Are humans the only animals that think about death?

It is generally assumed that humans are the only animals who can possess a concept of death. However, the ubiquity of death in nature and the evolutionary advantages that would come with an understanding of death provide two prima facie reasons for doubting this assumption.

link.springer.com - How to Tell If Animals Can Understand Death | SpringerLink

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In this section I will develop a set of conditions that an animal must fulfil in order to be credited with a minimal understanding of death. Having granted that the concept of death is not universal, one could wonder why I opt for offering a set of minimal conditions, rather than constructing the concept of death as something more open-ended, such as a cluster concept. One of the reasons for this is that, while I acknowledge the need to incorporate variability, I also want to construct a concept of death that can serve to address the assumption that animals lack it. If we were to depart from an open-ended cluster concept, it is difficult to see how we could address this assumption. But more importantly, I believe that, while there are some variations, there are also commonalities that are present across all human contexts where it is plausible to speak of the existence of a concept of death. As I will argue, a concept of death that did not meet these necessary and sufficient conditions would simply be too alien for us to plausibly construe it as such, regardless of whether it was possessed by a human or an animal.

The Seven Sub-components of the Scientific Concept of Death

In order to determine the minimal conditions that a concept of death must fulfil, it is useful to start from the set of sub-components of the concept of death that developmental psychologists use to determine the extent to which human children understand death. These sub-components correspond to the scientific understanding of death. Following Slaughter (2005), we can identify seven sub-components that make up the full-blown scientific concept of death: 1. Non-functionality: death implies the cessation of all bodily and mental functions. 2. Irreversibility: dead individuals cannot come back to life. 3. Universality: all living things, and only living things, die. 4. Personal mortality: death will also apply to oneself. 5. Inevitability: eventually, all living things must die. 6. Causality: death occurs due to a breakdown in the bodily functions. 7. Unpredictability: it is impossible to know in advance the exact timing of death. In conceptions of death that don’t qualify as scientific, because they belong to a worldview that incorporates supernatural entities, some of these seven sub-components might not be present or be just partially present. For instance, some magical or religious worldviews might entail that some living things don’t die, which would mean a relinquishment of the sub-component universality. Or they might entail that only the bodily, but not the mental functions, are terminated with death, which would mean only a partial presence of the sub-component non-functionality. I’m committed to the view that there is a set of commonalities that allows us to speak meaningfully of a concept of death across different human contexts, and it is these commonalities that need to be captured in a minimal concept of death that can be used to study the case of animals. In order to identify these common elements, I will now examine the seven sub-components of the scientific concept one by one to see which of them are crucial and to what extent they need to be present in a minimal concept of death. The first sub-component is non-functionality, the idea that death implies the cessation of all bodily and mental functions. As already mentioned, under some non-scientific conceptions of death, some of these functions may survive death. It would, however, seem outlandish to say that a Christian who believes her mental functions will continue existing after death lacks a concept of death or has one that is radically different from the scientific concept of death. A Christian and an atheist can still meaningfully communicate with each other about death, as is common in societies where secular and religious people co-exist. At the same time, someone who believed that all bodily and mental functions survive death would appear to both a Christian and an atheist as fundamentally confused or mistaken about what death is. Therefore, some non-functionality must be present in a minimal concept of death. The functions that are understood to terminate with death will, in turn, be those that are conceived as characteristic of live individuals. Under the Christian conception, these will be only the bodily functions, as mental functions are thought to be characteristic of both live and dead individuals. So, a minimal concept of death must incorporate non-functionality, while leaving room for variations in the cluster of functions conceived as characteristic of living beings. This variability is also relevant for the case of animals. We can’t expect an animal to understand that dead individuals lack functions that the animal doesn’t know that living beings have. So, for instance, we can’t expect an animal who doesn’t have a notion of digestion to understand that death implies the cessation of digestion. If an animal can understand non-functionality at all, this understanding is going to mirror her understanding of functionality. Therefore, we can expect an animal who has a minimal concept of death to understand that dead beings don’t do the things that she understands that living beings characteristically do—things like moving, eating, mating, grooming, playing, etc. The second sub-component, irreversibility, is the idea that dead individuals cannot come back to life. Very young children, when they first learn about death, tend to view it as something that is reversible, such as falling ill or going to sleep (Speece and Brent 1984, p. 1673). A definition of the minimal concept of death should be able to capture why we believe this to be a fundamental confusion. At the same time, however, we want the minimal concept of death to encompass conceptions of death with some element of reversibility, such as those that involve reincarnation. I suggest that the notion of irreversibility should be present in the minimal definition, but attached to the cluster of functions that are thought to terminate with death. Thus, an individual who believes in reincarnation will still have a concept of death, because the reincarnation is thought to occur in another body, so there is no reversion of the (bodily) functions that ended with death. This definition allows us to capture why an adult who believed death to be completely reversible would be confused or would have a concept of death that is so radically different from ours as to warrant us not classifying it as such. At the same time, it allows us to say that an animal who understands that the dead conspecific is not doing anything right now, but that she will get up and start moving at any moment, has not grasped the meaning of being dead, and is instead operating with a concept that comes closer to that of being asleep.

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The following three sub-components, universality, personal mortality, and inevitability, can be taken as a set, because if universality is true, that is, if all living beings and only living beings die, then personal mortality and the inevitability of death are entailed. These three sub-components are not required for a minimal understanding of death. This is because it is in principle possible for an individual to understand death as something that happens only to some individuals, and still possess an understanding of death. That this understanding is not precluded by a lack of these three sub-components is illustrated by the following thought experiment. Imagine that we were to learn that not all of us are going to die, or that we ourselves are not going to die, or that there is something we can do to postpone death forever. This would not fundamentally change what it means to die, although it would undoubtedly change how we experience life. In such a context, if we were to hear that Smith died, it would still mean the same thing: that Smith has lost the cluster of functions characteristic of living beings and will stay in that state forever. Although in such a world there would arguably be an extra dimension of tragedy to Smith’s death, we can still make sense of it with our regular understanding of death. So, these three sub-components are not necessary for a minimal comprehension of death. The following sub-component, causality, would certainly be advantageous to an animal who possessed it. Being able to understand the causality behind death could increase her fitness by allowing her to better avoid potential sources of danger. However, a minimal concept of death does not require an understanding of the causality behind death, for the simple reason that understanding what causes X in general is not necessary for having a concept of X. Thus, I can have a concept of arthritis without knowing what causes arthritis. Becoming familiar with the causality behind arthritis simply makes my concept more complex and perhaps more useful, but the concept of arthritis does not require it. Therefore, we should also relinquish the sub-component causality, despite the evolutionary advantages that may come from grasping it. With respect to the final sub-component, unpredictability, the first thing that needs to be said is that it is not true that death is inherently unpredictable. In certain contexts, such as the execution of someone with a guillotine, the timing of death can be predicted with a high level of precision. But more importantly, if hard determinism were true and we were able to calculate the exact timing of all of our deaths, this would, again, not fundamentally change what it means to die. It would probably entail a radical shift in the way we live our lives, but dying would still mean an irreversible cessation of those functions that are characteristic of living beings. Therefore, unpredictability is not required for a minimal understanding of death, either.

A Proposal for a Minimal Concept of Death

The previous sub-section allowed us to conclude that the crucial sub-components of the concept of death are non-functionality and irreversibility. With this in mind, here is my proposal for what a minimal concept of death looks like: A creature can be credited with a minimal concept of death once she classifies some dead individuals as dead with some reliability, where ‘dead’ is understood as a property that pertains to beings who: (a) are expected to have the cluster of functions characteristic of living beings, but (b) lack the cluster of functions characteristic of living beings, and (c) cannot recover the cluster of functions characteristic of living beings.

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Several things need to be highlighted about this definition. First, a minimal concept of death presupposes a minimal concept of life. This means that this definition satisfies Newen and Bartels’ requirement for the presence of some contrastive concepts, which they postulate because they believe that concepts can only emerge “in a minimal semantic net by classifying the objects in contrastive classes” (Newen and Bartels 2007, p. 298). It seems indeed impossible to have a concept of death without some understanding of life. If one lacked a concept of life, inanimate entities would be indistinguishable from dead ones. So, for an animal to understand that another being is dead, the animal first needs to classify this individual as one who would typically be alive. This classification need not be understood in cognitively demanding terms. It can take the form of an implicit expectation that this being will do the sorts of things that beings of its kind usually do, such as vocalise in a certain way, move in a certain way, eat certain things, etc. Further, possession of a minimal concept of death entails classification, rather than mere discriminatory capacities, so the emphasis is not placed on the animal’s capacity to recognise dead beings, but on her capacity to recognise them as dead. Thus, full reliability in the discrimination of dead individuals is not required. An animal can sometimes mistake beings that are asleep or in a coma for dead beings and still possess a concept of death. However, if the animal were to get it wrong every single time, then it would not make sense to credit her with an understanding of death, even a minimal one. So, some degree of reliability is required. That this reliability need only be partial is also implied by the absence of the sub-component universality in the minimal concept of death. The animal who has only a minimal understanding of death does not know that all living beings die. Thus, she may be capable of recognising as dead only dead conspecifics, and not members of other species. This does not preclude her from having a concept of death. As Allen and Hauser note, it is possible for an animal to have a concept of death but “not recognize that or… not care whether certain objects are capable of falling into its extension” (Allen and Hauser 1991, p. 237). It is also important to highlight that this definition leaves room for variation across species, across individuals, and across time. This is the reason behind the vagueness of the phrase ‘the cluster of functions characteristic of living beings.’ Rather than listing the specific functions that an animal must know that dead individuals lack, this criterion is left open-ended to allow for variation. Just as in the case of humans pertaining to different cultural groups, different species may have a different understanding of the sorts of functions that characterise live individuals and that are terminated with death. For instance, for species characterised by high competitiveness, an important function of live conspecifics may be that they compete for mates or resources, while species that are more cooperative may think of live conspecifics prominently as resources within the group. This criterion also leaves room for variation across individuals, so that, for instance, individuals with very playful personalities may place special emphasis on the fact that dead individuals do not play. And there is also room for variation across time, since the cluster of properties attributed to live individuals, or the number of objects that are understood to fall under the extension of the concept of death, may vary as an animal matures or gains more knowledge. In addition, the definition incorporates this temporal dimension, presupposing that no animal will be born with a concept of death, but that this is something that can be acquired (if at all) as a result of an accumulation of experiences. The definition then provides us with criteria to (roughly) determine the point in time at which an animal can be credited with a minimal understanding of death.

link.springer.com - How to Tell If Animals Can Understand Death | SpringerLink

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