[Animals] David Peña-Guzmán, philosopher: "Accepting that animals dream has philosophical, ethical and political consequences"

[Mr.Hacker]

 

Ndume was a wild elephant calf who had the misfortune to witness her mother being killed by angry farmers and a younger calf torn to pieces. Since then, for Ndume the nights have not been calm again. He ended up in an elephant sanctuary on the outskirts of Nairobi. The workers at the center tell how the little elephant would wake up in the middle of the night in anguish and start barrulating as loudly as he could. It was as if he were reliving in a dream the trauma of the day he lost everything.

This is one of the many examples that David M. Peña-Guzmán (Guadalajara, Mexico, 36 years old) recounts in his book entitled When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (Errrata Naturae, 2023), which is published in Spanish this week. Peña-Guzmán is currently an associate professor of humanities at San Francisco State University (USA) and co-host of the Overthink philosophy podcast. In this interview with EL PAÍS, he tells why he decided to write the first book about animal dreams.
Ask. Where does his philosophical interest in the minds of other beings come from?

Answer. Animals were never a central part of my childhood, quite the opposite. I lived in a house where objects, property and food were seen as objects. I discovered my interest in animals when I was already doing my PhD in philosophy at Emory University, in the United States. It was during an “animal philosophy” class that something clicked in me.

I realized that the animal has always been the great "unthought" of Western philosophy. Most of what has been said in philosophical circles has been 99% of the time based on the human being, without this trend having been criticized or even noticed. But once we introduce the figure of the animal, it completely changes the landscape of any philosophical subject, be it morality, empathy, logic, or the nature of thought. The animal puts philosophy in question.

Q. How did you come to the subject of dreams?

A. One day I was reading an article about experiments on rats in which the authors mentioned the importance of making sure the rats rest between experiments and, in passing, commented: "Who knows if they dream while resting and sleeping." This image of a non-human animal, sleeping and possibly dreaming, took hold of me until I decided to investigate if there were any studies on it. I found that there are many physiological, neurological, and psychological studies on sleep in animals, but not on dreams as subjective experiences. Since dreams are complex mental and bodily phenomena that are difficult to study in a purely empirical way, I came to the conclusion that animal dreams could be an ideal topic to stage a new dialogue between philosophy and science.

The animal has always been the great 'unthought' of Western philosophy. Once we introduce it, it completely changes the landscape of any topic
Q. In the book you mention examples of scientists who throughout history have denied that animals dream. How would you explain to someone who has a pet, and it is obvious to them that animals dream, that science is reluctant to admit it?

A. This question has a lot to do with why I wrote this book. I try to justify this intuition of people who are not scientists, but who have an understanding of animals based on a life in common with them. That is, the book is a scientific and philosophical defense of a point of view that many of us hold, but which is not, itself, directly derived from science.

In most of Europe and North America we live in a “scientist” culture. I mean, a culture where science enjoys enormous authority in social terms, since we see it as the source of absolute truth, as the embodiment of pure objectivity. But science is a social, material and historical practice where there are prejudices that are not noticed, but even so they condition what is done, what is thought and what is said. For example, since the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, science has been governed by the belief that animals are reduced to either machines with no internal life or pale, negative versions of our humanity. This prejudice is so ingrained in our scientific culture that, consciously or not, our scientists internalize it in their professional training to such a degree that they do not see it as a prejudice but as something given, obvious and neutral. But is not. And never has been. This prejudice is the expression of a problematic theoretical approach that science has adopted in relation to nature and the animal world for reasons that go beyond science.

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2023-04-10/david-pena-guzman-filosofo-aceptar-que-los-animales-suenan-tiene-consecuencias-filosoficas-eticas-y-politicas.html