Dogs Have Been Telling Us This For Years, And We're Finally Able To Listen

There is an interesting bit of research coming out of Emory University about dogs and what is really going on inside their heads.  Neuroscientist Gregory Berns has been successful in training dogs to tolerate having an M.R.I. and the results are very intriguing, but totally unsurprising to those of us who share our lives with a canine companion.

In dogs, we found that activity in the caudate increased in response to hand signals indicating food. The caudate also activated to the smells of familiar humans. And in preliminary tests, it activated to the return of an owner who had momentarily stepped out of view. Do these findings prove that dogs love us? Not quite. But many of the same things that activate the human caudate, which are associated with positive emotions, also activate the dog caudate. Neuroscientists call this a functional homology, and it may be an indication of canine emotions.

Now there is a scientific underpinning to arguments made by people like Peter Singer and more recently Tom Regan to name just two, plus, as Berns points out these results may have value that goes beyond the scientific in determining the lawful rights of dogs: 

I suspect that society is many years away from considering dogs as persons. However, recent rulings by the Supreme Court have included neuroscientific findings that open the door to such a possibility. In two cases, the court ruled that juvenile offenders could not be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. As part of the rulings, the court cited brain-imaging evidence that the human brain was not mature in adolescence. Although this case has nothing to do with dog sentience, the justices opened the door for neuroscience in the courtroom.

I agree that we are many years away from facing the implication of what science is beginning to show us because to do so would call into question some of the fundamental tenants of western Christian culture, particularly the idea that we have been given “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” (Genesis 1: 24-26). To paraphrase Darth Vader, the hierarchy is strong in this one.

More to the point though, I don’t think the “because they’re like us” premise of Berns', Singer’s, and to a lesser extent Regan’s arguments go far enough. It seems to me the determination of what kinds of rights are given to an animal should not be based on how much they are like us, but the fact that they are. In his book Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy Julian Franklin pushes beyond the arguments of Singer and Regan in particular to a reframing and expansion of Kant’s categorical imperative that provides an ethical argument for the treatment of all sentient creatures.  I’m drawn to that argument, but I know the issue is still unsettled philosophically (see J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals). 

I would like to make the case for sympathy, which I know is a term in some philosophical disrepute. Luckily I’m not a philosopher so I direct the reader to John Fisher’s Taking Sympathy Seriously: A Defense Of Our Moral Psychology Towards Animals (pdf) for a more extensive discussion. As humans we have the capability for sympathy, but that capability is not limited to other members of our species. Who hasn’t been affected by Sarah Mclachlan’s ASPCA commercials, or stories about the suffering of pets after a natural disaster, or felt that momentary heaviness in the heart when we see an injured animal?

I think there are important implications to the fact that we are able to extend our ability to connect with living creatures beyond our fellow humans, and when, through tradition, or expediency, or denial we ignore that connection we are ignoring a vital part of our nature—the part that tells us we are of this planet, not simply on it.