My Second Great Mentor: David Watt Yates (1904-1967)

Question:

Are you sure that animals are not self-conscious?  Can an animal that shows “compassion” to another creature (such as a dolphin assisting a drowning human) not have a sense of self?

Answer:

Dear John,

You are among the many animal lovers who have challenged me on this point.  I have, since I wrote Eternal Life: A New Vision, gone back to my sources in the field of Zoology and my studies in consciousness to make sure that my conclusions are valid – I am convinced that they are.

I do not minimize the human-like emotions that animals exhibit.  There are a number of species of birds who become monogamous and who appear to grieve the loss of their mate even unto death.  I have observed male sea lions in the Galapagos Islands that having lost the battle to remain supreme in a section of the shore to a younger and perhaps stronger sea lion, retreat to a state that looks very much like grieving.  Intimate family pets who lose a master or mistress to death give off much evidence that they have experienced a loss.  I know of one family of three dogs who are so clearly a closely knit unit that when one of them goes to the vet for a period of days, the other two reveal behavior that we interpret to be “missing” their companion.  So, please understand that I do not question or deny what seems to me to be an observable fact that, at least in the higher mammals there are emotions that are expressed. None of that is what I am talking about when I state that when Homo sapiens crossed the boundary from consciousness to self-consciousness, they crossed a significant and great divide. I continue, nonetheless, to be still convinced that “self-consciousness” remains a uniquely human characteristic.

Self-consciousness enables human beings to say “I” or “me” in a way in which no animal can do.

Self-consciousness causes human beings to see themselves not as part of nature, but as separate from and even over against the world of nature to the place where they seek both to organize nature and to conquer it to serve their purposes.

Self-consciousness enables human beings to live in the transitory arena we call time.  It is something we engage.  It is not just something that flows through us as a kind of “eternal present.”

Self-consciousness enables us to know we are alive, that we are mortal and finite and thus to anticipate and prepare for our deaths.  That is not some instinctual response to the closing down of our bodily functions, but a calculated mental response to a reality that no merely conscious creature can create.

Self-consciousness means that we are not bound by our instincts, but can challenge our own survival behavior in the name of a higher principle.

I am convinced that Darwin is correct that we human beings are “higher animals with complex and developed brains.”  That does not deny that the boundary between being conscious and self-conscious is still a huge boundary and it is that which makes human beings unique upon the face of the earth.

~John Shelby Spong