Abstract
I examine the tension between Peter Winch’s thoughts on animal minds in his early work The Idea of a Social Science (ISS) and his much later interpretation of Wittgenstein’s famous remark in the Philosophical Investigations (PI), that ‘My attitude to him is an attitude towards a soul.’ In ISS Winch claims that animals, his example is of dogs, cannot go on in the same way, cannot learn to follow a rule. Winch says, for example, as far as the dog goes, there can be no question of the ‘reflective application of criterion.’ But I want to ask, drawing on Winch’s own later interpretation of the above passage from PI, whether in a great many of our relations with certain animals, there is any question of our ‘reflective application of criterion.’ To put the point slightly differently, is what counts as, in Winch’s words, ‘always doing the same kind of thing when the word of command is uttered’ really decided at all, decided as I will argue in advance, by either party in this shared activity? The reference to a shared activity is important here. For the way in Winch makes his point throws into doubt the idea that there is in a case like this (with an animal) any such thing as a shared activity. Using an example of the way in which children play games with dogs, I will suggest that such doubt is misplaced, that indeed in such games, for example in the game of fetch, animals may themselves provide their own innovations as to what counts as going on in the same way.
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Notes
- 1.
One can imagine grounds, of course, if say one had a particular determinate conception of what constitutes following a rule, a conception that is not founded in what (as I will suggest) we make of certain shared patterns of action and response but on the possession of a language shared with other participants in the relevant rule following. My argument in this paper though is this way of putting the matter goes very much against the grain of Wittgenstein’s account of following a rule.
- 2.
If one asks, “which animals?” then the first case to focus on I would suggest is domestic pets and working animals, particularly dogs. Such animals stand out, I think, since to some extent we have co-evolved with them in ways that, as with our interactions with other human beings, undercut the temptation to look below the surface of our shared inter-responsiveness with animals to what (we may suppose) justifies it.
- 3.
I thank David Cockburn for bring this point to my attention.
- 4.
For a related discussion, and indeed one that has influenced this paper, see Crary 2012. Crary there examines criticisms of the conceptualist position defended by John McDowell to the effect that it denies that animals have minds. Crary there argues that McDowell’s position need not lead to this conclusion. Her specific strategy is to defend “a notion of a concept flexible enough to apply to the lives of some animals” (Crary 2012, 215), and in particular, in her discussion, the lives of dogs. More generally, my thoughts here are greatly influenced by several papers by Cora Diamond on our moral relations with animals.
- 5.
For an extended discussion of what I am calling “primitive responses”, see my Taylor 2002.
- 6.
I am not suggesting that all our activities with dogs and other animals are shared in the kind of way I am suggesting. A sniffer dog is not engaged in the same activity its customs official handlers for example are engaged in. Nor will I attempt to provide, indeed it would go against the grain of this paper to do so, a set of conditions or principles in virtue of which one might identify what is going to count as a shared activity in the sense that concerns me. Once again, the injunction is simply to look and see what concepts certain shared activities, forms of shared inter-responsiveness, will sustain.
- 7.
For example, where someone is in a persistent vegetative state or suffers an extreme mental disorder.
- 8.
I would like to thank Michael Campbell for his helpful suggestions on this chapter.
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Taylor, C. (2020). Winch and Animal Minds. In: Campbell, M., Reid, L. (eds) Ethics, Society and Politics: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter Winch. Nordic Wittgenstein Studies, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40742-1_17
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