Descartes held that nonhumanFootnote 1 animals are material automata. Call this view animal automatism. Human beings, in contrast, are composites of material automata and immaterial thinking substance. Given the standard conception of Descartes’s dualism on which the mind is identified with thinking substance, animal automatism entails that animals lack minds. This raises a puzzle. Descartes’s argument for animal automatism appears to rely on the claims that animals lack language and general intelligence, but these claims seem compatible with animals having minds. So, it is unclear how Descartes establishes that animals lack minds.
Interpreters have offered various solutions to this puzzle. One strategy denies that animals are mindless for Descartes. Other strategies assume that animals are mindless but identify premises that close the gap between claiming that animals lack language and general intelligence and the view that animals lack minds. For example, it has been suggested that Descartes rejects animal minds by an appeal to parsimony, or by assuming that all mental states presuppose reason. However, for reasons that I will explain, I do not find any of these solutions fully satisfactory.
In this paper, I argue for a new solution to the puzzle of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism that I call the introspective-analogical interpretation. This interpretation provides a new account of how Descartes argues for the view that animals are mindless automata. According to this interpretation, Descartes relies on introspection to argue that thoughts do not cause various human behaviors including: reflexes, passionate responses to stimuli, and behaviors that we perform habitually. Because such behaviors do not depend on thought, they should instead be regarded as automatic, i.e., as depending only on the dispositions of the body-machine. Moreover, Descartes holds, animal behaviors resemble automatic human behaviors. Descartes concludes from this that the best explanation of animal behavior is that it is automatic, and, that the best theory of animals is animal automatism. This interpretation explains how Descartes establishes the view that animals are mindless automata while avoiding the pitfalls of alternative interpretations.
Here is a roadmap for the paper. In section 1, I lay out and clarify the puzzle of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism. In section 2, I criticize the view that the puzzle does not arise because animals are not mindless for Descartes. In section 3, I criticize other solutions to the puzzle. In section 4, I argue for the introspective-analogical interpretation for animal automatism. I conclude in section 5.
1. The puzzle of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism
The locus classicus of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism appears in the fifth part of the Discourse on the Method (hereafter Discourse).Footnote 2 Descartes there describes “two very certain means” for distinguishing human beings from hypothetical automata (AT VI 46/CSM I 139).Footnote 3 The first distinguishing mark of humanity is language: “it is not conceivable that … a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence” (AT VI 56–57/CSM I 140). The second distinguishing mark is general intelligence:
For whereas reason is a universal instrument which can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need some particular disposition for each particular action; hence it is for all practical purposes impossible for a machine to have enough different organs to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which our reason makes us act. (AT VI 57/CSM I 140)
Automata need a disposition for each of their actions. But humans possess a general intelligence that outstrips what can be explained by the dispositions of an automaton.Footnote 4
Descartes goes on to claim that these criteria for distinguishing humans from automata also distinguish humans from animals. Humans alone have language and general intelligence. From this, Descartes concludes that animals act “according to the disposition of their organs” (AT VI 57–59/CSM I 140–41). Descartes’s presentation of his argument for animal automatism in the Discourse thus suggests that animals should be regarded as automata because they lack language and general intelligence.
In the Discourse, Descartes’s language suggests that animal automatism is equivalent to the view that animals lack reason. Descartes writes that animals’ lack of language “shows not merely that the beasts have less reason than men, but that they have no reason at all” (AT VI 58/CSM I 140). And animals’ lack of general intelligence is due to their lack of the “universal instrument” of reason (AT VI 57/CSM I 140). This makes it sound as if Descartes argues that animals’ lack of language and general intelligence is best explained by the claim that they lack reason. This inference can be questioned, but it is relatively plausible if Descartes’s conception of reason as a “universal instrument” is granted.
However, what makes animal automatism so controversial is not the claim that animals lack reason. Rather, what is controversial is Descartes’s claim that animals are automata and it is “not necessary to conceive of any vegetative or sensitive soul” to explain the functions of animals (AT XI 202/CSM I 108). This view invites the conclusion that Descartes eliminates the states of animals traditionally housed in the sensitive soul. And, in fact, Descartes’s corpus contains many statements that imply that animals’ status as automata without sensitive souls precludes their having passions, feelings, and sensory perceptions. I refer to these states as states of sensory consciousness. It appears, then, that Descartes regards animal automatism as equivalent to the view that animals lack not only reason but also sensory consciousness.
For example, in the Passions of the Soul (hereafter Passions) Descartes writes that animals have the “movements of the nerves and the muscles which usually accompany the passions and not, as in us, the passions themselves” (AT XI 369–70/CSM I 348). Descartes makes a similar point in a letter to Mersenne when he writes that animals move as if they feel pain but that the feeling of pain depends on the soul (AT III 85/CSMK 148). And in a letter to Reneri for Pollot, Descartes denies that animals have any “real feeling or emotion” (AT II 41/CSMK 100).
Moreover, Descartes holds that states of sensory consciousness are confused thoughts of the soul that arise from the mind-body union. For example, Descartes claims in the Principles of Philosophy (hereafter Principles) that the passions as well as sensations of color and heat are confused thoughts in the soul that arise “from the close and intimate union of our mind with the body” (AT VIIIA 23/CSM I 209). And in the Sixth Meditation Descartes makes this same claim with respect to feelings of pain, hunger, and thirst (AT VII 81/CSM II 56). But animals are mere automata that do not stand in a union to a mind. So, Descartes’s view that states of sensory consciousness are confused thoughts arising from the mind-body union entails that animals lack sensory consciousness.
Hence, we face a puzzle. Prima facie, it is fallacious to infer that animals lack sensory consciousness just because they lack language and general intelligence. Yet the fifth part of the Discourse gives the impression that this is Descartes’s argument. An adequate interpretation must avoid attributing to Descartes such an egregious non sequitur. Broadly speaking, there are two ways that we can avoid this conclusion. One option is to provide an alternative account of the content of animal automatism. If animals are automata that nevertheless have states of sensory consciousness, then our puzzle does not arise. Another option is to provide an alternative account of the argument for animal automatism. On this approach, one argues that Descartes’s argument for animal automatism does not rest solely on the premises that animals lack language and general intelligence. The introspective-analogical interpretation is an example of this approach.
Several scholars have opted for the first of these two options and argued that Descartes does not really deny that animals have sensory consciousness. I turn now to pointing out some problems for this interpretation.
2. Animals as sensitive automata
In a classic paper, John Cottingham argues that animals for Descartes are sensitive automata (Reference Cottingham1978).Footnote 5 That is, animals are automata with sensory consciousness. The strongest textual evidence for this view comes from Descartes’s correspondence and especially two letters to More and the Marquess of Newcastle.Footnote 6 For example, in the letter to the Marquess of Newcastle, Descartes writes:
[A]ll the things which dogs, horses and monkeys are taught to perform are only expressions of their fear, their hope or their joy; and consequently they can be performed without any thought. (AT IV 574/CSMK 303)
Prima facie, Descartes here attributes passions to animals. And, presumably, if animals have passions, then they also have other states of sensory consciousness.
The above passage conflicts with the passages I cited as evidence that Descartes denies that animals have sensory consciousness in section 1. Scholars have responded to this tension in two main ways. Some have argued, as I think is most plausible, that apparent attributions of passions to animals should be read as nonliteral (Radner and Radner Reference Radner and Radner1996; Sencerz Reference Sencerz1990; Wee Reference Wee2005; Hatfield Reference Hatfield2008). Defenders of the sensitive automata view have instead argued that Descartes only denies that animals have higher-order awareness of passions, feelings, and sensory perceptions.Footnote 7 Animals are aware of their environments but are not aware of this awareness. Wherever Descartes appears to deny that animals have sensory consciousness, all he means by this is that animals lack higher-order awareness of their sensory consciousness.
For reasons of scope, I cannot settle this issue in this paper. My primary concern is to interpret Descartes’s argument for animal automatism rather than to provide an account of the content of this view. Accordingly, I argue here for the modest conclusion that the evidence for the sensitive automata view is weak enough that we should be open to exploring alternative solutions to the puzzle of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism. I make two arguments to support this conclusion. In section 2.a, I argue that Descartes’s theory of the passions can plausibly accommodate the claim that his attributions of passions to animals are nonliteral. And in section 2.b, I argue that the textual evidence for claiming that Descartes only denies higher-order awareness to animals is weak because it is highly ambiguous.
2.a Animals’ nonliteral passions
In a famous passage from the Sixth Replies, Descartes distinguishes between three grades of sensory response (AT VII 437–38; CSM II 294–95). The first grade is constituted by material stimulation of bodily organs. Upon such material stimulation, the soul experiences confused perceptions arising from the mind-body union which constitute the second grade (AT VII 437; CSM II 294). Finally, the third grade is instead constituted by intellectual judgments (AT VII 438; CSM II 295).Footnote 8
Descartes’s theory of the passions follows a similar pattern. Descartes claims that the behaviors that accompany our passions are automatic (AT XI 358/CSM I 342–43). Our flight from a terrifying animal is thus an automatic response of the body. When the body undergoes such automatic responses, the soul experiences a corresponding passion which is “among the perceptions which the close alliance between the soul and the body renders confused and obscure” (AT XI 349–50/CSM I 339). The function of these passions is to dispose the will to consent to the automatic responses of the body-machine (AT XI 372/CSM I 349). Descartes’s theory of the passions thus recognizes three grades: bodily mechanisms, confused perceptions which arise from the mind-body union, and acts of will. Call this the three-grade theory of the passions.
One might think that Descartes’s three-grade theory of the passions supports attributing passions to animals given that the first grade is shared with animals.Footnote 9 However, this assumes that the three grades correspond to three different senses or types of passion. Hence, if animals have one grade, they have passions in at least one sense. But there are alternative ways of reading the metaphysical relationship between the three grades and the passions. One could hold, for example, that the passions are metaphysically identical to the composite of all three grades. One might also hold that, strictly speaking, the passions should be metaphysically identified with the second grade only.
Indeed, there is good textual evidence for this final reading. As previously mentioned, Descartes claims that animals move as if they have passions, but that they do not actually have passions (AT XI 431/CSM I 376–377; AT XI 369–70/CSM I 348). And, Descartes claims that passions are confused perceptions in the soul (AT XI 349–50/CSM I 339). So, Descartes appears to ascribe the first grade of the passions to animals but to deny that they literally have passions because they lack a soul with confused perceptions. In the exposition of my positive view, I will assume this reading of the relationship between Descartes’s theory of the passions and animal automatism.
Of course, advocates of the sensitive automata view instead prefer the view that the three grades each constitute their own type of passion. I won’t settle this issue here. For our purposes, what is important is that my preferred reading is a plausible interpretive option. Descartes’s attributions of passions to animals can be interpreted as merely attributing the first grade of the passions to animals. And, consistently with this claim, Descartes can claim that, literally speaking, animals lack the passions which are identical to or require confused perceptions in the soul.
2.b Descartes on first-order and higher-order awareness
In the Principles Descartes asserts that “thinking is to be identified here not merely with understanding … but also with sensory awareness” (AT VIIA 7/CSM I 195; see also AT VII 29/CSM II 19). This assertion supports what I call the expansive interpretation of thought. According to this interpretation, thought encompasses all mental states including states of sensory consciousness. Because Descartes denies that animals have thought, the expansive interpretation is inconsistent with the sensitive automata view. Advocates of the sensitive automata view have instead defended what I call the restricted interpretation of thought. On this interpretation, it is only higher-order awareness of sensory consciousness that is constituted by thought.Footnote 10
A first problem for this interpretation is that when Descartes explicitly discusses distinctions between first-order and higher-order awareness, he maps these distinctions onto different types of thought. For example, Descartes claims that infants have “direct” thoughts but lack the “reflexive” thoughts by which adults can represent their sensations as being newly experienced (AT V 221/CSMK 35). And, even more tellingly, Descartes appears to deny that a distinction between first-order and higher-order awareness should be used to make sense of his view of animals in a response to Bourdin.
Bourdin had objected to Descartes that what distinguishes spirit from matter is not thought but rather that spirit can “think in such a way that you can contemplate and consider your thought by a reflexive act.” (AT VII 533/CSM II 364). A benefit of this traditional view, Bourdin intimates, is that one would not need to deny animals’ sensory consciousness (AT VII 535/CSM II 364). To this Descartes replies:
The initial thought by means of which we become aware of something does not differ from the second thought by means of which we become aware that we were aware of it … And if it is conceded that a corporeal thing has the first kind of thought, then there is not the slightest reason to deny that it can have the second. (AT VII 559/CSM II 38)
This passage can be read as denying that corporeal things have even first-order sensory consciousness. But even if we give this passage some other reading, it still demonstrates that Descartes has the sophistication and terminology needed to draw distinctions between orders of awareness. And yet Descartes nowhere unambiguously expresses the view that animals have first-order sensory consciousness.Footnote 11 The restricted interpretation of thought thus implies that Descartes’s texts are systematically misleading in a way that makes his view of animals seem much more controversial. Critics of animal automatism objected to Descartes that it was implausible to deny that animals have sensory consciousness (e.g., AT VII 268–69/CSM II 187). Yet Descartes never responds to these objections by clearly asserting that in his view animals have first-order sensory consciousness.
The primary textual evidence for the restricted interpretation is also highly ambiguous. In the Principles, Descartes draws a distinction between vision “as bodily activit[y]” and the “actual sense or awareness of seeing” (AT VIIA 7–8/CSM I 195). It is only the latter, Descartes claims, that is constituted by thought. Defenders of the restricted interpretation argue that this shows that Descartes held that bodily activity is sufficient for vision, and that thought is identified with higher-order awareness of this vision.Footnote 12 However, Descartes contrasts vision as bodily activity from the awareness constituted by thought by writing that the claim “I am seeing” is only doubtful when interpreted as a claim about vision as bodily activity (ibid.). This is because one could dream that one is seeing something when one’s eyes are closed (ibid.). All that follows from this is that optical stimulation is necessary for vision as bodily activity and not necessary for the awareness constituted by thought. We can thus read this passage without claiming that bodily activity is sufficient for vision. This passage does not provide unambiguous support for the restricted interpretation.
To conclude, I have argued that Descartes’s apparent references to animals’ passions can plausibly be read nonliterally. And the textual evidence for claiming that only higher-order awareness of sensory consciousness is constituted by thought is highly ambiguous. Moreover, in section 1, I identified a variety of texts that are problematic for the sensitive automata view. The textual evidence for the sensitive automata view is thus weak enough that we should be open to exploring alternative solutions to the puzzle of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism. Moving forward, I will act on the assumption that animals for Descartes lack sensory consciousness.
3. Problems with alternative interpretations
There are two dominant interpretations in the literature of how Descartes establishes that animals lack sensory consciousness. According to intellectualizing interpretations, Descartes holds that the mind is essentially rational.Footnote 13 Hence, the reasons that Descartes gives for denying animals reason (i.e., their lack of true language and general intelligence) are themselves reasons for thinking that animals lack sensory consciousness. According to parsimony interpretations, animal automatism is instead established by an appeal to parsimony.Footnote 14 In section 3.a, I criticize intellectualizing interpretations. In section 3.b, I do the same for parsimony interpretations.
3.a Intellectualizing interpretations
Descartes distinguishes between the intellectual or rational states of the pure understanding, and the confused states of the mind-body union that I’ve earlier termed states of sensory consciousness (AT VIII A 16–17/CSM I 204; AT VIII 316–17/CSM 1 280; AT XI 347–48/CSM I 337–38; AT VII 72–73/CSM II 50–51). Unlike some of his scholastic predecessors, however, Descartes does not understand this distinction in terms of the operations of ontologically distinct parts of the soul.Footnote 15 Rather, the mind insofar as it operates independently of the body is the pure understanding (AT VII 73/CSM II 51).Footnote 16 States of sensory consciousness are modes of a thinking substance that instead depend on the union of the mind and body (AT VII 81/CSM II 56).
Given this understanding of the relation between the faculty of reason and the soul, reason is in a sense essential to the soul. Reason is just a way in which the soul itself can operate, as opposed to a part which could be separated from it. Just so, it may appear that animal automatism can be justified by appeal to Descartes’s “intellectualized” conception of the mind.Footnote 17 Gary Hatfield provides a pithy intellectualist reconstruction of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism: “if animals have sentience, they must have minds; hence, they must exhibit intellect and reason, but they don’t” (Reference Hatfield2008, 419). In other words, given that intellect and reason are essential to the mind, animals’ lack of reason entails their mindlessness.
However, intellectualizing interpretations trade on an ambiguity. Descartes’s conception of the mind is intellectualized in the sense that the faculty of reason is essential to the mind. But Descartes held that the exercise of the faculty of reason can be obstructed by the mind-body union. In infants and “madmen” (i.e., persons with cognitive disabilities) the mind experiences states of sensory consciousness but is prevented by the deleterious influence of the body from exercising the pure understanding (AT VII 229–30/CSM II 160–61; AT VII 354/CSM II 245; AT IV 281–83/CSMK 262–63; AT V 150/CSMK 336; AT V 219/CSMK 356).Footnote 18 Hence, Descartes does not hold that the mind is intellectualized in the sense that intellectual or rational acts are essential to the mind. Infants and persons with cognitive disabilities may have the faculty of reason, but they do not enjoy the fruits of this faculty.
Because Descartes does not hold that rational acts are essential to the mind, he must acknowledge that his fundamental framework leaves open two distinct hypotheses that can account for the observation that animals lack language and general intelligence. The first hypothesis, which Descartes adopts, is the doctrine of animal automatism. However, another possible hypothesis models animals after persons with cognitive disabilities. Animals could be composites of body and mind where the condition of the body, like in persons with cognitive disabilities, prevents the exercise of the intellect. I call this the “latent view” of animals because on this view animals have a latent capacity for reason.
If Descartes’s defense of animal automatism is to be fully persuasive, he must give us a reason for embracing animal automatism and rejecting the latent view of animals. One might worry that this problem is anachronistic, and that no one in the period would have taken the latent view of animals seriously. However, in his entry “Rorarius” in the Dictionnaire historique et critique Pierre Bayle makes a powerful argument in favor of the latent view of animals:
I would like to ask these gentlemen if they would find it just to say that the soul of a man is of another species at the age of thirty-five than at the age of one month, or that the soul of a madman, an idiot, or a senile old man is not substantially as perfect as that of a capable man. They would no doubt reject this view as a very great error, and rightly so. For it is certain that the same soul that only senses in children meditates and reasons in a solid way in a mature person, and that the same soul whose reason and wit are admired in a great man would only dote in an old man, only talk wildly in an idiot, and only have sensations in a child… . If it were united to organs different than ours, it would think otherwise than it does now… . It is easy to apply this to the soul of beasts. (Reference Bayle and Popkin1965, 222–23)
Bayle suggests that infants, persons with cognitive disabilities, and the senile should be regarded as having souls of the same species as typical adults. Differences in cognitive capacity should be explained by differences in bodily organs. The alternative, Bayle intimates, requires us to absurdly hold that the species of one’s soul changes as one develops into a cognitively typical adult. Moreover, explaining differences in cognitive capacity by appeal to different species of soul lacks parsimony and requires us to recognize many different species of soul. But if the correct explanation for cognitive diversity among humans appeals to differences in bodily organs, then why shouldn’t this same approach account for the difference between humans and animals? As Bayle notes: “it is easy to apply this to the soul of beasts” (ibid.).
Interestingly, Descartes addresses the possibility of modeling animals after infants in a 1649 letter to Henry More (AT V 345/CSMK 374). He writes that he accords infants minds because mature humans display “certain signs of thought” by which Descartes presumably means language and general intelligence (ibid). Animals, by contrast, are denied minds because they never grow up to display certain signs of thought. Descartes does not address the possibility of modeling animals after persons with cognitive disabilities. But Descartes would presumably say that he accords persons with cognitive disabilities minds because they are members of the human species and typical adult members of the human species display certain signs of thought.
However, this Cartesian justification for rejecting the latent view of animals does not give us a response to Bayle’s argument. Bayle argues on explanatory grounds that humans share the same species of soul and that differences in bodily organs explains cognitive diversity among humans. It seems arbitrary to not extend this account to other animals, given that their behavior seems well explained by attributions of sensory consciousness. The Cartesian justification for rejecting the latent view of animals does not engage these considerations at all. Rather, it assumes a very high evidential standard for attributions of soul. An organism should only be regarded as having a soul if it is a member of a species that speaks or displays general intelligence. But it begs the question to assume this high bar without justification. And intellectualizing interpretations do not provide us with any justification for this high bar. The fact that the faculty of reason is essential to the soul does not entail that the only good evidence for the presence of a soul is language or general intelligence.
One might suggest that intellectualizing interpretations just need to be supplemented with additional premises that explain why animal automatism is to be preferred over the latent view of animals. One obvious possibility is that Descartes prefers the doctrine of animal automatism over the latent view for theological reasons.Footnote 19 Descartes alludes to the theological virtue of animal automatism in two pieces of correspondence as well as in the Discourse (AT VI 59–60/CSM I 141; AT IV 576/CSMK 304; AT V 277/CSMK 366). However, theological considerations are best read as not essential to Descartes’s case. In the first piece of correspondence, the theological argument is presented as merely a response to an analogical argument for the claim that animals have minds.Footnote 20 In the second piece, the theological argument is described as just one among many arguments.Footnote 21 In the Discourse, the unique immortality of the human soul is only mentioned as a benefit of Descartes’s view of animals after he has already concluded that animals act merely from the disposition of their organs (AT VI 59–60/CSM I 141). Descartes thus appears to regard theological considerations as playing a supplementary rather than an essential role in justifying animal automatism.
To conclude, intellectualizing interpretations fail to explain why Descartes rejects the latent view of animals. Descartes rejects such a view by relying on a very high evidential standard for attributions of soul. But this high evidential standard begs the question. I have just argued that this difficulty shouldn’t be circumvented with an appeal to theological doctrine. Another possibility, which I explore next, is that Descartes endorses animal automatism because of its theoretical parsimony.
3.a Parsimony vs. analogy
Parsimony interpretations take Descartes to reject animal minds because of the theoretical parsimony of animal automatism.Footnote 22 According to parsimony interpretations, the point of Descartes’s discussion in the fifth part of the Discourse is to establish that animal behavior lies within the scope of mechanistic explanation–only language and general intelligence lies beyond the scope of what can be explained mechanistically. From this, Descartes infers animal automatism via an implicit appeal to parsimony.
Parsimony does play an important role in Descartes’s argument for animal automatism.Footnote 23 But parsimony interpretations make the stronger claim that parsimony suffices to solve the puzzle of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism. I argue that this stronger claim is false. Parsimony alone cannot solve this puzzle. Solving this puzzle also requires recognizing contributions made by introspection and analogy.
The problem with parsimony interpretations is that the merit of a theory must be evaluated along several dimensions and there can be trade-offs between theoretical virtues. In the case of animal automatism, the analogy between humans and animals suggests that the virtue of parsimony is won at the cost of another theoretical virtue. Just as we ought (other things being equal) to prefer parsimonious theories, we ought (other things being equal) to infer like causes from like effects. This is a problem for the doctrine of animal automatism because the practice of explaining human behaviors by appeal to states of sensory consciousness is prima facie attractive. For example, we say that someone is eating because they feel hungry and saw the bread on the table. Call this class of behaviors that are naturally explained by states of sensory consciousness sensitive behaviors. If states of sensory consciousness feature in our best explanations of sensitive behaviors in humans, then analogy motivates explaining sensitive behaviors in animals in the same way.
Descartes is thus forced into a dilemma. He must either: (a) deny the commonsense view that human sensitive behaviors depend on states of sensory consciousness, or (b) violate the principle that from like effects one should infer like causes. Descartes adopts the first horn in the above dilemma. Descartes holds that “all the motions of the limbs which accompany our passions are caused not by the soul but simply by the machinery of the body” (AT V 344/CSMK 374). And Descartes writes that animals “conduct their lives” with behaviors like those which accompany our passions (AT XI 431/CSM I 376–77). Descartes thus regards sensitive behaviors in both humans and animals as automatic.
The claim that human sensitive behavior is automatic is surprising. Naïve introspection suggests two problems. Firstly, introspection suggests that sensitive behaviors depend on sensory perceptions. And secondly, introspection suggests that passions cause passionate behaviors. For example, it seems that I flee a terrifying animal because I see the animal and then am moved by fear to flight. If Descartes affirms that such behavior is automatic merely as a corollary of his doctrine of animal automatism, then one might worry that this corollary is sufficiently introspectively implausible to justify rejecting animal automatism. The persuasiveness of Descartes’s case for animal automatism thus depends on Descartes’s ability to argue on independent grounds that it is plausible to regard human sensitive behavior as automatic.
According to the introspective-analogical interpretation, introspection provides this independent ground. Descartes argues that, contrary to what the naïve believe, introspection can be used to undermine the view that sensory perceptions and passions cause our sensitive behaviors. Relying on introspective claims and considerations of parsimony, Descartes argues that various behaviors are best regarded as automatic in human beings. Moreover, Descartes claims, animal behavior resembles these automatic behaviors and hence is best regarded as automatic as well. Descartes’s appeal to introspection thus gives Descartes a response to the dilemma I posed above. The first horn of the dilemma—embracing the seemingly implausible view that human sensitive behavior is automatic—turns out to be not so implausible after all. The genius of this argument is that it transforms the analogy between humans and animals from an apparent obstacle into a reason for embracing animal automatism.
4. The introspective-analogical interpretation
According to intellectualizing and parsimony interpretations, the only empirical claims that serve as premises in the argument for animal automatism are claims about animal behavior. The introspective-analogical interpretation rejects this assumption. According to the introspective-analogical interpretation, introspectively motivated empirical claims about the role of automatism in human beings play an important role as well. Descartes first argues that introspection supports the view that humans contain an automaton within them, and then Descartes uses this result to support the view that animals are automata as well.
The foundation of the introspective-analogical argument is an appeal to introspection. By “introspection” I mean to refer very broadly to the mind’s capacity for first-person knowledge. Introspection might sometimes take the form of deliberate fixation of attention on our own mental states, thereby forming higher-order perceptions of these states (e.g., AT VII 559/CSM II 382). But arguably, Descartes held that not all first-person knowledge must be acquired this way. For Descartes claims that we have an immediate awareness of all our thoughts (AT VII 160/CSM II 113). Regardless of the mechanism that explains our ability to know our own thoughts, I hold that an appeal to this capacity plays an important role in the argument for animal automatism.Footnote 24
Descartes relies on introspective claims in defending the view that habitual behaviors, reflexes, and the behaviors that accompany our passions are automatic. However, the introspective considerations for regarding reflexes and the behaviors that accompany our passions as automatic differs from the introspective case for regarding habitual behaviors as automatic. Consequently, I begin in section 4.a by providing an account of how Descartes introspectively defends the claim that habitual behaviors are automatic. In section 4.b, I explain how Descartes extends his conclusions about habitual behavior to argue that reflexes and the behaviors that accompany our passions are automatic as well.
4.a Introspection and habitual behavior
Descartes makes clear that he intends to make the analogy between humans and animals count in favor of animal automatism in the Fourth Replies:
But if we wish to determine by the use of reason whether any of the movements of the brutes are similar to those which are performed in us with the help of the mind, or whether they resemble those which depend merely on the flow of the animal spirits and the disposition of the organs then we should consider the differences that can be found between men and beasts. I mean the differences which I set out in Part 5 of the Discourse on the Method … If we do this, it will be readily apparent that all the actions of the brutes resemble only those which occur in us without any assistance from the mind. (AT VII 230/CSM II 161; emphasis added)
Descartes claims that the point of his arguments from the fifth part of the Discourse is to show that animal actions only resemble automatic human behaviors. Just so, animal behavior is best regarded as automatic.
This analogical argument requires Descartes to have already established that there are automatic human behaviors. Descartes argues for this claim in the lines preceding the above quotation when he writes that actions such as “walking, singing, and the like” can occur “without the mind attending to them” (AT VII 229–30/CSM II 161; see also AT VI 46/CSM I 134; AT III 48/CSMK 146). From this, Descartes concludes that these motions “do not depend in any way on the mind” (ibid.). It appears that Descartes has habitual behaviors in mind. Habits require thoughts to be acquired. For example, learning how to sing a song requires thought. But once these habits have been acquired, they can be performed seemingly without any direction from the mind. Indeed, Descartes claims that these habitual behaviors “do not depend in any way on the mind” (ibid.).
The most plausible explanation of why Descartes regards habitual behaviors as automatic is that he takes this to be supported by introspection. In a letter to the Marquess of Newcastle defending animal automatism, Descartes claims that animals only imitate or surpass us “in those of our actions that are not guided by our thought” (AT IV 573/CSMK 302–3). Descartes then lists examples of such actions not guided by thought claiming that “it often happens that we walk or eat without thinking at all about what we are doing” (ibid.). Presumably, Descartes has in mind cases in which we act habitually while we introspectively know that our thoughts are occupied by other matters. But we know that when we were acquiring these habits it was necessary for our thoughts to be focused on them. So, if we are now performing them without thinking about them, these behaviors must no longer need the guidance of thought and must instead be automatic.
Descartes argues in a letter to Plempius for Fromondus that animal behavior should be modeled after automatic habitual behavior:
I explain quite explicitly that my view is that animals do not see as we do when we are aware that we see, but only as we do when our mind is elsewhere. In such a case the images of external objects are depicted on our retinas, and perhaps the impressions they make in the optic nerves cause our limbs to make various movements, although we are quite unaware of them. In such a case we too move just like automata … (AT I 413–14/CSMK 61–62)
This passage is sometimes taken to support the sensitive automata view. However, this passage can instead be read as claiming that animals respond to visual stimuli in the same way that we do when we are acting habitually and automatically. In such a case, “our mind is elsewhere” and “we too move just like automata.”
However, not all of our actions are habitual. We often interact with our environments in a way that seems to depend on our sensory consciousness. So, Descartes must justify the claim that it is better to model animal behavior after automatic habitual behaviors as opposed to behaviors that seem to depend on sensory consciousness. In my view, Descartes regards animal behavior as resembling automatic habitual behaviors because animal behavior, like habitual behavior, can be highly sophisticated yet, in an important sense, inflexible.
Consider how one can be very good at habitually performing a complex series of motions without being able to perform a different but similarly complex series of motions. For example, if I learn a difficult piano piece, this does not mean that I thereby know how to play a different but similarly difficult piece. In order to learn this piece of similar difficulty, I will have to practice a great deal until I can perform it habitually as well. It is characteristic of habitual behaviors, then, that they can display a high degree of complexity without the behaver being able to produce different behaviors with a similar degree of complexity.
A recurring theme in Descartes’s writings on animals, and especially in the fifth part of the Discourse, is that animal behavior is sophisticated yet inflexible in this sense. Descartes writes in the Discourse: “[i]t is also a very remarkable fact that although many animals show more skill than we do in some of their actions, yet the same animals show none at all in many others” (AT VI 58/CSM I 141). This shows that animals act according to the disposition of their organs (ibid.). Similarly, in the letter to Reneri for Pollot Descartes writes that:
[T]hough their movements are often more regular and certain than those of the wisest men, yet in many things which they would have to do to imitate us, they fail more disastrously than the greatest fools. (AT II 40/CSMK 99)
In other words, animal behavior is sophisticated yet inflexible. In this respect, animal behavior resembles our habitual behaviors. And this comparison supports the conclusion that animal behaviors are automatic like our habitual behaviors.
Descartes’s appeal to introspection on habitual behaviors shows that we can navigate our environment and respond to stimuli without perception playing any role. This happens, for example, when we walk about habitually without thinking about what we are doing. This shows that it is hasty to claim that introspection shows that human sensitive behaviors depend on sensory perceptions. Some of our behaviors may depend on sensory perceptions, but some of our behaviors do not. Descartes’s appeal to introspection also produces some initial reasons for thinking that animal behavior is automatic. Animal behavior resembles our automatic behavior in being sophisticated yet inflexible. So, analogy favors the view that animal behavior is automatic.
However, much of animal behavior seems well explained by attributing passions to them. And Descartes’s appeal to introspection on habitual behaviors does nothing to ameliorate the worry that introspection supports the view that the passions cause the behaviors which accompany them in humans. I turn now to explaining how Descartes relies on introspective claims to respond to this concern and to help defend the view that such behaviors in humans are automatic. As a shorthand, I will refer to such behaviors and analogous behaviors in animals as “passionate behaviors” but this should not be taken to imply that they are caused by the passions. On my reading, passionate behaviors in humans are automatic behaviors which are accompanied by the passions which strictly speaking are confused thoughts in the soul which dispose the will to consent to the behavior. The passionate behaviors of animals are automatic behaviors that resemble the passionate behaviors of humans.
4.b Introspection on reflexes and passionate behaviors
Descartes also appeals to introspection on reflexes and behaviors that accompany our passions. However, introspection does not reveal that these behaviors are performed without being accompanied by thought. Rather, what Descartes emphasizes is that introspection reveals that these behaviors do not depend on the will. For example, in the Passions, Descartes takes the fact that we cannot prevent ourselves from blinking when a hand approaches our eyes to show that “it is not through the mediation of our soul that they close” (AT XI 338/CSM I 333; see also AT VII 229–30/CSM II 161). And in the letter to Newcastle, Descartes cites the fact that movements of our passions do not depend on the will as evidence that they are automatic:
As for the movements of our passions, even though in us they are accompanied by thought because we have the faculty of thinking, it is nevertheless very clear that they do not depend on thought, because they often occur in spite of us. Consequently they can also occur in animals, even more violently than they do in human beings… . (AT IV 573/CSMK 302–03)
However, the claim that reflexes and passionate behaviors do not depend on the will does not entail that they are automatic. These behaviors could depend on states of sensory consciousness without depending on the will. So, if Descartes deductively infers that these behaviors are automatic from the claim that they do not depend on the will, then he is guilty of fallacious reasoning. However, we can plausibly read Descartes’s reasoning in these passages as abductive. Descartes’s claim is that the best explanation of why these behaviors are independent of the will is that they are automatic, i.e., they depend entirely on the dispositions of the body.
To understand the appeal of this abductive argument, it should firstly be noted that introspection arguably does more than merely show that reflexes and passionate behaviors are independent from the will. Consider the case of putting out one’s hands to protect one’s head when one takes a fall (AT VII 230/CSM II 161). In such a case, introspection arguably shows that we don’t have any thoughts about putting out one’s hands. One’s hands simply react in an appropriate fashion, without our having to think about it. The same is true of the various somatic changes that accompany our passions, such as trembling in fear (AT XI 415–16/CSM I 369). One trembles without having to think about trembling. This introspective result arguably shows that our bodies contain dispositions for these motions.Footnote 25 What is unclear is whether thought is required for triggering these dispositions.
Introspection does not rule out that thoughts are needed for triggering reflexes and passionate behaviors. However, the appeal to introspection on habitual behaviors reveals that behaviors of similar complexity do not require triggering thoughts. And, parsimony supports the hypothesis that states of sensory consciousness accompany but do not cause reflexes and passionate behaviors. Descartes’s appeal to introspection on habitual behaviors commits him to the view that there are at least two different types of behaviors: there are automatic behaviors and there are deliberate behaviors, i.e., behaviors that depend on volition. Reflexes and passionate behaviors aren’t deliberate. If reflexes and passionate behaviors can plausibly be regarded as automatic, then Descartes can avoid postulating a third type of human behavior.
However, as I argued in section 3.b, a problem with the hypothesis that these behaviors are automatic is that introspectively the passions seem to be responsible for our passionate behaviors. Call the view that the passions themselves directly cause our passionate behaviors direct passionate causation.
A powerful response to this objection can be found in Descartes’s theory of the passions. Descartes’s theory of the passions is carefully crafted to deny direct passionate causation while remaining introspectively plausible. Descartes claims in the Passions that the function of the passions is to “move the soul to consent and contribute to actions which may serve to preserve the body or render it in some way more perfect” (AT XI 430/CSM I 376). The soul consents to these behaviors with a volition (AT XI 372/CSM I 349). Descartes uses representational language when describing how the passions perform this function: “the passions almost always cause the goods they represent, as well as the evils, to appear much greater and more important than they are” (AT XI 431/CSM I 377). The passions thus play a role with respect to our passionate behaviors in Descartes’s psychology. But the role they play is indirect; the passions merely influence the will to consent to passionate behaviors.
Moreover, Descartes claims, we sometimes act passionately while experiencing an opposing act of will (AT XI 364/CSM I 345). In these cases, there is a conflict between the tendency of the motions of our animal spirits to push the pineal gland in one direction while our will opposes this tendency (AT XI 366/CSM I 346). If we act passionately despite an opposing act of will, this is because the motions of the animal spirits were victorious in this struggle to control the pineal gland (ibid.). So, on Descartes’s view, we sometimes act passionately without the passions even contributing indirectly by influencing the will to consent to the passionate behavior.
This theory offers Descartes a plausible response to the objection that introspection supports direct passionate causation. Descartes can respond that introspection only supports the claim that the passions influence the will. The naïve mistakenly interpret this as evidence for direct passionate causation. But we sometimes act passionately without the consent of the will. So passionate behaviors can be produced even when the passions fail to influence the will to consent to a passionate behavior.
One might object to this that the passions could both influence the will and directly cause passionate behaviors. Consequently, insofar as introspection confirms that our passionate behaviors are accompanied by the passions, we cannot rule out the hypothesis that the passions directly cause passionate behaviors. However, as long as introspection does not support direct passionate causation, parsimony can tip the scales in favor of the view that passionate behaviors are automatic.Footnote 26 Descartes’s theory of the passions thus parsimoniously avoids claiming that there are behaviors that are neither automatic nor deliberate while also accounting for the data of introspection.
I’d like to conclude by contrasting the introspective-analogical interpretation with Lex Newman’s parsimony interpretation. Newman recognizes that Descartes appeals to introspection. However, Newman claims that the point of this appeal is merely to show that various behaviors do not issue “from an occurrent, conscious volition of the behaver” (Reference Newman2001, 403). Consequently, these behaviors can be explained as automatic. And, if behaviors can be explained as automatic, then parsimony favors the view that they are automatic.
However, restricting introspection to merely showing that various behaviors do not depend on the will leaves Newman open to various objections. For example, one can object that introspection supports the view that our ability to navigate our environment depends on sensory perception. The introspective-analogical interpretation avoids this problem because it holds that introspection supports the view that habitual behaviors do not depend on thought at all not even sensory perception. A second problem for Newman is that introspection seems to show that passionate behaviors depend on the passions. I’ve argued that an introspective response to this objection can be found in Descartes’s theory of the passions. All that introspection really shows is that the passions influence the will, but this does not support direct passionate causation.
5. Conclusion
I’ve argued that Descartes makes an introspective-analogical argument for animal automatism. Descartes argues that introspection shows that habitual behaviors are automatic. And, given this, Descartes argues that reflexes and passionate behaviors are best viewed as automatic as well. Descartes further claims that animal behaviors resemble the automatic behaviors of humans. Consequently, analogy supports the conclusion that animal behaviors are automatic. Descartes’s argument for animal automatism thus begins by establishing that the “animal within” the human being is an automaton and concludes from this that the animals without are automata as well.
Before concluding, I’d like to make two further points about the introspective-analogical interpretation. Firstly, although the introspective-analogical interpretation is an account of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism, the interpretation also has implications for the debate over the content of animal automatism itself. If the introspective-analogical interpretation satisfactorily solves the puzzle of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism, then it undermines one of the strongest arguments for the sensitive automata view. Although the textual evidence for the sensitive automata view is relatively sparse, a major point in its favor is that it resolves the puzzle of Descartes’s argument for animal automatism.Footnote 27 But this point does not favor the sensitive automata view if the introspective-analogical interpretation offers an equally plausible solution to this puzzle.
Finally, we should note that the introspective-analogical argument was embraced by several early modern expositors of Descartes and the Cartesian philosophy. For example, Claude Clerselier articulates the introspective-analogical argument in his introduction to the Reference Clerselier1677 edition of Descartes’s Treatise:
Given that the great similarity between humans and beasts, in the conformation of their bodies, and in the similarity of their actions, is the cause of why one believes that they act by an interior principle which is similar to ours, that is to say, by a soul which senses and knows, it seems to me that in order to combat this prejudice … one of the most powerful methods is to observe the many similar things which are in us, without the ministry of the soul, and without in any way being known by her, or if she comes to this knowledge, still these things do not depend on this knowledge to be done … and to show that it is only in these respects that animals resemble us. (59–60; translation mine)
And in the Systema generale philosophica, a systematic presentation of Descartes’s philosophy, François Bayle defends animal automatism as follows:
Forasmuch as most of the Motions, that are observ’d in Animals, are accompanied in us with some knowledge, it hath been believed, that there was in Animals a principle of knowledge, which is called the Sensitive Soul, that produced them; without considering, that the same Motions are very often made in us without our Soul’s contributing any thing to them, seeing she doth not think on them, and that at times they are made against her will. (Reference Bayle and Grangeron1670, 121)
So, the introspective-analogical interpretation may not be an original reading of Descartes. Indeed, it may be one of the first. However, I’ve argued that it avoids some of the problems afflicting prominent interpretations in contemporary literature. And, it draws our attention to a part of Descartes’s reasoning that early moderns rightly foregrounded, but which has received relatively little attention in contemporary literature.
Acknowledgments
This paper has greatly benefitted from thoughtful feedback from Lisa Downing, Julia Jorati, Richard Samuels, and Lisa Shabel. The paper also benefitted from fruitful feedback and discussion at the 2017 meeting of the Early Modern—St. Louis conference. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy whose detailed and insightful comments greatly improved the paper.
Evan Thomas is a lecturer in philosophy at Ohio State University where he completed his PhD in 2020. His research focuses on early modern philosophy and the mental and moral status of nonhuman animals. He also has strong interests in social, political, and environmental philosophy.
