Ted writes regarding a rather fundamental topic:

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"Never put Descartes before the horse!"

<*groan*>

Nevertheless, I think it worthwhile to put in context Descartes' famous
statement:

    I had long before remarked that, in relation to practice, it is sometimes
    necessary to adopt, as if above doubt, opinions which we discern to be
    highly uncertain, as has been already said; but as I then desired to give
    my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought that a procedure
    exactly the opposite was called for, and that I ought to reject as
    absolutely false all opinions in regard to which I could suppose the least
    ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained
    aught in my belief that was wholly indubitable.  Accordingly, seeing that
    our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there
    existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men
    err in reasoning, and fall into paralogisms, even on the simplest matters
    of geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other,
    rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for
    demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts
    (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced
when
    we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I
supposed
    that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind
    when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams.
But
    immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that
    all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought,
should
    be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am
    (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of
    doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of
    shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the
    first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.

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The paragraph of Descartes that Ted quotes above is precisely the paragraph
that can either be used to argue (i) the supremacy of reason or, (ii) quite
the contrary, the attribute of overwhelming stubbornness that allows the
unfortunate but nonetheless extremely common human attribute of nearly
complete self-delusion, "dry-labbing" or "pencil-whipping" a highly desired
result in the face of abundant evidence that argues exactly the opposite
conclusion. I tend to vote for the second in the above; it's just that
Descartes does it eloquently. But that's little reason to be sucked in by a
silver-tongued salesman.

The argument that Descartes promotes above is certainly not settled however,
as you can see below. I searched out an article that appeared in the NY Times
just a month ago (it took me a little while to find it, simply because it
appeared in the "Arts" section, and not the "Science" section, as I
remembered).

I've excerpted a part of the article here. In this article, the hero is
Donald Griffin, the biologist who first discovered the phenomenon of
echolocation in bats, thus I was a great fan of Donald Griffin before he
wrote his book, "The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of
Mental Experience," in 1976. That book only cemented my appreciation of his
work, it also caused an enormous stir within evolutionary biology. As one
fellow who wrote a review of the book in the Smithsonian magazine ca. 1977
asked, "What's all the fuss about? Any fool who's ever owned a dog has no
doubts that animals think."

The change in philosophy that has occurred within evolutionary biology in the
25 years since Griffin's first book has been both profound and rapid, as you
can get from this excerption. Biology has moved from viewing essentially all
other organisms as Cartesian automata to be willing to ascribe
self-awareness, joy and pain to crustacea:

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February 3, 2001, Saturday

THINK TANK; No Longer Alone: The Scientist Who Dared to Say Animals Think

By Emily Eakin

Twenty-five years ago [Donald Griffin] published a short book suggesting that
humans didn't have the monopoly on thoughts and feelings. Animals, he argued,
most likely had them, too.

Scientists were appalled. According to the behaviorist doctrine that held
sway at the time, animals were little more than ''stimulus response
automata,'' robots with a central nervous system. The idea that an ant or an
elephant might have thoughts, images, experiences or beliefs was not just
laughable; it was seditious. After Dr. Griffin published a second brief on
behalf of animal consciousness in the 1980's, one behaviorist labeled it ''
'The Satanic Verses' of animal behavior.''

Were it not for the fact that he had a tenured position at Rockefeller
University as well as an international reputation, Dr. Griffin might have
found himself out of a job. (As a graduate student at Harvard in the 1940's,
he helped solve the mystery of how bats navigate in the dark and coined the
term echolocation to describe it.)

''He insisted that people look at animal consciousness when it was considered
anthropomorphic and flaky,'' said Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an emeritus professor
of anthropology at the University of California at Davis. ''Anyone else would
have been hooted out.''

But the field Dr. Griffin christened cognitive ethology ultimately took off.
Over the last decade alone a flood of new data have emerged that would seem
to have turned the tide definitively in his favor. In Arizona an African Gray
parrot named Alex can identify colors and shapes as well as any preschooler.
In Georgia a bonobo ape named Kanzi converses with his trainer via computer
keyboard and watches Tarzan movies on television. Last week researchers at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published evidence suggesting that
rats dream. Animal enrichment programs featuring mental puzzles disguised as
toys and treats have become a standard part of daily life at zoos. And this
spring the University of Chicago Press will issue an updated edition of Dr.
Griffin's 1992 book, ''Animal Minds.''

If Dr. Griffin, a tall, thin decorous man with a predilection for
animal-print ties, views these developments as vindication, he is too modest
to say so. ''We know so very little,'' he said. ''Scientists, including me,
have come to be very cautious. Early work on primate gestures and facial
expressions was grossly misinterpreted.''

In fact the recent findings appear to have only intensified the debate over
animal consciousness. Lately, experts on the human mind -- philosophers and
psychologist -- have been weighing in alongside the scientists. For if it
turns out that animals can think, then the idea that consciousness is unique
to humans -- a basic assumption in Western thought since Descartes -- becomes
impossible to maintain.

Clearly Gus, Alex and Kanzi aren't Cartesian automatons, but just how
conscious are they? Do they experience pain, desire and other sensations the
way humans do? (Philosophers call this phenomenal consciousness.) Are they
capable of thinking about their experiences? (Philosophers call this
self-consciousness.) Do they have beliefs? What about remembering the past?
Do earthworms have some form of consciousness? What about salamanders? Is it
even possible to study an animal's inner life?

The range of opinion on these questions is nearly as great as the number of
possible answers. Surveying the scholarship in the journal Philosophia in
1988, the University of Houston professor Justin Leiber found a field riven
by discordant claims. Two philosophers agreed in ''denying consciousness to
sponges.'' One drew the line ''somewhere between the shrimp and the oyster.''
Another proved willing to ''speculate about the subjective experience of
tapeworms,'' while yet another had referred to the ''inner life of
cockroaches.'' More recently the Tufts University philosopher Daniel C.
Dennett declared the state of thinking on animal consciousness a ''mess.''

On the one hand there are the pro-consciousness philosophers like Colin
McGinn, a professor at Rutgers University, and Peter Singer, a professor of
bioethics at Princeton and a leading animal rights advocate. These scholars
believe that most if not all animals have phenomenal consciousness. ''I think
it's plain common sense that animals have conscious states,'' Mr. McGinn
said. ''Animals way down to insects have phenomenal consciousness. It's a
primitive feature of the biological world.''

On the other hand there are the skeptics like Mr. Dennett and Herbert
Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia University. What ''are you seeing when
you see sentience in a creature?'' Mr. Dennett asked in a 1995 essay. ''It is
in fact ridiculously easy to induce powerful intuitions of not just sentience
but full-blown consciousness (ripe with malevolence or curiosity or
friendship) by exposing people to quite simple robots made to move in
familiar mammalian ways at mammalian speeds.''

Mr. Terrace, who has studied apes and monkeys in his lab, concedes that
animals think, but draws the line at consciousness. ''Language is necessary
for consciousness,'' he said. ''There is something going on in animals'
heads, but it's not linguistic.''

Dr. Griffin appears mildly amused by the debate his work has helped unleash.
During his visit to the Central Park Zoo he gave a talk to donors and
trustees. ''Daniel Dennett calls the pursuit of animal consciousness a 'wild
goose chase,' '' he told the audience with a chuckle. ''But there are no
neurons or synapses in the human brain that aren't also in animals. It's as
difficult to disprove animal consciousness as it is to prove it.''

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Wirt Atmar