ARE ANIMALS NON-HUMAN PERSONS?

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A Paper

Presented to

Dr. Ted Cabal

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

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In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for

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by

Jefferson Calico

April 27, 2010

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Are Animals Non-Human Persons?

The issue of persons and personhood is an important and burgeoning area of

philosophical research and is not only philosophically fruitful but socially important.

Metaphysical philosophy, cutting edge science, ethics, and philosophy of religion all converge

on issues regarding personhood to create a challenging and creative field of discussion. While

personhood is a central concept in the debate over issues of the beginning and end of life, current

scientific research into animal behavior and the rise of the animal rights movement have

broadened its application. Science is increasingly engaged as a handmaiden to the animal rights

movement in the pursuit of social and legal recognition of a new moral and legal status for

animals. Moreover, there is a growing body of philosophical work, both ethical and

metaphysical, being done on this question of personhood and non-humans which provides the

ideological underpinning for the animal rights movement. There is, however, very little Christian

philosophical work being done in this area. A quick flip through a number of current Christian

works on ethics shows that the status of non-human beings has not been an issue of concern for

Christian ethicists.. We will examine three concepts of personhood, their application to animals,

and propose that animism offers some useful conceptual resources.

A Cultural Shift?

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) made headlines

in January 2010, with its declaration that dolphins are persons. Several media outlets picked up

on the announcement and discussed its repercussions. Two aspects of the announcement seem

particularly incongruous. The AAAS claim is first of all scientific, grounded in advanced

scientific research

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in the fields of animal biology, neurology, and behavior. Second, the scientists themselves draw

ethical, rather than scientific, conclusions from their research. Dolphins, they report, are smarter

than we thought and therefore deserve better treatment from humans.1 These scientists make a

startling jump from scientific research to ethical conclusions. As we will see, the philosophical

concept of personhood provides the link between the two.

The AAAS conference on dolphins is merely one of the latest indications of a cultural

crisis on this issue. Americans are increasingly confused about how to conceptually classify

animals, and the traditional distinctions between humans and animals are losing their clarity. Our

culture seems to be on the verge of a shift, a paradigm change in its thinking about the nature and

place of animals. The new paradigm does not draw its categories from Christian conceptual

resources and in many instances represents a direct rejection of the Christian tradition and ways

of thinking..

What are Animals?

Animals are not just animals. Our way of thinking about animals is already more

complex than we might at first suppose. We tend to use “animal” to mean non-human, and so

divide the world of beings into two great classes: human and animal. We have traditionally

understood these two classes to be separated by an ontological gap: animals are brutes and

humans are persons. As one church member said during a sermon about Genesis 1, “Animals are

beings without souls.”

Within the Christian and Western philosophical traditions, this human/animal

distinction is well-documented.2 The ontological gap between humans and animals is obvious:

1David Grimm, "Is a Dolphin a Person?" Science Now, February 21, 2010, [online], accessed 8 March

2010, http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/02/is-a-dolphin-a-person.html; Internet.

2Gary L. Francione, "Animals - Property or Persons?" in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New

Directions, eds. Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 110-11.

Gary Francione discusses Descartes’ perspective on animals as things.

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humans have rationality, self-consciousness, the ability to make and use tools, to deliberate, to

act creatively, to make moral decisions, etc., while animals do not. Humans exhibit a high quality

of personhood which is not found in other beings. While higher mammals such as the great apes

are impressive in some ways, their abilities do not compare to the personhood exemplified by

human beings. This viewpoint is well represented by the psychologist and philosopher Willard

Gaylin who acknowledges that humans have a “biological linkage” with other beings, an “animal

heritage” in that we “share whole biological systems with animals much lower and more distant

from us than the higher primates.”3 However, he simultaneously emphasizes the uniqueness of

human beings, arguing against the idea that life consists of “a continuum of creatures, all

advancing in small increments up the hierarchical scale from the unicellular to the primate.”4

Rather, he sees human beings as a unique type of being, a “noble discontinuity,” whose

exemplification of personhood is of a demonstrably different quality than that of other beings,

including higher mammals. He writes, “the order of change between the chimpanzee and the

human being is of such a magnitude as to represent a break, a discontinuity, in this great chain of

life.”5 He goes on to describe that uniqueness in terms of personhood: the capacities of human

beings to use language, make choices, imagine. The human mind sets human beings apart from

the rest of creation.

At its worst, this perspective has led to an understanding of animals as things and

property, with detrimental results for their treatment.6 A more sympathetic application of this

3William Gaylin, Adam and Eve and Pinocchio: On Being and Becoming Human (New York: Viking

Publishers, 1980), 7. 4Ibid.

5Ibid. 6Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (New York: The

NewYork Review, 1975), 202-232. This chapter of Singer’s book traces the Western philosophical and Christian

perspective on the ontological gap between humans and animals. He brings out the destructive results of the

worldview.

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perspective is found in the concept of “fellow creature.”7 When we call an animal a “fellow

creature” we recognize a kinship with it, that we share something with it. It is not “other” in the

sense of being alienated from our understanding and affections. The concept of fellow creature at

once holds the being at some distance, recognizing the ontological distinction between us and it,

while acknowledging a bond of respect with it. A fellow creature cannot be dealt with without

consideration. I believe this concept fits well with the traditional Christian understanding of

animals: that human beings share the earth with them and have been commissioned to exercise

responsible godly sovereignty over these beings. Animals are animals and not persons, but they

are also fellow creatures. These are creatures towards whom we have a duty of care and to whom

we extend a certain sympathy and goodwill. While holding ourselves apart from animals, we

simultaneously respect and make a place for the majestic whale, the noble lion on the savannah,

and the insignificant titmouse eating at our birdfeeder.

The animal rights movement represents an attempt to uproot this older more

traditional way of viewing animals, critiquing the traditional perspective on two levels. First, it

criticizes the fellow creature concept as not providing sufficient protection of animals from

abuse. Though we may have a sentimental conception of animals, we have not treated them as

fellow creatures. And this critique seems to be correct in large measure, as the movement’s

condemnation of factory farming demonstrates.

In the modern era, our treatment of animals has been driven by the convergence of

technological, economic, and structural realities which have not been adequately addressed by

the “fellow creature” concept. The ability to concentrate and confine animal populations in a

“factory farming” or laboratory context is a relatively recent development, a product of fertilizers

and antibiotics. Similarly the economic concerns of a global economy, and the technological

7Cora Diamond, "Eating Meat, Eating People," in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions,

eds. Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 101ff. includes a

compelling discussion of the concept of fellow creature.

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ability to mass produce food and other products led to the development of these farming and

laboratory situations. When animals become enmeshed in these techno-economic systems, they

clearly are not treated as fellow creatures. I would suggest that most Christians, including those

who have no problem with consuming meat, would find the treatment of animals in these

situations problematic. I am fairly sure that if I traced the bag of frozen chicken in my freezer, or

my MacDonald’s hamburger, back through the production process, I would find the treatment of

those animals to be troublesome and not congruous with a fellow creature concept. If this is the

case, then we can appropriately conclude that the fellow creature approach to animals has not

kept pace with our real treatment of animals and has not afforded animals the sorts of protection

that humane treatment requires.

The second level of critique is more radical and claims that there are inherent

metaphysical problems with the concept of fellow creatures. The animal rights movement

believes that this way of looking at animals, in terms of human dominion, grants moral privileges

to human beings without justification, a position known as “specieism.” Singer defines specieism

as “a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and

against those of members of other species.”8 From this perspective, our valuation of animals as

ontologically inferior to human beings is on par with racism and sexism. It is an arbitrary and

unjust sort of discrimination that fails to recognize the inherent equality between humans and

animals, or more exactly, human animals and other animal species.

The animal rights movement is interested in the concept of personhood because it

seems to provide a solution to both the issues of protection and moral status. The philosophical

concept of personhood has metaphysical and legal weight which “fellow creature” lacks. The

concept provides adequate resources to prevent the abuse of animals. The conceptual revisioning

of animals as persons overturns the discriminatory ideology of human-centrism and raises the

8Singer, Liberation, 7.

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ontological status of these beings by breaking down the distinction between human and animal.

In this way, the animal rights movement attempts to cause a cultural cognitive shift of

metaphysical categories, so that social resources can be leveraged to protect animals from

mistreatment. This conceptual shift is not merely the agenda of a radical fringe. It is increasingly

reflected in popular culture and is well represented in philosophy. The ethicist James Walters,

who is by no means an animal rights activist, writes, “my point is… to join those who are calling

for a conceptual revolution in our thinking about animals and moral status.”9 The idea of

personhood is the ground on which this revolution is being fought.

Two Approaches regarding the Status of Animals

We have seen that the traditional conception of animals, on the one hand as brutes and

on the other as fellow creatures, has proven inadequate both in describing what animals are and

protecting animals from abuse. Animal rights proponents seek to solve the problem using two

main conceptual models: the physicalist model and the personalist model.

The first approach is an argument based on the ontological equality of all sentient

beings. Rather than identifying special characteristics that are worthy of moral status, it focuses

on physical commonalities shared by all animals, particularly sentience, the ability to feel pain.

Every animal that can feel pain deserves moral consideration. In his now classic salvo into

animal rights, Animal Liberation, Peter Singer takes this position, calling it the “moral principle

of equal consideration.”10

In this approach, there is essentially no ontological gap that makes

human animals unique. There is a strong sense in which this perspective devalues higher mental

functioning, the self-conscious mind, as an indicator of moral value and questions why this

particular feature is seen as the hallmark of moral worth. It is an argument down the ontological

spectrum, a leveling out of the traditional ontological hierarchy, which establishes the valuation

9James W Walters, What is a Person?: An Ethical Exploration (Urbana, IL: University of Illonois

Press, 1997), 106. 10Singer, Liberation, 251.

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of beings at a low ontological level. Humans are animals, like other animals, and therefore do not

have a unique moral status. There are no criteria by which we can privilege human animals. All

animals can suffer and therefore deserve a certain level of moral consideration. As Jeremy

Bentham wrote, “The question is not, Can they talk? nor, Can they reason? but, Can they

suffer?”11

This approach takes a physicalist perspective on the value of life, also called a low

standard of personhood, which looks for “clear, biological demarcations between types of

beings.”12

There is something in the nature of the being, its essence, that gives this being moral

status. When applied specifically to human beings, this demarcation is variously called the

rational nature or human nature or from a theological perspective, the image of God in human

beings. This natural essence gives every human being inherent moral status, simply on the basis

of being genetically human. This argument is often advanced in terms of the “sanctity of life.”

Thus human infants and severely handicapped humans deserve equal moral consideration

because they are human regardless of their capacities. However, when philosophers and ethicists

apply this physicalist type of argument to life forms in general, the trait of sentience is settled

upon as the clear, biological demarcation between entities with inherent moral status and those

without.

The second approach is to argue up the ontological spectrum by claiming that some

animals are persons according to a high standard of personhood.13

This approach emphasizes

ontological difference or hierarchy by retaining the high standards of personhood. In fact, the

very standards that Gaylin uses to emphasize human uniqueness are applied to animals. It argues

that some animals are like human beings in that they exhibit person-making qualities. These

11Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation, Chapter 17, Section 4, footnote 122.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bentham/bnthPML18.html; accessed May 5, 2010.

12Walters, What is a Person?,156. 13Ibid., 24.

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person-making qualities are often summarized under the concept of rationality. Persons are those

who have the set of characteristics that allows them to exhibit rationality as a strong component

of their lives. Thomas White, the philosopher who spoke at the AAAS meeting mentioned above,

takes this position in his book In Defense of Dolphins. He claims that dolphins, unlike most other

animals, display characteristics that meet the classic standards of personhood.

This approach takes a personalist perspective which is “capacity based” and aligns

moral value with the possession of higher cognitive capacities.14

In distinction from the

physicalist approach, it argues that not all human beings or all sentient creatures are persons nor

are they of equal moral consideration. Persons are those, as Walters defines it, “with capacities

for significant cerebral functioning.”15

This generally refers to self-consciousness, although

several other “person-making” qualities have been noted including complex brain structure, the

capacity for rational thought, emotional life, freedom to choose and deliberate about decisions,

the capacity to envision a future, language use, and complex social behavior. These qualities

express the most common understanding of personhood, one that many of us probably share.

When my wife calls our two year old a “little person” she is honing in on the child’s precocious

use of language, developing personality, and ability to make her own decisions, specific person-

making capacities that are not exhibited in babies.

One concern that has been raised with this approach is that the class of human beings

becomes larger than the class of persons. Some humans, such as human infants and other genetic

humans who do not exhibit person-making qualities are not considered persons with full moral

value. The approach also loosens the connection to human nature. Traditionally humans have

been understood to be the only beings capable of exhibiting these capacities. But clearly this

approach shifts the concept of person away from “human nature” and onto these rational

14Ibid.,156.

15Ibid., 35.

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capacities, which other types of beings may potentially exhibit. If other non-human beings

exhibit these capacities, they should also be considered as persons. This perspective has an

important place in Christian thought, since God is often thought of as Mind fully realized, God is

the ultimate rational agent. As Walters puts it, “ET in the Spielberg movie, angels, and God

Himself are surely persons.”16

At the same time, both these approaches can be seen as the outworking of the

Darwinian worldview.17

On the first approach, all animals are products of the evolutionary

process. At a certain level of biological complexity, organisms can feel pain and this qualifies

them for moral consideration. Humans are not “other” than the rest of the animal world and to

suggest that humans have a special sort of dignity or value is simply ideological at best, an

attitude of specieism on par with racism and sexism. On the second approach, there is nothing

necessarily unique about the evolutionary development of Homo sapiens. While our particular

evolutionary line led to the emergence of the set of characteristics we call “personhood,” other

evolutionary paths might also produce beings with similar and equitable sets of person-making

characteristics. Humans are persons who evolved on land; but dolphins for instance could be

persons that evolved in water.18

Let us take a closer look at the personalist approach as applied to

animals.

Non-human persons

As the AAAS conference mentioned above indicates, there is an active effort to

demonstrate that some animals, such as dolphins, exhibit person-making qualities. The AAAS

meeting presented scientific research from several disciplines, such as cetacean neuroanatomy

and cognitive psychology, showing the advanced state of dolphin cognitive and social ability.

16Ibid., 3.

17Singer, Liberation, 225.

18

Thomas I White, In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier (Malden, MA: Blackwell

Publishing, 2007), 120-121.

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For instance, the scientists found that dolphins have brain to body ratios larger than the great

apes. They are the “the second most encephalized beings on the planet” with a complex

neocortex and Van Economo neurons which are associated with “emotions, social cognition,

and… the ability to sense what others are thinking.”19

In addition to these physical characteristics

of dolphin brains that are associated with intelligence, the researchers reported behaviors that

indicate self-awareness, such as recognition of their reflections in mirrors, forms of

communication, and learning. Dolphins exhibit distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and

can think about the future.20

Scientists are also finding highly developed social behavior in

dolphins. In his book, In Defense of Dolphins, Thomas White discusses detailed evidence for

tool use, cooperative fishing strategies, social specialization and division of labor, even social

alliances and the use of political skills by dolphins.21

According to White, this combined research builds a strong cumulative case that

dolphins meet the high standards of the personalist approach, “they're alive, aware of their

environment, and have emotions—those ones are easy. But they also seem to have personalities,

exhibit self-controlled behavior, and treat others appropriately, even ethically.”22

White develops

a list of eight person-making characteristics covering a range of cognitive and social behaviors

and argues that dolphins meet these standards.23

What we find in White’s work is the specific

and persuasive application of the personalist approach to dolphins:

19Grimm, “Is A Dolphin a Person?”

20Jonathon Leake, "Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'," in The Sunday

Times Online, January 3, 2010 [online]; accessed 8 March 2010;

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6973994.ece; Internet.

21White, In Defense, 125-135.

22Grimm, “Is A Dolphin a Person?”

23White, In Defense, 156-57. White’s list of person-making characteristics is drawn from a variety of

thinkers. While each emphasizes a different set of characteristics, they all represent the personalist focus on advanced cognitive ability. White’s list includes: “1) A person is alive; 2) A person is aware; 3) A person feels

positive and negative sensations; 4) A person has emotions; 5) A person has a sense of self; 6) A person controls its

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1. A being with advanced cognitive and social abilities: a rational mind, is a person.

2. Dolphins have advanced cognitive and social abilities.

3. Therefore dolphins are persons.

4. Persons have unique and full moral status (dignity).

5. Dolphins therefore have unique and full moral status.

From the personalist perspective, animals rights advocates focus on proposition 2,

proving that dolphins meet the standards of personhood. If dolphins can be shown to be rational

minds, then they are also persons. The strong ethical conclusion follows: if dolphins are persons,

then they are entitled to appropriate treatment.24

Our treatment of them must change in

accordance with their moral status, specifically White and the AAAS scientists mention issues of

captivity, breeding, and fishing practices, even drawing parallels to slavery.25

The Idea of Persons

Although the idea of personhood for dolphins is disputed from many angles, the claim

and its evidence is not insignificant. That it is well documented and well argued only increases

its controversy. Science, philosophy, and ethics converge here to create an interesting dilemma:

the use of the traditional high standards of personhood to challenge the uniqueness of human

personhood. As discussed earlier, we have traditionally thought about persons as human beings,

who have a unique ontological and moral status which does not pertain to animals. However, this

claim calls that uniqueness into question and challenges us to reevaluate our conceptual and

moral categories. Have we correctly understood what it is to be a person? Do we understand

own behavior; 7) A person recognizes other persons and treats them appropriately; 8) A person has a variety of

sophisticated cognitive abilities.”

24White, In Defense, 214-15.

25Ibid., 211-12. Our application of personhood has a morally dubious past. Remember that indigenous

people were exhibited in zoos, even at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. In many cases, they were considered

“quasi-persons” closer to animals, more brutes than sophisticated human beings, i.e.the personalist concept. Their

various person-making characteristics were down-played or ignored. See Sarah Zielinski, "The Tragic Tale of the

Pygmy in the Zoo," in Smithsonian, December 8, 2008 [on-line]; accessed 24 March 2010;

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2008/12/02/the-tragic-tale-of-the-pygmy-in-the-zoo; Internet; and Mitch

Keller, "The Scandal at the Zoo," in The New York Times, August 6, 2006 [on-line]; accessed 24 March 2010;

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/thecity/06zoo.html?_r=3; Internet.

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what moral status is appropriate for persons? Is “person” a useful category at all? If so, have we

historically been treating certain persons (animals) in a morally reprehensible fashion? What is

human dignity? Does the attribution of personhood to animals demean human dignity?26

The idea of a person as a rational animal or soul has a long philosophical history from

Aristotle to the present. It has generally defined the parameters of how we think both about

human beings and about persons: persons are distinguished by their minds.27

For instance,

Moreland and Craig write, “What makes the human soul a person is that the human soul is

equipped with rational faculties of intellect and volition that enable it to be a self-reflective agent

capable of self-determination,”28

Swinburne concurs with this understanding of personhood, “By

a person I mean an individual with basic powers (to act intentionally), purposes, and beliefs.”29

Moreland and Craig continue, "we naturally equate a rational soul with a person ... The reason

human souls are individual persons is because each soul is equipped with one set of rational

26R. Albert Mohler, Jr., "Newsnote: Make Way for 'Non-Human Persons?'," in AlbertMohler.com,

January 7, 2010 [on-line]; accessed 7 january 2010; http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/01/07/newsnote-make-way-

for-non-human-persons; Internet; and Gaylin, Adam and Eve, 3-6. Mohler and Gaylin are right to suggest that

human dignity is challenged by the animal rights claims. The term “dignity” has generally been used to indicate that

which separates humans from animals and gives human unique moral status. Both forms of the animal rights

argument hold that humans are neither separate from animals nor unique in their characteristics. Both arguments

imply that human dignity is a social construct, similar to racism as “white dignity” and sexism as “male dignity.” If

we are to hold onto the claim of a unique human dignity in the face of these rival positions, it seems to require a

refinement in our understanding of the term. Mohler and Gaylin may be right that it has been traditionally rooted in

the idea of the image of God, something uniquely found in humans. But the image of God has been understood

philosophically as “rationality” or “Mind”. If other types of beings are rational minds, then two responses seem to be

available from the Christian perspective. First, argue that animals such as dolphins are not really rational and so not persons, or are rational but are not persons. Given the direction of science and cultural change, this argument will

have increasingly little support. Second, enunciate the idea of the image of God in ways that intellectually and

creatively discern the metaphysical distinctions between humans and other rational beings. The challenge is to

enunciate that distinction when the physical differences continue to be eroded from a scientific perspective. Perhaps

it represents an intractable conflict: an animal rights culture claiming personhood for animals versus a Christian

culture claiming the image of God in human beings, each with their own sorts of evidence but little common ground.

27J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview

(Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003), 598. 28

Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 594. 29Richard Swinburne, "God," in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, eds. Charles Taliaferro and Paul

J Griffiths (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 51.

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faculties sufficient for being a person,"30

They propose that a rational soul is a person and that

human beings meet the requirements of "rational soul." Humans "have" or "are" a rational soul, a

mind, and therefore are persons.

Determining Personhood

Now a question arises: how do I determine if a particular being is a rational soul, a

mind? For instance, how would I determine if you were a rational soul, rather than a dumb

animal or an automaton? Philosophy has dealt in detail with the problem of other minds, in

response to Hume’s skeptical challenge, and we shall not go into it here. It is generally argued

that we rely on inductive reasoning to conclude the existence of other minds. Two philosophical

methods have been proposed: the argument by best explanation and the argument by analogy.31

In the “best explanation” method, I observe that your behavior gives signs of intentionality,

volition, and purpose. While other theories such as alien possession or advanced robotics may

explain those behaviors, these explanations are unlikely. I induce that Mind is the best

explanation for what I observe. In the analogical method, I begin by observing my own actions

and find that they arise from the activity of my self-conscious mind. I then observe that your

actions: reacting to bad news, writing grocery lists, discussing movies, slogging through

philosophical texts, etc. are all similar to those I myself carry out, which I know from direct

experience arise as a result of Mind. Therefore reasoning from analogy, I propose that you, like

myself, are a rational soul. Now, the important thing to note here is that I draw these conclusions

not from a direct experience of your Mind but from observing various signs which I interpret as

indications of Mind.

30 Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 594.

31Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (New York:

Routledge, 2003), 298-99.

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Artifacts

This insight becomes particularly important when we shift our attention to beings that

are removed in one way or another from our immediate observation. How do we determine the

rationality, or personhood, of beings that are distant from us? Consider, for instance, beings that

are temporally distant from us: how do we know that the ancient Egyptians were persons? We

know it because we induce it from evidence, by observing that they built temples, pyramids,

wrote in hieroglyphics, etc. In other words, they left various sorts of signs, which we will call

artifacts, which we interpret as indications of Mind. Similarly, consider even more remote beings

with an evidential record sparser than the ancient Egyptians: the Cro-Magnons. We know of the

Cro-Magnons primarily through skeletal remains, examples of tools such as spear and arrow

heads, and a few examples of art such as cave paintings, in which human and animal figures,

handprints, and various actions such as hunting are depicted. Despite our distance, when we

encounter these cave paintings, we seem to instantly recognize and connect with the personhood

of these remote beings. Again, through inductive reasoning, we conclude that these types of

artifacts are sufficient to indicate the rationality and personhood of Cro-Magnons.

Culture without artifacts

Given the right evidence, specifically artifacts that are strongly inductively associated

with rational minds, we can successfully conclude that beings are rational souls, or persons.

What sets persons apart from animals are these artifacts: persons make tools, paint pictures, build

cities, write history, and develop organizations. These artifacts are strongly connected to

rationality through our two inductive arguments, but they are different from a sophisticated

mental life. They are not mental life, but only indications of mental life, certain types of evidence

from which we induce the existence of a rational soul.

But certain human cultures have exhibited a scarcity of these sorts of artifacts. For

instance, when the Australian aboriginals were first discovered by Europeans, they were a

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culture almost entirely lacking in the type of artifacts generally associated with rationality. Many

groups were completely nomadic, without buildings, few tools, clothing, jewelry, etc. They were

considered the perfect example of pure, primitive beings on the cusp of the evolutionary

transition from primate to human, when rationality and religion were just emerging.32

They were

often treated as “missing links”, not quite as persons, when encountered by cultures with strong

personalist ideas of human beings.33

But we have since understood that the Aboriginals

represented an oral culture in which their sophisticated mental life, their personhood, was

primarily exhibited in “oral artifacts”. By oral artifacts, I mean human works that are linguistic

and conceptual, rather than physical. Aboriginals tell stories, give things names, play music, and

hold rich and complex understandings of their environment, history, kinship relations, and

cosmology. Therefore the sophisticated mental life of these persons is expressed in non-physical

artifacts, oral and relational in nature. Because of issues such as language difference and cultural

misunderstanding, these artifacts were not seen or appreciated by most Europeans until

anthropological work began to illuminate the richness of these “primitive” cultures.

Now, what if we discovered that in a similar way dolphins have a sophisticated mental

life expressed in non-physical sorts of artifacts? Thomas White argues that scientific research

has demonstrated that dolphins use both verbal and non-verbal methods of communication: they

“talk” or “sign”.34

Imagine that through future research we “crack the code’ of dolphin language

and realize that while dolphins cannot build cities or do art, they do tell stories.35

What if we

simply misunderstand dolphins, not speaking their language and misinterpreting their signs since

they obviously utilize neither facial expressions, hand gestures, or other types of signing with

32Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1986), 49.

33Zielinski, “The Tragic Tale,” and Keller, “The Scandal.”

34White, In Defense, 141,146. 35 We should note that our access to dolphins is insignificant compared to our access even to remote

human groups. Anthropologists discover the intricacies of human culture by living with and observing those cultures

for long periods of time. However, no one can live with dolphins in the same way.

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which we are familiar. What if by deciphering their language and symbolic methods, we

discovered that they sing songs or found indications of rhyme or rhythm? What if they

communicated ideas of ancestry and kinship and gave names to other creatures and places in

their environment?

Apart from the ability to successfully decipher them, these sorts of oral and relational

artifacts are for the most part invisible to us. They raise the possibility that there might indeed be

non-physical artifacts of various sorts that are strongly correlated with rationality, intentionality,

purpose, i.e. the various person-making characteristics, but which we have a tendency to

overlook or misunderstand. We might mistakenly conclude that dolphins are just dumb animals,

instead of persons. [Though experiment: my wife holding my baby (conclude Mind), photo of

inuit mother from 1880 holding baby (conclude Mind), photo of whale mother gently caressing

baby (what do I conclude – instinct or mind? If instinct,Why? Presuppositions – Just from

imagining those scenes in order there is no reason to draw different conclusions]

White raises the possibility that dolphin “culture,” the term we generally use for these

non-physical artifacts, might be difficult for us to discern because it is specifically adapted to an

aquatic, rather than a terrestrial, environment. For instance, the physical characteristics necessary

for bodies in aquatic settings are different from a terrestrial design. Unlike our highly movable

human faces, dolphin faces are rigid to plow the water and so cannot indicate emotional and

mental life. White argues that the reliance of dolphins on echolocation might give a wholly

different shape to dolphin perception and thinking.36

Similarly, dolphins may compensate for

36 White, In Defense, 20-27, 177-78. White has a fascinating discussion of echolocation and how it

might shape dolphin cognitive and social life. For instance, dolphins may communicate through the timing of sounds

rather than intonation. Dolphins can “click” so fast that humans cannot distinguish the individual sounds, but

scientists believe dolphins may be able to discern patterns within those “buzzes.” While it “sounds like Greek” to us,

the clicking of dolphins may involve detailed types of communication. Echolocation is a type of sonar which

enables dolphins to “see” through objects that are visually opaque, giving them a different perception of the world

from visually oriented human beings. White tells a story of a dolphin scanning the body of a woman and

communicating that the woman was pregnant. Some scientists argue that dolphins can share echolocatory sensory

experience, “by listening to someone else’s echoes, one dolphin can actually share another dolphin’s experience,”

17

their lack of physical structures by means of social behaviors which are entirely unfamiliar to

human observers.37

In other words, because of their distance from us, expressed in terms of

environmental difference, the evidence of their mental life would be unlike that of human beings.

White emphasizes this difference, “there may very well be fundamental differences in how

‘intelligence’ manifests itself in different big-brained species when one has evolved on land, the

other has evolved in the oceans, and they’ve had to adapt to dramatically different

environments,”38

If these dissimilar sorts of non-physical artifacts were revealed in dolphin life,

it would seem to require the conclusion that dolphins, or other higher mammals, have a mental

life that meets the criteria of for rationality. This, at least, seems to be the argument that Thomas

and others are making. Dolphins are persons, with all the social, legal, and moral implications

that status entails.

An Alternative Perspective

There is a third approach which may give us different insights into personhood. This

discussion will focus on the religious data of animism. Animism is defined in various ways, but

generally concerns the idea that all of life contains personal attributes. Graham Harvey succinctly

defines animists as those who “recognize that the world is full of persons, only some of whom

are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others.”39

Perhaps this seems a

biased perspective from which to examine the question of animals and personhood, since

animists are predisposed to see personal qualities in non-human beings. However, we should not

like looking through someone else’s eyes (178). This sort of experience might give dolphins a very different sense of

self. 37Ibid., 121.

38Ibid., 117. We shouldn’t be distracted by the evolutionary argument. A similar argument could be

constructed from a design perspective: If beings are specifically designed for certain environments, we would expect that intelligence would be expressed in ways specifically fitting those different settings.

39Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World (New York: Columbia University Press,

2006), xi.

18

make that a barrier to considering this point of view. Harvey argues that animism should not be

seen as an irrational, superstitious, or uninformed perspective. Rather, animism is a religion

which provides a thoughtful and philosophically rich perspective on the world. He writes, “far

from being a primitive or childish irrationality” animism brings our “hunches” and experiences

with personhood “under the sway of more carefully considered, practiced, and educated

knowledges.”40

Animism is deeply concerned with persons, what counts as a person, how we discern

what is or is not a person, and how persons are to be treated. In that way it represents a source of

data that we ought to consider. For example, if we were investigating a traffic accident, we

would examine the scene, measure the skid marks, and interview the people involved. But what

if as we were leaving the scene, we noticed an old man sitting on a nearby park bench quietly

observing everything that happened? Even if we doubted his effectiveness as a witness, we

would be amiss if we failed to ask what he saw. In a similar way, the animists have been quietly

observing the scene of our investigation in their own way for a long time. We must at least

inquire if the worldview offers helpful philosophical insights into personhood.

The Relational Community

We have seen that the physicalist and personalist approaches resolve the issue of the

personhood of infants in different ways. The physicalist looks for personhood in minimal or

universal physical demarcations and therefore attributes personhood to any and every genetically

human infant. The personalist sees personhood in the capacity for advanced cognitive function

and therefore does not attribute personhood, or full personhood, to the human infant. The animist

approach is distinctive, however, because it considers neither nature nor capacities but discovers

personhood within the relational context.

40Ibid., 198.

19

Charlotte Hardman describes a ritual among a tribe in Nepal in which new born

infants, five or six days old, are introduced to the ancestors. The ritual is the most important in

the infant’s life, on which their future depends, because “it is the rite in which the child…gains

personhood.”41

The issue is not one of nature or capacity: the baby is considered human and the

ritual is not thought to give the baby the capacity for either rationality or relationality. Instead,

the ritual facilitates the formation of relational ties to the baby, whether by ancestors or just the

living tribe itself. As Hardman writes, “until the baby has been introduced to the ancestors, it is

not considered a person.”42

This introduces a new criterion into the discussion of personhood,

that of relationality. In this approach, personhood is not a property of a being, but is constituted

within relationships. Persons are those beings who relate and towards whom a community

relates. Persons are those with whom we can and do have substantive relational encounters.

The Experiential Quality of Personhood

Another distinctive aspect of the animistic approach towards personhood is its

experiential and phenomenological character. Personhood at its core is not defined or observed;

it is experienced in the relationality of beings. Relationality defines and shapes the animistic

worldview in ways both deeply religious and deeply personal, as Morrison writes, “Native

American religious sensibilities focus on the ways in which reality is interactive.”43

The

animistic conception of personhood shares in that perspective. “Person” is more verb than noun.

It is not an objective property, or set of properties or capacities owned by an individual being; yet

it is not subjective either, in the sense of one’s perspective on the world, a story one tells oneself.

Personhood is intertwined in the “interpersonal encounter”; it is an intersubjective and

41Charlotte E. Hardman, "Rites of Passage among the Lohorung Rai of East Nepal," in Indigenous

Religions: A Companion, ed. Graham Harvey (New York: Cassell, 2000), 209. 42Ibid., 207.

43Kenneth M. Morrison, "The Cosmos as Intersubjective: Native American other-than-human persons,"

in Indigenous Religions: A Companion, ed. Graham Harvey (New York: Cassell, 2000), 33.

20

interactional experience.44

In animism, we know that a being is a person, not because of an

inventory of its nature and characteristics, but because we encounter it as a person.

Here we might be helped by Martin Buber, who also locates the essence of

personhood in the experience of another person, in the personal encounter with another. As

Walters describes his perspective, “the reality of life does not lie in each of us individually” but

in “personal interaction.”45

What is important about persons is not their characteristics but what

Buber calls the “between.”46

The between is the experiential encounter between two beings in

which the personhood of each is realized and recognized. It is what Buber calls the “I-Thou”

encounter.47

We know that the other is a person because we encounter it as a person. It seems to

me that the emphasis on shape-shifting and the loose lines between animal and human in the

animistic worldview relate to this experience.48

These ideas are symbols which attempt to

communicate or approximate the experience of the animist in these personal encounters with

other beings. The shape-shifting animal symbolically or mythically communicates the content of

the I-Thou experience. It is the animist saying, “I encountered this being as a person,” not as a

human being but nevertheless in a deeply personal way. The symbolic connection of the animal

44Ibid. 31-32.

45Walters, What is a Person?, 49.

46Ibid., 49. Buber uses the term Zwischen.

47While Buber uses this term to discuss the human – divine relationship, all I mean to indicate is the

deep, substantive encounter with another person – the recognition of personhood in the encounter with another, as

opposed to an I-it encounter for instance. I am not suggesting that animism sees the human – other-than-human

encounter as necessarily religious in nature, or in any way similar to the encounter with the divine. While some

other-than-human beings in animism may be divine beings, many and perhaps most are not. I am not suggesting, in

other words, that animals are divine or considered divine. 48Morrison, “The Cosmos,” 32. Animals become humans, humans become animals, animals are

anthropomorphized and humans are animamorphized. One anthropologist describes the perspective of the Kwakiutl,

a tribe in British Columbia, who believe animals “to be human beings who have donned the masks and costumes

that created their animal forms.” I suggest that what these sorts of ideas communicate is not that animals are

humans, or that animals commonly shape-shift, but that the core of reality and other beings is personal. It is not an

ontological proposition, so much as a mythic representation of personhood.

21

with a human form and characteristics reveals and holds open the possibility that one might have

a substantive relational encounter with non-human beings.

Signs of Intent

While animists experience personhood within the encounter with another being, they

do not reduce it to phenomenology. Animists also point to evidence of personhood. What

animists encounter in the world are other beings who exhibit artifacts of personhood. When

animists look at the other-than-human world, they see evidence that “much of what animals

do…is intentional, planned, and purposive.”49

Animists report various sorts of encounters with

living beings as indications of person-making qualities from which they induce the presence of

personhood in these beings. We will briefly examine several classes of evidence that animists

read as signs of intent, indications that animals are persons who relate to us and with whom we

can relate.

Encounters

The first class is that of the direct personal encounter with an animal that gives the

animist reason to believe that the animal is a person. We should note that animists do not classify

every interaction with animals as personal interactions. Sometimes the animal is a person, while

at other times it may indeed be just an animal. Person-making characteristics are often apparent

in the anecdotes of these personal encounters. For instance, Harvey recounts an event that

occurred at the first traditional powwow held by the Conne River Mi’kmaq band in

Newfoundland, during a revitalization period when the tribe was recovering some of its

traditional ways. During the last song, a lone eagle “flew one perfect circle over the central drum

group and then returned to its watching place across the river.” While Harvey notes that eagles

are common in the area, “the flight of this eagle, in this way, at this moment, was celebrated as

49 Harvey, Animism, 101.

22

an encouragement of the process of the human community’s return to tradition.”50

Several things

are important about this and similar incidents. The framework of the event was the experiential

nature of the encounter: the eagle was experienced as a person. Its flight was understood as an

intentional conscious act in which the eagle was participating in the community (kinship), and as

a clear act of communication with the humans. Only a person can act in such a way. Imagine if a

single engine place had flown one circle over the event – we would ask “What are they doing”

assuming mind at work.

Nor are these sorts of experiences only found within the animistic worldview. Thomas

White mentions that stories of dolphin helpfulness, such as rescuing endangered sailors, are

found throughout history and seem to indicate intentional moral response to human crisis.51

Dolphins recognize and act appropriately towards other persons. He also recounts several

episodes between scientific researchers and dolphins in which the researchers suddenly and

vividly encountered the personhood of dolphins.52

In each case, such as a “me, too” sharing

experience between a pregnant dolphin and pregnant researcher, or aggressive encounters in

which dolphins “warned off” the researchers, the dolphins expressed intentionality, self-

consciousness, and even morality.53

These specific events stood out in respect to most

cetacean/human interactions in their quality of human-oriented, interactional, and relational

character. The researchers encountered the dolphins as persons who shared and participated in

the humans’ emotional and social life. As Harvey describes it, “the unusual physical proximity

50Harvey, Animism, 102-03.

51White, In Defense, 220.

52Ibid., 23, 130, 140-41.

53Ibid., 141, 220. White believes that these sorts of incidents, in which dolphins seem to restrain their

aggressive behavior toward humans, demonstrate that dolphins understand humans beings as other minds, other

persons who require a moral response. They treat the researchers appropriately as persons.

23

that sometimes occurs in encounters between particular [animals] and particular humans can be

considered to be deliberate acts of communicative intimacy.”54

54Harvey, Animism, 103.

24

Dreams and Religious Epistemology

Animists do not believe that reality is akin to Walt Disney movies in which animals

may at any moment begin speaking in English, singing and dancing, and helping out with the

chores. However, they do believe that animals as persons communicate and do so in dreams.55

For instance, the Ojibwa understand dreams as important sources of experience and information,

“far from being of subordinate importance, such experiences are for them often of more vital

importance than the events of daily waking life…because it is in dreams that the individual

comes into direct communication with… the powerful persons of the other-than-human class.”56

From a philosophical perspective, dreams fill an epistemological function for animists. They are

a means of obtaining justified beliefs about areas of reality outside of human sensory perception.

Epistemology generally accepts faculties such as perception, rationality, consciousness, memory,

and testimony as sources of justified belief.57

The animist approach (and by some readings, the

biblical approach) challenge us to consider the expansion of our sources of knowledge to include

dreams. Dreams are sources of knowledge for the reality of other-than-human persons, whether

animal or angelic.

Possession

We will not talk about possession in detail, but only note that it is a widespread

religious phenomenon, found within animism and most other religions. Religious traditions

describe various forms of possession: demonic possession; the ecstatic experience of charismatic

Christians being filled with the Holy Ghost; the vodou medium through whom various spirits

may talk, act, and solve problems in the human world; indigenous Kachina masks by which

55Ibid., 135.

56A. Irving Hallowell, "Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and Worldview," in Teachings from the American

Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy, eds. Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock (New York: Liveright, 1975),

165. 57See Audi, Epistemology, for a detailed discussion of these sources of knowledge.

25

human persons channel and give physical form to cosmic persons.58

Possession is understood as

an event in which a non-human being inhabits a human body and acts within that body. The

human body becomes a tool for the intentionality and volition of the non-human possessor. The

philosophical issue is this: what kind of being could successfully inhabit and operate a human

body? Surely an animal, in Gaylin’s sense of a purely instinctual mechanical being, could not

successfully accomplish such a feat; only another person, a mind, could be capable of it.

Examining the philosophical issues of possession could be a line of research which might

provide evidence for the existence of other-than-human persons.

Animal Culture

Animists interpret animal behavior in cultural instead of instinctive terms. Notice the

difference between these two approaches towards animal behavior. Gaylin writes,

Animal activities that seem imaginative, brilliant, or intelligent are none of these. The organized

behavior of insects is fixed by instinct, not by choice, and the stupid mechanical quality of such

behavior can be revealed by its lethal persistence even when environmental conditions have

changed, making the formerly life-supportive behavior deadly.59

Of course, many might comment that human behavior also exemplifies some of this persistence

in the face of futility or even lethality. Harvey points out that animal and human behavior may be

closer than we expect. Both humans and animals engage in patterned behavior and in behavior

that seems intentional. He mentions that animals often act towards humans in ways that seem to

indicate choice and then goes on to say, “even among themselves, when communicating about

food supplies and territories, animals are engaging in culture not merely operating according to

instinctive or mechanical necessity,” (emphasis added).60

What we have is not a disagreement

58Morrison, “The Cosmos”, 35. 59Gaylin, Adam and Eve, 33.

60Harvey, Animism, 102.

26

regarding behaviors, though Harvey takes a broader range of animal behavior into account, but a

disagreement regarding the interpretation of that behavior.61

Cultural behavior may be defined as patterned behavior within a group that is learned,

in contrast to instinctive behavior, which is patterned behavior within a group that is natural,

genetic, unlearned. We know that animals learn, some more than others, and adapt to their

surroundings, indicating that animal behavior is not merely mechanical. The AAAS scientists

discuss dolphins as “cultural animals,” meaning that they learn new behaviors from one

another.62

The animist argument seems to be that animals, and humans for that matter, exhibit

cultural as well as instinctual behavior and deepens the analysis by suggesting that species

specific behavior among animals is comparable to cultural differences among human beings.

Where Gaylin sees instinctual species-bound behavior, animists see differing animal cultures.

Just as Germans and Italians have different patterns of behavior, eat different foods, build

different sorts of houses, so birds and badgers, cats and dogs exhibit different patterns of cultural

behaviors.

We may suggest to the animist that if you take a dog and raise it among a group of

cats, it remains a dog. It does not act, eat, or behave like a cat.63

That is true. However, the

correct conclusion to draw from that insight, according to the animist, is not that animal behavior

is wholly fixed, but that animal behavior has a more limited range of variability than human

behavior. But we should also remember that the sort of eclectic tastes that humans exhibit is a

61This disagreement can be seen as part of the philosophical problem of other minds. The question is:

What data is sufficient to reasonably conclude that another mind exists in any particular being. Animists look at the

data about animals and induce the presence of a mind, an agent exhibiting self-consciousness to some degree.

62Leake, “Scientists Say”

63Sometimes we say similar things about humans. Our family sometimes said about one of my great

aunts, “That’s the Irish in her!” No offense intended to anyone of Irish descent. What we meant of course is that

“you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl!” Although raised in a

different environment, some of those characteristic behavior patterns remain, even in humans. So are these

behaviors cultural or instinctive? Singer discusses the tendency to downplay the instinctive nature of patterned

behavior in humans, Singer, Liberation, 249.

27

relatively new phenomenon. For most of human history, human behavior was more limited.

Animist thinking arises from the sort of situation in which humans ate what was around them or

available locally and built shelters adapted to specific environments. Human language, clothing,

and culture were very localized and group bound. And to deviate from this group-behavior

would have been almost unthinkable; innovation and individualistic expression held a limited

place in their lives. It was natural for the Ojibwa to live as Ojibwa, for the Inuit to live as Inuit.

To be removed from that natural setting was to lose one’s self. In this sense, the distance

between human culture and the species-specific behavior of animals seems closer than we might

at first think, and is interpreted by animists as the idiosyncrasies of different sorts of persons.

If dolphins and other animals exhibit cultural behavior, why might we or Gaylin fail to

see this intentionality? The first reason is simply that Gaylin may be correct and signs of

intentionality are not present in animals. We are not justified in concluding that animals are

rational minds. Pet owners simply read too much into animal behavior and anthropomorphize

animals for sentimental reasons, while the primitive presuppositions of animists distort their

observations. However, if those signs are present, there may be other reasons that explain our

overlooking of them. Our presuppositions about animals may cause us to miss or misunderstand

signs of intent in animal behavior. Our isolation from animals may prevent us from thoroughly

observing their behavior. On the other hand, animals may not choose to demonstrate rationality

to us. Harvey discusses the possibility that if animals are agents, they might choose to relate or

not to relate to humans. Thus, we must distinguish not between persons and objects, but “persons

in the process of relating [showing themselves as persons to other persons] and persons being

disinterested in and unresponsive to others.”64

In other words, there may be sufficient reason to

believe that animals do or can exhibit intentional behavior of which we may or may not be

aware.

64Harvey, Animism, 101. Harvey describes the Nayaka of India who speak of elephants at times

“personing” towards humans and at other times not engaging with “other-than-elephant persons.”

28

Advantages

Given the various sorts of evidence that animists and others muster, we must decide

whether the sort of artifacts they describe are sufficient evidence for personhood. There seem to

be several advantages to receiving the animist position, in comparison to the other approaches

we have examined. The physicalist approach radically undermines the appraisal of human

characteristics that we find intrinsically valuable. The personalist approach seems to require

equal moral and legal status for persons, so that non-human persons must be incorporated into

the human community in problematic ways. Both seem to blur the real and meaningful

distinctions between humans and other intelligent creatures/persons.

Within the animist account, however, we have resources for a deepened understanding

of the nature and place of animals without the distortions implicit in the other approaches. The

animist account does not require equal moral or legal standing. It does not commit us to

vegetarianism or social equality for animals; consider that animists eat animals. While they

accommodate a significant place for animals in their lives, they also hold to a sense of integrity

about the human community. There are many communities of persons, human and non-human.

Those communities interact and interface in numerous ways, yet the communities also have a

strong sense of self-integrity.

Nor does accepting the animist understanding of personhood commit us to the position

that all animals are persons all the time. The phenomenological or experiential rather than

substantive view of personhood allows for it to be a type of interaction into and from which

beings may move. While ostensibly about stones, Hallowell’s understanding applies to

personhood as well:

the Ojibwa are not animists in the sense that they dogmatically attribute living souls to inanimate

objects such as stones…. It leaves a door open that our orientation on dogmatic grounds keeps shut

tight. Whereas we should never expect a stone to manifest animate properties of any kind under

29

any circumstances, the Ojibwa recognize, a priori, potentialities for animation in certain classes of

objects under certain circumstances.65

This captures the variability in our experience of animals, who at times exhibit person-making

qualities and at other times do not. It neither reduces them to brutes, nor elevates them to human-

like status. It does, however, hold the door open for the possibility of significant, person to

person experiences with other-than-human persons. This new conceptual paradigm gives us

resources for respecting and interacting with non-human communities while avoiding

problematic ontological commitments. Some animals are encountered as persons, which means

that we acknowledge “the potential presence of intentionality (desire, need, purposefulness,

selfishness, selflessness,) and thus the existence of self-consciousness and other oriented beings

whose actions must be taken into account in the course of daily life.”66

Ultimately it seems that by recognizing animals as persons, the animistic approach

creates patterns of co-existence which preserve the possibility for significant relational

interaction among beings. This possibility, obliterated by conceptualizing animals as brutes, is

preserved in the delicate balance of communities of persons. The animist view of persons may

provide an intellectual resource that would allow humans to extend appropriate treatment to

animals. From this perspective, we recognize human beings as one community of persons among

others, each with their own ways of life and their own value. We learn to adapt the life of our

human communities around those of other-than-humans persons, holding open the possibility of

moments of substantive interaction. We seek to interact respectfully and thoughtfully, as White

calls it with “appropriate treatment” of persons towards other persons. Using an animistic

understanding of personhood, we can receive other beings as persons while not necessarily

extending to them full ontological and moral equality.67

65Hallowell, “Ojibwa,” 147-48.

66Morrison, “The Cosmos,” 26.

67Ibid., “The Cosmos,” 29, 39. Morrison notes that animism is a pragmatic approach towards persons

tempered with deep ethical commitments. These commitments are reflected and actualized in the ritualized

interaction with other-than-human persons. Native Americans eat fish, while recognizing their obligation to the

30

Balaam’s Donkey

Seeing the potential advantages of the animist approach toward persons, one further

question must be asked: does this approach fit within a Christian perspective? Let us begin

thinking about this by acknowledging that the Christian worldview does recognize non-human

persons. The biblical account has generally been read by Christians to support the idea that

demons, angels, and especially God are examples of non-human persons. The Bible seems to

extend the idea of personhood up the ontological hierarchy. The question is: can the concept of

personhood be extended “down” the ontological hierarchy to include members of the class of

animals? There are several biblical sources that we might engage in this discussion, such as

blood and the moral status of animals, the Sabbath and the moral status of animals, and angelic

beings represented as animals, to name a few. Ez. 1 – the angelic beings had a human, lion, oc,

and eagle faces

However for this paper, we will briefly examine the biblical account of Balaam’s

donkey which appears in Numbers 22:21 and following.68

Quickly summarized, Balaam is riding

his donkey so that he might go and curse the Israelites. The angel of the Lord blocks his path, but

Balaam is unaware of the angel’s presence. His donkey, however, is quite aware of the angel and

tries to avoid him in various ways. Frustrated, Balaam beats the donkey until the Lord opens the

donkey’s mouth, allowing the donkey to plead his case in an unmistakable way. After a brief

discussion with the donkey, the angel is revealed to Balaam. The angel accuses Balaam of his

immoral behavior toward the donkey, validates the donkey’s sensitivity and suggests that she

(the donkey) saved Balaam’s life.

community of fish as persons and the mutually sustaining relationship between the two communities. Ritual

provides the context in which those relationships are maintained and enacted. 68While no direct quotations from the Bible are used, I did reference the English Standard Version for

this discussion.

31

Read from the perspective of this paper, the account is an astonishing perspective on

the possibility of other-than-human persons. Two features are important to see: 1) Balaam’s

donkey was no brute, and 2) Balaam failed to see it because of his presuppositions. First, the

donkey displayed all the characteristics of a person. She was aware of spiritual realities,

demonstrated intentionality and self-consciousness, and acted morally towards Balaam, seeking

to protect him. When given the opportunity, the donkey communicated intelligently with

Balaam. All these are the sorts of non-physical artifacts, or signs of intent that this paper has

associated with other-than-human persons. Regarding Balaam, he failed to see these signs,

presumably because he presupposed that his donkey was a dumb brute. Despite his ignorance,

his treatment of the donkey was condemned as immoral both by the donkey and by the angel

(Num. 22.28-30, 32). In fact, the angel seemed to value the life of the donkey over that of the

human (Num. 22.33).

The Christian is left with several options in regard to Balaam’s donkey. First, he might

read the passage as a parable. However, this is difficult since the account appears in the midst of

a text that most evangelicals would consider a historical narrative. The context does not lend

itself easily to this interpretation. Second, he might read it as a miracle in the sense of a singular

event of God’s primary causation. In this case, he would understand the apparent personhood of

the donkey to be God’s intervention in the course of events. The “person” is not the donkey but

God acting towards Balaam through the donkey, much as He might speak through a burning

bush. But such a reading is hard to correlate with the text. The donkey acts intelligently and

intentionally from her own resources, apart from divine enabling. While God did open the

donkey’s mouth, the Bible says that it was the donkey who spoke, not God speaking through the

donkey. Third, the Christian can accept the plain reading of the text in which the donkey is

clearly described as an other-than-human person. While not demonstrating that all donkeys are

persons, the passage opens the possibility that some are at some times. Furthermore, it is not

enough that Balaam stop beating his donkey. The implication of the text is the Balaam should

have been open to her person-making qualities; he is at fault for treating her as a brute. Indeed,

32

the biblical understanding of the donkey seems very similar to the animist account we have

examined.

Conclusion

The idea behind my examination of personhood is that a cultural shift is taking place

in our understanding of animal life. Americans are increasingly uncomfortable with seeing

animals as either brutes or property, and with the types of uses of animals to which those

conceptual categories have led. We have been too much like Balaam. While I am partial to the

“fellow creature” approach, it has failed to adequately protect animals. The animal rights

movement has begun to advocate the application of the concept of “person” to animals and has

marshaled scientific and philosophical evidence on its behalf. I agree with the animal rights

position that “person” has the conceptual weight which may provide more adequate protection

for non-human beings. However, both the physicalist and personalist approaches toward

personhood lead to ontological, as well as moral and legal, difficulties. Animism, however,

approaches the idea of personhood from a unique perspective. It gives us a new cognitive

paradigm for understanding and valuing animals while avoiding the problems inherent in the

other approaches.

33

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