Sci Am October 2019 issue has an article, Is Death Reversible? by Christof Koch of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. At p. 36 he writes; `... there is no credible evidence that apes, dogs, crows and bees have minds sufficiently self-aware to be troubled by the insight that one day they will be no more.’
Relate this to a preceding question: Is abstraction a collective invention of human society? Suppose that abstraction is an invention of society’s networked minds of hundreds or thousands of generations. Then the difference between `apes, dogs, crows and bees ‘ and humans is that humans acquire the abstraction `death’ from the store of abstractions devised collectively by society. If so, humans do not differ from `apes, dogs, crows and bees ‘ in understanding death due to superior individual cognition that arises during an individual lifespan, but rather from an insight collectively arrived at by networked minds over many generations.
For an individual human, it is difficult to separate from knowledge that which has been acquired by means of language. Paul Feyerabend in 1993 in Against Method, observed ` … describing a familiar situation is, for the speaker, and event in which statement and phenomenon are firmly glued together.’ Perhaps that applies to the abstraction `death’? Or not?
I don't see how else a person could grasp death other than abstractly. To know death experientially (as-lived, real-time, as-experienced) one would have to die, which would be rather difficult to tell about it. Perhaps being really close is good enough but still it is not death. Curiously Heidegger suggest confronting our personal death as a way to allow our personal concerns (our throwness to seek wealth, fame, mansions, yachts, PhD's or whatever one has be the golden ring) to negate these yearnings' influence on our 'being-there' (dasein). Then we can see without these 'fallen' ways of being clouding our perception. Would this be akin to a personal Plato's cave experiment, whereby one sees the world not the shadows on the wall?
I would be cautious on quotes such as the one from Christof Koch without further support of evidence from empirical evaluation or review studies that can show that conclusion is supported. I say this, since this view is difficult to reconcile with studies like [1][2] (if you can post his support of this statement, it would be appreciated).
Having said that, I think it is not an all or nothing when it comes to abstraction. Loss becomes relevant due to time spent with a person or object. From there there are several factors that differentiate what constitutes a loss of a person and eventually self recognition of lifespan.
Another factor that is important are the conditions under which the reflection is done. A person under constant battle for survival will have less time to ponder (and receive external input on such matters) than a person without constant stress.
[1]Gonçalves, A., & Carvalho, S. (2019). Death among primates: a critical review of non‐human primate interactions towards their dead and dying. Biological Reviews.
[2] Fiore, R. (2013). What defines us: An analysis of grieving behavior in non-human primates as a potential evolutionary adaptation.
Dr. Geigel,
You are right to suggest caution in dealing with quotes, especially ones not referenced to studies or otherwise unsupported.
Thank you for the two references you supplied, appreciated. I hope to read the article by R. Fiore, at least.
The question as posed implicitly questions whether the distinction between human understanding of death and perception by other animals is sharply defined; abstraction afforded by language, as a collection invention of society, confers on humans insights that might not exist without language.
Specifically, the article you reference, Gonçalves, A., & Carvalho, S. (2019), Death among primates, argues that non-human primates are capable of an implicit awareness of death.
Thank you again.
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