not. He argues that of
course they do since we are also machines (made of molecules) and we are
conscious. Instead, the question he poses is what kind of minds do they have.
Human-machines have minds but what about non-human ones? Even the human
ones are not conscious all the time because many of the things we do, such as
turning over in bed when we are asleep, are done without our being conscious.
How do we distinguish those actions that involve consciousness from
those that do not? We are back to the theme of the book: is it only those minds
that can talk?

Until the last chapter, I found Dennett’s questions exhilarating. I had a
sense of being taken forward, despite the lack of answers. By the last chapter,
however, I began to wish that Dennett had asked even more questions than
he did.
The implications of tying consciousness to language are immense. If the ability
to suffer, for example, demands consciousness and if only language-users are
conscious, what does this say about the way we should treat animals without
language?

Dennett does address this issue, but only in the last few pages. He argues
that human consciousness may be the sort of consciousness that is necessary for
serious suffering, but he left me wishing there had been an extra chapter
exploring this issue. It may be true that certain kinds of suffering, such as
imagining what a future would be like, are impossible without language.
But what
exactly is the relationship between suffering and consciousness? Do you need
language to suffer from hunger, from fear, from fatigue and, if so, why?

Dennett ends his book by arguing that we need to study the lives of animals
not their brains to find out if they are suffering and that to do so we need
“all the methods of science”.

He drops this bombshell at the bottom of the penultimate page, without
saying
what these methods are, leaving the reader to feel wretchedly abandoned. What
methods? What kinds of evidence do we need to establish that one kind of mind
suffers and another does not? You can’t stop asking questions now, I thought,
not when you have taken us this far and questioned so much. But he did.

I can only hope that he is already writing the sequel, “The Kinds of Minds
that Suffer” or “The Question of Suffering” or some such. We need many more
Dennett-type questions if we are ever to make inroads into the greatest
remaining mystery in biology.

SINCE everyone else seems to be doing it – writing books about mind and consciousness, that is – a book by someone as knowledgable about the workings of the human brain as Antonio Damasio is greatly to be welcomed. Descartes’ Error, I had supposed, would argue that dualism – the idea that brains and minds are quite different sorts of entity – is a fallacy. And given Damasio’s stature as a neuroscientist, I assumed his book would be about the latest research on which parts of the brain are involved in conscious experiences. I was quite wrong on the second count and only partially right on the first.

The “Error” in the title in fact turns out to be all the things Damasio objects to in other peoples’ ideas on the mind: “an emblem for a collection of ideas on body, brain and mind prevalent in Western culture”. His particular target is, as I had supposed, the dualism that splits “mind” from “brain”, but his own solution does not stop at simply saying that conscious experiences come from brain states. His view is that minds are embedded (he prefers the term embodied) not only in brains but in all of the rest of the body.

Brains evolved, he argues, to look after bodies, to make sure that they survive by constantly monitoring their state and directing them to take any action that might be necessary to keep them safe, stable and in a good state of repair. When anything untoward happens, such as the arrival of a predator, a complex interaction between the brain and the rest of the body occurs which induces an emotional state that prepares the body to flee. As a result we feel afraid. Emotions and feelings are thus guardians of bodies but have, Damasio says, been curiously neglected by cognitive psychologists.

His book is an argument for the scientific treatment of feelings and emotions on the grounds that no one can fully understand how the brain works just by studying the rational or clever things brains do, without at the same time understanding that brains are there to feel and to evaluate for the good of the body. He states emphatically that his book is not about consciousness, although certainly consciousness floats in and out of it often enough.

Much of the book is about the prefrontal cortex and the role it plays in human life and personality. Damasio starts with an account of the curious history of Phineus Gage, a construction worker engaged in blasting rock to lay railway lines in Vermont. In 1848, a heavy iron bar was dynamited through his left cheek, travelled up through the front of his brain and exited through the top of his skull. Surprisingly, Gage not only survived this freak accident but at first appeared to have all his faculties intact. He could speak, move normally and his memory was unaffected. It was only later that it became apparent that his personality had subtly changed. He could rationally decide what to do but it was as though he no longer cared about the outcome. The emotions that normal people associate with various happenings were not there any more.

Damasio describes other people, patients of his, who have also had damage to the frontal lobes similar to that experienced by Gage and who have shown the same inability to care about what happens to them. He then uses his knowledge of these brain-damaged people to formulate his “somatic marker” hypothesis – the idea that rational decision-making is, in normal people, guided by their “gut feelings” about a problem. What the brain decides is influenced by bodily (somatic) responses such as disgust or fear. The selective advantage of this would be that it cuts down on the number of possible outcomes to a problem we have to contemplate before we make up our minds. Solutions that might involve us in unpleasant situations, such as getting very cold or going out in the dark alone, can be rejected en masse and we can then spend our time thinking about a subset of solutions that are associated with much pleasanter emotional states. (Perhaps, then, “lateral thinking” involves ignoring our somatic makers and exploring a wider range of solutions?) Covert, nonconscious processes thus normally censure which solutions the rational brain is allowed to look at.

So even though this book is not about what consciousness is, or even which parts of the brain are needed for us to have conscious experiences, it is a thought-provoking account, using evidence from brain-damaged people who become detached from their own emotions, of the way the normal brain involves emotions in its rational decision making. The error of trying to separate “mind” and “brain” may be less prevalent than it once was, now that more and more philosophers and physiologists are turning away from out-and-out dualism, but the still prevalent error of trying to separate reason from emotion is the one that Damasio is most concerned with. In his view, having feelings is one of the main jobs the brain does. In putting the case for ceasing to regard emotions as messy complications for a purely intellectual brain and seeing them instead as an integral part of its decision-making processes, he has made an important contribution. We may be no further forward in understanding what consciousness is, but we have much more idea of the connection between reason and emotion.

Animal welfare has moved from being a fringe subject – not entirely
scientifically respectable – to being an important part of biological education
during the past ten years or so. There is now an increasing number of biology
and veterinary degrees that include courses in animal welfare. And at every
level, training in research methods is more and more likely to cover animal
welfare as well as the more traditional areas of experimental design and
statistics. Undoubtedly a need exists for a good, clear, comprehensive book
on animal welfare for students, bringing together the scientific evidence
that has now accumulated on various aspects of this subject.

Even though it has become more accepted as a proper scientific discipline,
however, animal welfare has not been able to shake itself free of difficulties.
It is still beset with the problem of defining welfare, for example, a
problem exacerbated by the many meanings that ‘welfare’ can have when applied
to our own species. (Try defining ‘human welfare’ in a short sentence.)
And whereas the rest of the biological sciences can safely hide behind the
behaviourist logic that we can never know what another organism, human or
otherwise, is consciously experiencing, even asking a question about animal
welfare forces us to conclude that we must at least try to find out. ‘Suffering’
unashamedly admits conscious experience. Animal welfare involves, among
other things, trying to eliminate that suffering. A navigator with a very
steady hand is needed to take us across these particular waters.

So, given the need for guidance, how well have Donald Broom and Ken
Johnson succeeded in giving it? How much have they clarified, synthesised
and explained? To what extent would a student or anyone else reading this
book find themselves more knowledgeable and able to think more clearly about
the very difficult issues that animal welfare raises? I think they have
done a good job on the whole, and produced an extremely useful book, one
that is likely to benefit a wide range of people interested in the scientific
approach to animal welfare. The criticisms I have are largely those of style
and readability.

On getting to the middle of the second chapter, for example, you might
begin to wonder why you are being given so much information about homeostatic
control and asked to understand concepts such as ‘casual factor space’.
These misgivings could have been avoided if the very helpful introductory
chapter on current debates on animal welfare had been followed by even a
brief lead into chapter 2 explaining why it was necessary to go into such
detail of how animal bodies work. Two quite heavy chapters, one on homeostasis
and motivation and the other on tolerance and coping, have to be got through
before the fourth chapter explains the meaning of basic terms such as ‘stress’
and ‘welfare’.

From this point onwards, the book becomes much easier to read because
the reader is at last equipped with definitions. Even if you do not agree
with these – and not everyone will agree that the welfare of an animal
is best defined as ‘its state as regards its attempt to cope with its
environment’ – the logic of the argument is clearly laid out. You can at
least see what the authors are getting at.

There then follow particularly valuable chapters on the various means
that have been used to assess welfare, from the physiological to the behavioural.
They form good reviews of important topics such as aggression, stereotyped
behaviour and what can be concluded where animals show physiological measures
of ‘stress’.

This is not an easy book to read (it is a textbook, not bedtime reading)
but it will become essential for anyone, student or otherwise, wanting
to discover what the scientific study of animal welfare is all about.

Marian Stamp Dawkins is in the department of zoology, University of
Oxford.

IN HER preface to this collection of essays, the editor Gill Langley
admits to having been tempted to wield her editor’s red pen when she came
across views with which she disagreed. Fortunately, she resisted temptation
and the result is a book that is notable for the diversity of its contributors’
views. So we have chapters by those who believe that there should not be
any animal experiments at all and others by those who believe that there
certainly should be. There is a judicious mixture of opinions, beliefs and
careful collection of facts.

The authors also provide enough philosophy to give a background to the
ethical problems surrounding the use of animals in experiments, but not
too much. And there is some very useful information about the most recent
laws that have been passed in different countries, showing the way that
the cli mate of opinion on the care and treatment of animals is continuing
to change.

The first two chapters, one written by Mary Midgley and the other by
Tom Regan, set the stage by putting attitudes to animals in a philosophical
context. There is nothing particularly new here, but it is useful to have
accessible and clearly written statements by two people whose writings on
the treatment of animals has been so influential.

One of the most valuable chapters in the whole book then follows: a
discussion of the evidence for pain and suffering in non-human animals by
Margaret Rose and David Adams. As many arguments about the ethics of animal
experimentation come down, in the end, to the issue of whether and how much
animals are able to experience pain, protagonists on all sides need to know
what the physiological evidence on animal pain is. This chapter provides
an excellent starting point with many useful references.

Erik Millstone, in his chapter on toxicological experiments, admits
to being an unapologetic speciesist, that is, someone who sees important
moral differences between humans and other species. He also sees important
biological differences and argues extremely convincingly that there are
dangers in using non-human animals to test the safety of drugs and other
substances and then extrapolating directly to humans. More stridently, Robert
Sharpe makes somewhat the same case, calling animal experiments a ‘failed
technology’. Clive Hollands directs his wrath at what he calls trivial experiments
on animals. He lists those that he thinks should never have been done.

There is a thoughtful chapter by Martin Stephens on replacing live animals
with tissue culture, mathematical models and other techniques and a very
down-to-earth chapter by David Morton who illustrates very well the power
of low-key common sense in persuading people to treat animals more humanely.

Gill Langley argues that science students are not taught enough about
being humane to the animals they work on, while Judith Hampson concludes
the book with a review of new legislation on animal experiments, in Britain
and abroad.

The result of this multi-authored, multi-opinioned book is not, as might
be supposed, an undisciplined cacophony. On the contrary, the book has a
curious harmony. Running through each chapter is a concern for the humane
treatment of animals, and the different ways this is expressed actually
give the book a coherence that a more one-sided book would lack. The fact
that people of very different views can contribute to the same volume lends
weight to the idea that the consensus on the scientific use of animals might
be changing. Perhaps it really is possible for people with dif fering views
on this difficult subject to learn from each other. Certainly, this book
will help them to do so.

Marian Stamp Dawkins is reader in biology at the University of Oxford.