What Is It Like to Be a Fish?
A court in Poland has just sentenced a local farmer to jail for animal cruelty. The farmer was selling fish (carp) in a Christmas market, killing them on a stand with a little guillotine. (Here’s the link to the article in Polish). Carp in Poland are maybe the most important traditional Christmas Eve dish, so the controversy is raised every year; this is the first time such a case was actually ruled on by a court of law.
Let’s start with the technical aspect of the case. The judge explained in the sentence that the farmer should have stunned the fish before killing them — and since he didn’t, he was found guilty of animal cruelty. It is really puzzling, as beheading the fish with a guillotine ends all its vital functions in an instant. Beheaded fish doesn’t feel anything anymore. Therefore, arguing that stunning (which can fail very easily — you can never be sure what fish actually feel after you hit them) is necessary to spare their suffering, is just ridiculous.
However, more interesting is the ethical aspect of the case. The prosecution accused the farmer of causing “physical and psychological suffering of the fish”. And both terms used in this context are extremely problematic.
Psychological suffering is a mental state. Mental states are by their very essence subjective: suffering, sadness, happiness, joy can mean many different things for different people, based on their individual experiences. There are, of course, some objective measures that can describe each mental state, such as brain or gland activity that can be observed and measured. However, by brain scanning or blood testing we are unable to tell how a particular mental state is experienced by the subject.
Humans use two powerful tools to overcome this subjectivity. The first one is language: we can describe our mental states to others. The flexibility of the language allows us to express our most complex thoughts and feelings. The second seems to be even more important. It is empathy — the ability to simulate mental states of others in our own minds.
The limitations of using language are quite obvious. This is not about the question of whether or not animals use codes to communicate. Some of them do. However, by using their codes they can’t describe their mental states the way humans can to each other. So when attributing mental states to animals, we tend to use the power of empathy.
I agree with some evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists saying that empathy is the closest thing to the answer to the eternal question of “what makes humans human?”. We share this quality with other primates and probably some other animals too, however there is no doubt that humans excel at empathy. We’ve built a system of social cooperation on it, symbols, human culture and technology.
The limitations of using empathy aren’t that clear. What seems to be problematic is that we tend to extrapolate our mental states to other animals. For instance, I am perfectly capable of imagining how would I feel as a fish (or a dog, or a bird, or any other creature for that matter). However, in my imagination it would always be my mind trapped in an alien body. I simply cannot imagine myself as a fish mind in a fish body, because it is my mind that produces this imagination. Pain, fear, and other feelings I would experience as a fish would be experienced by a human and there is no basis to say the fish’s experience stands anywhere close to that.
So, what is it like to be a fish? Only fish will know the answer to this question and since they don’t talk, they won’t ever tell us. Therefore, any attempt to build a system of morality on this kind of empathy will fail.
We have to understand that without humans there won’t be any ethics, any moral rules, only the law of the nature. And a major part of the law of the nature is that some animals kill other animals, and some animals suffer. A utilitarian approach to animal cruelty is therefore hopeless. The only possible reason for banning animal cruelty is the intentions of the person who kills an animal. Operari sequitur esse — if he intends to make an animal suffer, he is a bad person and should be punished for sake of others. Ethics is anthropocentric, as it should be.
(The title is an obvious reference to the brilliant paper by Thomas Nagel, What it is like to be a bat?, which I recommend you to read).
