Are Pigeons Delighted?

Are pigeons delighted?

Yes, probably. Pigeons are probably delighted sometimes.

The conventional epistemological approach tends to conclude that we cannot know if pigeons experience anything similar to what we would call 'delight'. In his paper 'What is it like to be a bat' Thomas Nagel argues: "It is difficult to understand what could be meant by the objective character of an experience, apart from the particular point of view from which its subject apprehends it."

In other words, you have to be a certain thing, to know what that thing's experience is like.

But this is a self-defeating argument, since it applies just as equally to you and I: since I am not you, I cannot know what you experience. But although most people would concede that I cannot know exactly how it feels to be you, this criterion is not what I am looking to satisfy - I just need to know that you are also capable of experiencing anger or happiness and feelings that are similar in significant part. I don't need to know exactly how it felt when you stubbed your toe - just that it hurt you like it hurts me.

Why do I need to know that? Well, because our world is built on the assumption that we feel similarly about things - we don't need to feel exactly the same - we just need to feel similarly so that we can have words like 'chair' or 'home' that we use in a more or less consistent way. To use Wittgenstein's expression the 'language game' depends on this and only this. You and I will feel differently about dogs, but we both know they bark loudly and have fur that is soft to the touch. It is not my language that is the limit of my world, but my feelings. So long as we share feelings, our worlds can overlap and you and I can communicate.

This 'feeling similarly about things' allows us to connect not just to our fellow humans (with who we share a language) but with other creatures designed similarly: both you and your faithful hound are startled by the loud noise outside - you react similarly. Notice that you may not be quite as excited about the squirrel, nor your dog as appreciative of the Degas painting (but this is true of people too).

We can communicate with our dogs (and our children) but only to a limited degree. We can do this because we feel similarly about some things, and this happens because we are designed similarly. We may even grow apart from our childhood friends, as we learn to feel differently about the world, and find it hard to communicate thereafter.

Evolution builds variation on a common design; classical conditioning works on sea slugs as well as humans because we both experience pleasure and pain. Certainly not in exactly the same way - but pleasure and pain nonetheless. How much alike? The more dissimilar our design, the less similar the sentiment. You will never have any confidence about what a computer feels - any more than you can about what an ocean feels.

But we can be confident that sophisticated creatures - rats, dogs & pigeons for example - with complicated brains much like out own, experience pleasure and pain. And most likely delight. 

Probably pigeons are delighted sometimes.

*Image: Franz Van Heerden