A Descriptive Psychologist and Psychoanalyst's exploration of the behavioral logic of freedom, liberation and reaction. Short takes on the qualities that make us human: empathy, ethics, aesthetics, improvisation and play.
Policies are guides to how we'd like to live our lives. Maxims are the behavioral logic that guide proper description. "If the situation calls for a person to do something they can't do, they will do something they can do instead," is different from the more hopeful, "people do the best they can", since it is pretty clear, often enough, they don't. People doing the best they can is a kind and generous variation of the policy "give people the benefit of the doubt," and that's usually a good first move. There is a conceptual difference between behavioral logic, the Descriptive Psychological maxims employed to guide proper description, and personal and therapeutic policies that represent our values and the direction we hope life will take. To give people the benefit of the doubt, to treat them as doing the best they can, is a good first move since it usually avoids starting off on the wrong foot with a degradation. Of course, when we treat someone as doing the best they can and they know damn well they're not, we might end up disqualifying ourselves as competent judges. It's a risk, but that's why policies are different from maxims. Policies are to be followed until or unless we have reason enough not to, whereas behavioral logic in the form of maximsare the constraints or the rules for correctly framed descriptions. The body of behavioral logic that constitutes the maxims in Descriptive Psychology is "an open-ended collection, since there is no limit to the different warning, reminders, etc. that might appropriately be given by one person to another in regard to describing persons and their behavior" (Ossorio, PLACE, 1998/2012). People always act within their values, knowledge and competence. What else can they do? But do they do their best? Sometimes, maybe. This illustrates the difference between logical forms, the grammar of making sense, and social policies and choice principles. "If the situation calls for a person to do something they can't do, they will do something they can do instead," is a logical form, a tautology. Treating people as doing the best they can, is a social policy, a manner of not engaging in a dismissive or degrading stance.
Maxims can also serve as a sort of grammar that guides the shape of a hypothesis or empirical generalization. In these cases, the logical structure serves as the frame for the empirical content. "When over-excited or in doubt, groom," is an example of an empirical generalization of a pattern of vertebrate behavior. Grooming, whether a response to over-excitment or confusing uncertainty, is an example of the more general notion of displacement behavior, something I was taught when I was going to be a zoologist. I was taught that displacement behavior sometimes occurs when an animal is in a situation that might call for aggression but where aggression, for whatever reason, would be problematic for the animal’s survival. This includes conflicts over food, dangerous sexual challenges, or when a juvenile gets too rough with an adult of greater threat potential. For some zoologists, displacement was a manner of bookkeeping drive and excitement, a way of accounting for “frustrated aggression”. The maxim, "If the situation calls for a person to do something they can't do, they will do something they can do instead" can provide a structure to house displacement behavior in the form of the hypothesis, “If a situation would appear to call for an animal to do something that might put it in a worse position, it will likely do something else instead”. This is also informed by a modification of the maxim, “A person values some states of affairs over others and acts accordingly”. Grooming serves social cohesion and also feels good, prudent and hedonic motives, and so also fits the maxim, "If a person has two reasons for doing X, they have a stronger reason for doing X than if they have only one of these reasons." The Maxim, “if a situation calls for something a person can’t do, they will do something they can do", is open concerning what it is that the person will choose or select from their behavior potential. Selections are not random or arbitrary, hence, “If a person values a specific something….they will thereby also value other specific things of the same kind to the extent that they are relevantly similar to the original.”
Displacement attempts to accomplish something relevant, given the circumstances, even if it is not what the observer might expect at first glance. My puppy Hart has a policy, “When you can’t steal the bone, chase your tail.”
.... All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place. ... (109) .... Since everything lies open to view, there is nothing to explain. .... (126) The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a young science....For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion.... The existence of experimental methods make us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and methods pass one another by. (xiv)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
What makes an individual a person is, paradigmatically, to have mastered the concept of a Person. Peter G. Ossorio, PLACE
It is unfortunately clear that the social enterprise called Behavioral Science lacks an adequate and shared framework. The absence of an explicit articulation and map of the concepts that constitute the behavioral sciences impedes intelligible communication and comparative study. Descriptive Psychology, developed by Peter Ossorio, addresses this head on and provides a fresh start.
Descriptive Psychology is the intellectual discipline that makes explicit the implicit structure of the behavioral sciences. It concerns conceptual, pre-empirical and theory-neutral formulations that allow and facilitate the identification of the full range of a subject matter. To the extent legitimate examples or possibilities are found outside an existing Descriptive formulation, the formulation is enlarged or revised. The pre-empirical work is accomplished through identifying and interrelating the essential concepts, the vital distinctions, characterizing all possible instances of a subject matter. The empirical project, on the other hand, involves finding the specific possibilities and patterns that actually occur. To do this, we use our conceptual tools and go out and look.
Descriptive Psychology separates the conceptual and empirical from the theoretical.
We start with conceptualization, then find the data that has a place within the conceptualization. Conceptual formulation is logically prior to finding appropriate empirical instances.
Once an adequate conceptualization is achieved, theory can be employed for explaining why, out of the full range of possibility, only certain empirical patterns are found. But that is not Descriptive Psychology's job. For that task, I might wear my psychoanalytic hat or assemble the tools and hypotheses provided by any of the standard theories or invent new ones.
Descriptive Psychology's conceptual tools explicate and assemble the logical structure of behavior and serve as a formal check on the logical adequacy of description and theory. Descriptive Psychology explicates the Person Concept as the fundamental structure of the behavioral sciences. The Person Concept is a single, coherent concept which involves the interrelated concepts of Individual Person, Behavior, LanguageandWorld. Descriptive Psychology establishes the rules of construction, composition, and relationship that articulate how these concepts are interconnected.
Only Individual Person and Behavior will be addressed in this entry and only in a very basic manner.
The diagrams and illustrations that follow are ones I use in classes on psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice taught from the perspective of Descriptive Psychology. I also use them in a seminar on supervision. They are applicable across the behavioral sciences. Most of the diagrams have a link elaborating the content.
And then examine behavior through the concept of Intentional Action by way of the Agency Diamond:
This represents five of the eight parameters of the full case of Intentional Action that has the conceptually separable dimensions of Identity, Wants, Knows, Knows How, Performance, Achievement, Significance, and Personal Characteristic.
Behavior = Intentional Action = < I, W, K, KH, P, A, S, PC >
I: The Identity of the actor.
W: What the actor Wants to accomplish.
K: What the actor Knows, distinguishes, or recognizes in the circumstance that is relevant to what the actor Wants. (In Deliberate Action the actor recognizes different options, in Cognizant Action the actor is self-aware of the ongoing behavior).
KH: What the actor Knows-How to do given what the actor Wants and Knows about the relevant circumstance.
P: The procedural manner or Performance of the action in real time.
A: The Achievement of the action.
S: The Significance of the action for the actor. What the actor is up to by performing the act in question.
PC: The Personal Characteristics of the actor expressed by the action.
Agency descriptions concern goal directed or purposeful behavior. These descriptions are defined by something recognized and wanted that the person knows how to do. Behavior is motivated by opportunity and dilemma. It involves a performance in real time that achieves some difference in the person's world.
We then go on to represent Cognizant and Self-Aware Action:
In Cognizant Action people know they are engaged in some sort of an Intentional Action. This is represented by the small diamond above the Knows parameter.
We are now ready to look at a special case of Intentional Action called Deliberate Action in which people choose an action from alternative ways of reaching a goal given how they understand or appraise their circumstance. This is the paradigm case of the behavior of persons.
IA=Intentional Action; I=Identity; W=Wants; K=Knows;
KH=Knows How; P=Performance; A=Achievement; PC=Personal
Characteristic; S=Significance. Adapted with
permission from Joe Jeffrey,Ph.D
The larger blue diamond notations are a shorthand that represent an Intentional Action without commitment to the Identity of the actor, the Significance of the act, and the Personal Characteristics that the act reflects. The little blue diamonds represent the person's Intentional Action options given the circumstances. In a Deliberate Action, the actor is both Cognizant of what he is doing (IAin K) and Chooses to do it (IAin W).
Another way of going about this is to remember that persons as Deliberate Actors are able to self-regulate or adjust their behavior to fit their changing circumstances in response to their appraisal of how effective they are in achieving their goals. For this we employ the Actor-Observer-Critic feedback loop of self-regulation. A person is an Actor able to Observe and describe his behavior and Critique and adjust his behavior accordingly.
Adapted with permission from C.J. Stone's "Actor Central".
Although this feedback could be a process of deliberation, of thinking through the possibilities, it ordinarily isn't. Instead, for the most part, people simply recognize their options and what they take is the "best" course to follow. Psychopathology involves something going wrong in this feedback loop and psychotherapists, one way or another, intervene by taking on the function of an adjunctive observer-critic.
The A-O-C model naturally relates to the concepts of Intentional, Cognizant and Deliberate Action. Cognizant and Deliberate Action are types of Intentional Action along with Emotional and Unconscious action. All are intentional but not all involve the same degree of awareness. Emotional actions are cases where a person has a tendency to act intentionally and immediately on their recognition without deliberation. I take up the concept of emotional action and emotional competence in the posting Emotional Competence, Self-Experience, and Developmental Patterns.
At this point it might be useful to look at the Judgment or Decision Diagram that illustrates the structure of making an appraisal.
This is a reconstruction, performed after an action, given an agent's Personal Characteristics, of how they weighed their hedonic, prudent, aesthetic, and ethical/moral values in their Judgment or Decision on what Behavior to enact. Although Judgment or Decision could be an active process of thinking through options, of deliberating about the circumstances, it usually isn't. Often enough, a person simply knows what they want to do. Their appraisal of a situation is immediate. On the other hand, if the behavior goes wrong, a person might rethink their judgment by reconstructing their action in a way the diagram illustrates. Later, we will use this diagram to help understand unconscious motivation, transference, and symptomatic or compromised behaviors.
But first I'd like to show how the Intentional Action model can provide insight into Empathy in a non mysterious way:
We can use this model to look in more detail at the more or less quality of an empathic understanding as well as the kindred concept of mentalization, a concept I find far less problematic than "theory of mind". Wil does not have a theory that Gil is a deliberate actor with a mind of his own. He simply takes it to be the case unless he has reason not to. Wil's becoming a person required engaging with others as deliberate actors. He didn't first need a theory or assumption to see others as like himself in this way. However, if in some autistic manner he does not adequately know others to be minded, this model might be a way to teach him by showing the factors involved.
Bear in mind that Wil does not have direct access to Gil's Wants, Knowledge, or Know How, but can only observe and think about the Significance of Gil's Performance and Achievement. The yellow and green IA diamonds above Wil's representation of Gil's behavior show that Wil more or less empathically recognizes that Gil has his own choices and is also a Deliberate Actor, i.e., a person like himself. This is how I understand "metallization". This is how Wil can put himself in Gil's shoes.
Earlier, I probably should have introduced a very important conceptual tool, The Relationship Formula, since this is logically related to the concept of Intentional Action and will be a key to understanding both emotional behavior and behavior that doesn't follow the expected norm, along with a host of other important questions we often ask when behavior doesn't go as expected (and even when it does). As you will see, we are very fond of unless clauses in Descriptive Psychology.
So let's use the concept of Intentional Action and the Relationship Formula to make sense of Emotional Behavior. Say, for example, you are sitting quietly at your desk working on your blog when a Zombie enters:
Regardless of what you might report feeling, stomach dropping, heart pounding and nearly breathless, what makes this an example of emotional behavior is your immediate attempt to escape the danger without having to think it over. This impulsive quality is typical of what we are call an emotional response. Here's the behavioral logic:
Adapted from The Behavior of Persons, 2013, Peter G. Ossorio
And we can make sense of most of what we are likely to call emotion this way:
A lot to digest. But if you're ready, I'd like to pull some of this together by way of clarifying some aspects of unconscious action. Since I am a psychoanalyst, this seems obligatory. Let's start with the logically necessary reminder that the unconscious is an Observer's construct. The unconscious refers to what I notice about you, that you can't recognize about yourself. Since no one has a pipeline to the truth, when interpreting something as unconscious, we are entering a domain of disagreement, contention, and defensiveness. I liken this to the lawyer's dilemma when facing opposing counsel, jury and judge. It boils down to making a case that regardless of its merits will be accepted or rejected.
And now, finally, I going to reposition some of this using a variant of the Judgment diagram that was introduced earlier. Here are some fundamental distinctions that involve the concept of unconscious action and recognition (transference) as well as motives that a person might refuse to acknowledge as their own (although if given sufficient reason, they might.)
Notice how domains two and three are likely sources of disagreement and are also sources of behavior going wrong, being compromised, bungled, or mysterious to the Actor. The unconscious and unexamined is difficult to socialize since it is unavailable for moral dialog, self-correction and negotiation. It's where we mess up.
Wynn Schwartz
The Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology
Harvard Medical School wynn_schwartz@hms.harvard.edu
Journal of Evolution and
Technology - Vol. 24 Issue 3 – Sept 2014 – pgs 27-34
Abstract
A Paradigm Case Formulation (PCF) of Persons is
developed that allows competent judges to identify areas of agreement and
disagreement regarding where they draw a line on what is to be included as a
person. The paradigm case is described as a linguistically competent individual
able to engage in Deliberate Action in a Dramaturgical Pattern. Specific
attention is given to the ability of paradigm case persons to employ Hedonic,
Prudent, Aesthetic and Ethical perspectives in choosing their Deliberate
Actions and Social Practices.
It is sometimes said that animals do not talk because they
lack the mental capacity. And this means: “they do not think, and that is
why they do not talk.” But---they simply do not talk. Wittgenstein
(1953)
Apparently, humanity has matured enough for us to ask in a non-trivial way, “Are human beings the only persons we encounter?” Historically, we have only recognized others who share our
human embodiment as fellow persons. This matters legally, morally and ethically
since we grant people rights, privileges and protections that are not offered
to nonpersons. These rights, privileges and protections are subject to
revision. We no longer allow people to be kept as the property of other
people.
The capacity to revise and reorder appraisals is a
fundamental feature of what it means to be a person. This includes moral and
ethical judgments, and appraisals of who is to be treated as a person.
I am going to offer a Paradigm Case Formulation of what we
take to be a Person. Ethical and moral progress is a fundamental possibility
inherent in this conceptualization. It follows that if we recognize nonhuman
animals (or other entities) as persons, asking, if we are holding them in
slavery becomes a legitimate question.
What is
a person? And what is a Paradigm Case Formulation?
Sometime in the mid 1960’s, NASA asked the Descriptive
Psychologist, Peter Ossorio, “If green gas on the moon speaks to an astronaut,
how do we know whether or not it is a person?” (Schwartz 1982).Note that simply asking this question
acknowledges the possibility of a person who does not share human embodiment.
So how can we sort out what constitutes a person if we allow
that the category is not based only on having a particular body?Toward this goal I am going to use the
Descriptive Psychological method of Paradigm Case Formulation (PCF) (Ossorio
2013).I will show how it is
reasonable to include non-humans as persons and to have legitimate grounds for
disagreeing where the line is properly drawn. In good faith, competent judges
using this formulation can clearly point to where and why they agree or
disagree on what is to be included in the category of“Persons”.
I am going to make explicit what is already implicit in what
we mean by "Persons" by making explicit what we already know and act
on. We already have an implicit understanding of what it means to be a
person since this understanding is fundamental in order to act as one of us with the shared expectations required to
competently engage in the social practices of everyday life. We engage with our
fellow persons differently than we do with what we take to be nonpersons.
The value of a Paradigm Case Formulation (PCF) is to achieve
a common understanding of a subject matter in cases where an ordinary
definition proves too limiting, various, ambiguous or impossible.These formulations are helpful when it
is reasonable to assume there are legitimate grounds for disagreement about
specific possible examples. I think the concept of “Person” presents this
definitional problem.
A PCF should provide competent users a starting point of
agreement. PCFs are designed to be as inclusive as possible in order to
capture, as a starting point, all possible examples.Generally they should consist of the most complex case, an
indubitable case, or a primary or archetypal case. It should be a sort of
“By God, if there were ever a case of “X”, then that’s it.” Finding a fully inclusive definition is a common conceptual
dilemma. Consider how difficult it is to exactly define what is meant by the
word “family” or the word “chair” if we wish to achieve agreement on all
possible examples of “families” and “chairs”. Must families all have two
parents of different genders plus their children? Must all chairs have
four legs and a backrest? For example, most would agree that a group of people living
together consisting of a married father and mother and their biological son and
daughter is a family. But what if there is only a husband, his husband and
their dog? Or three best friends who live under one roof and make their
significant decisions together? What elements must be present and what
can we change, add or leave out and still meet what different people call a
family? Notice the parameters of gender, number of participants, presence or
absence of marriage, presence or absence of children, presence or absence of
“living together” and so on.The
content of each of these parameters is subject to deletion or substitution,
with the result that with each alteration a judge may no longer accept the new
variation as within the domain of what they take to be an appropriate instance
of the concept in question.
By starting with a paradigm case that everyone easily
identifies as within their understanding of a concept, it becomes possible to
delete or change features of the paradigm with the consequence that with each
change some people might no longer agree that we are still talking about the
same thing. But because of the shared paradigm, it becomes possible to show
where there is agreement and disagreement and where various judges draw the
line.
A Person is an
individual whose history is, paradigmatically, a history of Deliberate Action in a Dramaturgical Pattern. Deliberate Action is a form of behavior
in which a person (a) engages in an Intentional
or Goal Directed Action, (b) is Cognizant
of that, and (c) has Chosen to do
that. A person is not always engaged in a deliberate action but has the
ability to do so.
Deliberate Action is fundamental to any claim of personal
autonomy insofar as autonomy is linked to the ability to make personal
choices.As deliberate
actors, Paradigm Case Persons act on Hedonic,
Prudent, Aesthetic and Ethical reasons when selecting, choosing
or deciding on a course of action. Why only these four? These are the ones we
know. There may be more; if another is invented or discovered, it would be
included, somewhat like cooks now agree there is a fifth taste, umami, in
addition to sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.
Hedonics, prudence, aesthetics, and ethics provide intrinsic
or fundamental motivation (Ossorio 2013). They provide reason enough to do
something. They stand on their own. These reasons for action can be in
conflict, operate in a complementary or independent fashion, and so on.
Tautologically, if you have two or more of these reasons to do something, you
have more reason than if you had only one of them.
These four classifications are "family resemblance
groups". Hedonics refers to the value of pleasure, pain, disgust, and so
on; prudence to self-interest; aesthetics to the artistic, social and
intellectual values of truth, rigor, objectivity, beauty, elegance, closure and
fit; ethics with right and wrong, fairness and justice, the level playing
field, the Golden Rule and kindred notions.
Hedonic and prudent motivations can operate with and without
cognizant awareness. They can be an aspect of both deliberate and
non-deliberate intentional action. As a fundamental aspect of the general
case of goal directed behavior, they are probably features of all sentient
animal life, whether human or not. They provide a basis for cross
species empathy and shared understanding.I can be sensitive to my dog’s pain.I have reason to believe he is
sensitive to mine.
Aesthetic and ethical motivations are in an important way
different from hedonic and prudent concerns.Aesthetic and ethical motivations are only relevant when
deliberate action is also possible since aesthetic and ethical action
require the ability to choose or refrain, to potentially think over a
desirable course to follow. In the service of being able to choose,
and perhaps think through the available options, a person’s aesthetic and
ethical motives are often consciously available (Schwartz, 1984). It is reasonable to claim that I can’t help but that it
feels good, or that I see it as in my self-interest. I simply and
directly know it that way without having to deliberate about it, but as a
mature paradigm case person, I can consciously attempt to refrain from seeking
pleasure or self-interest on aesthetic and/or ethical grounds. And, at times, I
might set my ethics and aesthetics aside for the sake of pleasure and
self-interest.
It is a matter of one's personal characteristics how an
individual weighs their hedonic, prudent, ethical and aesthetic reasons in a
given circumstance, and how these perspectives operate
independently, antagonistically, harmoniously, and so on. To
remain a member in good standing in the general community of persons, central
to our social contracts, we expect that the normal mature human can employ all
of these motivational perspectives.Any adult human who does not have these interests will likely
seem primitive or pathological. Any general theory of human behavior
that does not adequately address these motivations will be defective.
It is the formal requirement that ethical and aesthetic acts
are potentially deliberate that positions these motives as quintessential
qualities of persons. Any action that is motivated by ethical or aesthetic
concerns is evidence of the involvement of a person.
What about language?
Also paradigmatic of persons is language use, the ability to
share symbolic representations that correspond to the concepts used in social
practice.The detection of
language is both vital and problematic in assigning the status of person to a
nonhuman entity.Shared social
practice based on shared "forms of life", as Wittgenstein
(1953/2009) put it, creates a dilemma since both embodiment and environment are
relevant in what is shared.Evidence of language is vital in the detection of deliberate action
since with language we can symbolically represent a choice, both what was
chosen and what was renounced.I
can tell you what I did and what I decided not to do. Language may not be
required for a particular deliberate action to be possible, but it hard to get
around its central place in the detection of persons.
We don’t have direct access to what goes on in another
person’s head. We can only observe each other's overt performance, including
what we tell each other about what we are up to. Language is the ideal format
for representing option and choice, since we can speak about what we did
not do, what we rejected or refrained from.
You see me take the low road but unless there is some way of
representing that I was aware that I could have taken the high road, you might
be hard pressed to successfully argue my behavior was deliberate and that I am
accountable for the choice.
Language is especially significant in a person's ability to reorder priorities. Since language can be used to represent the consequences of a course of action not yet followed, it serves as a fundamental means of personal and social negotiation. I can weigh the consequences of my potential acts and you can tell me your thoughts about them. The reordering of priorities is a vital aspect of social life, hard to accomplish without language. This is also partly why the behavior of persons is
less stereotyped and predictable than the behavior of nonpersons.
People can develop, invent and reconsider. They can think about their
thinking. They can change their mind (or at least they can try). And, central
to my interests in this writing, people can gather evidence that an entity they
had not considered a person might be one.
What about the Dramaturgical Pattern?
That life is lived in a dramaturgical pattern is to say that
people’s lives are potentially understandable. Their stories can be
intelligibly told. Life consists of episodes of unfolding and overlapping
social practices in response to the changing circumstances.A person’s history is not a random or
arbitrary collection of performances but instead a meaningful unfolding of
behavior given what a person is attempting to accomplish.A person’s actions have an ongoing
significance creating intelligible through-lines that an observer can employ in
recognizing behavior that is both in and out of character for the actors (Schwartz
2013). Of course, accidents and the unintended can happen; but for the most
part, people have their reasons for doing what they do.The drama of a person’s life is created
in a manner akin to an improvisational play. The characters and the setting are
a given but we have to wait and see how it will play out. The script can only
be written in retrospect, after the actions have occurred.
The PCF offered here allows for nonhuman persons, potential
persons, nascent persons, manufactured persons, former persons, deficit case
persons, primitive persons, and, I suppose, super-persons. A human being is an individual who is both a person and a specimen of
Homo sapiens (Ossorio 2013).
I am not going to include the political and legal claim that
corporations are persons since that involves a language game that is played for
different reasons than my concerns here. Corporate personhood has its own logic
of contract and responsibility.
Some implications
Although deliberate action is not dependent on
the availability of language, language use is a form of deliberate action
essential for the full paradigm. A person without language would be a
deficit case. Different judges will have their reasons for granting or
rejecting a deficit case as a full person along with the corresponding rights,
obligations and expectations that follow from that accreditation or degradation
(Schwartz, 1979).
Must a person have an ethical and aesthetic perspective to
count as a person? Or is the ability to engage in any sort of deliberate action
enough? Clearly to me, my dog Banjo is a deliberate actor.But our conversations are pretty one
sided. He has, I feel sure, hedonic and prudential perspectives.About his ethical and aesthetic
perspective, I am not sure, except that I think I would have a hard time
building a case that he has these values. I think he appreciates affection
and gentleness similar to me, but I would not trust him with my lunch. I do not
doubt that he is an intentional actor, although I am uncertain about the range
and nature of his deliberations. But regardless, apart from the extent I
consider Banjo to have some person qualities, he is a member of my family and
is to be treated as such. He is a beloved companion.
The ability to weigh hedonic, prudent, ethical and
aesthetic interests are defining personal characteristics since these
perspectives shape an individual's social practices and ways of life.The dramaturgical pattern of a
particular life is significantly dependent on a person’s values. A robot or
manufactured person, given its physical form, might not have an hedonic
perspective since the visceral sensations of pain or pleasure might not be
available; a chimpanzee person, apparently lacking language, probably has
underdeveloped or absent ethical and aesthetic concerns and this suggests a
sort of primitive status. Still, underdeveloped is different from
absent.Our descendants may look
back at our values and see them as underdeveloped.We are a work in progress.
The line that constitutes language use from nonlinguistic
communication is also blurred. Evidence that chimpanzees and other Great Apes
use a flexible system of non-vocal gestures to communicate may reasonably be considered
a “sign language” by some observers (Hobaiter and Byrne, 2014).
Human children, while developing their perspectives, have
nascent person status and are treated differently than full “legal” persons by
not being given the same span of rights and responsibilities granted
adults.But the distinction
between childhood and adulthood is clearly arbitrary. Is adulthood reached at
21, 18, 16, 12, or 35? Rights and obligations change as values, knowledge and
competence matures but is finally a matter of political and legal decision.
The PCF provides a way to classify different sorts of
persons based on the motives they are competent to use in recognizing their
options and choosing a course of action.The ability and disposition to manifest and refine hedonic, prudent,
aesthetic and ethical values are fundamental status markers relevant to a
consideration of appropriate rights and responsibilities. Implicitly or
explicitly we employ these distinctions in our interactions with others whether
adult or child, human or otherwise.
What about other animals?
Years back, I was pursuing a pod of bottlenose dolphin when
a small one smacked the stern of my kayak, hard. As the calf
re-approached, a large female nudged it away. I was astonished, relieved and
grateful. Not wanting to push my luck, I paddled back to shore.
Are dolphins good candidates for personhood? Do they
engage in deliberate action in a dramaturgical pattern? Do bottlenose dolphins
speak to each other? Did a dolphin protect me from mischief?I don't know. I don't have
sufficient evidence that dolphins fill the paradigm case.Some people have reason to think they
might. Using a PCF, I can point to where the evidence is robust and where it is
lacking.Language seems to be the
sticking point.
What about the other Cetacea,
the elephants, the nonhuman primates, and various parrots?I suspect they fill out some of the
paradigm case. Other judges reasonably believe they fill out more. To the
extent other animals are not domesticated (or enslaved), they can’t or don’t
"talk" with us.Nonhuman
animal communication, including the possibility of language use, is
difficult to study when there is an absence of "shared forms of
life."
The domesticated are interdependent with humans in a
way other animals are not and this partly accounts for my sense of their
companion status and our shared practices. We work, play, eat, exploit and
otherwise interact with the domesticated in ways we do not with the
"wild".They become our
pets, livestock, guards and companions.We treat them, for better or worse, accordingly.As our ethical and aesthetic standards
evolve, we revisit what we take to be the right way to engage with them (or we
should).
Do animals in the wild talk with each other and could they
talk with us? We may not have sufficient shared social practices to make
inter-species communication, speech, and translation feasible, so it’s very
hard to tell. This is a difficult empirical issue.Rather than simply communicate, some observers believe they
speak to each other in a linguistic fashion. There is no consensus but the
evidence is mounting that they do (see, for example, Savage-Rumbaugh, 2009).
Since language requires shared social practice, an animal’s
ecologically bounded options limit its expected communicative range, concerns,
and actions. Humans are adept at disrupting their environments.We’re very skilled at
coercing them and killing them to further our goals. If they wanted to talk
to us, I am not sure we’d welcome what they have to say.
If someone actually taught nonhuman animals to
competently use language, would that be teaching them to be a person? Yes, that
is an implication of the paradigm offered here.By this same reasoning, we teach our human children to be
persons, too.
What are the ethics of uncertainty?
So what should we do with our uncertainty? Logically, we are
never in a position to prove that something is a person, but we can adopt a
policy that if we have any strong grounds for seeing the other as one of us, we
should treat that entity as a person until we have reason enough to feel we are
misguided. With persons it should be I to Thou. There are people whose cultures
and social practices leave me mystified, but it is prudent and ethical to
proceed from the belief that I simply do not understand what they are
about.The same should hold for
other animals. I am not particularly concerned with initial false positives. In my scientific training, I was told to avoid anthropomorphism. I have become skeptical about the morality of this stance, whether it involves an animal’s possible slavery or how I treat them as food.. A significant ethical question remains: After the line on
personhood is drawn, what considerations apply to the treatment of animals that
do not fall into the person category? Sentient animals are intentional actors and
have an interest in the avoidance of suffering (Singer 2009).Is it ever ethical to inflict
harm if there is a way not to? What priorities need be weighed?
Person status defines a domain where social and legal rights
reside, hence a proper abhorrence of slavery and murder. Judges in good
faith might differ as to what animals are included as persons, but it is a
moral and ethical mistake to limit concerns about the quality of a life to
whether that life is also a person. Part of being a person is to
understand this.
Ossorio, P. 2013. The Behavior of
Persons. Ann Arbor:
Descriptive Psychology Press
Savage-Rumbaugh, S., D.Rumbaugh, W.A. Fields.
2009.Empirical Kanzi: the ape
language controversy revisited. Skeptic.
15(1): 25-33.
Schwartz, W. 1979.Degradation, Accreditation and Rites of Passage.Psychiatry.
42(2):138-146.
Schwartz, W. 1982.The Problem of Other Possible Persons: Dolphins,Primates, and Aliens. In Advances in Descriptive Psychology vol
2. ed. Davis, K. and T. Mitchell, 31-56, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Schwartz, W. 1984. The Two Concepts of Action and
Responsibility in Psychoanalysis.The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
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