Can “Wild Animals” Be Mechanisms?

On page 294 of his superb book?Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez tells us that “wild animals are not mechanisms”[i]. The Web informs us that a mechanism is?a system of parts working together in a machine[ii].?Although Lopez barely defends his statement, this single thought struck me like lightning. I also believe that Lopez modified “animals” with the word “wild” in order to more fully illuminate the soft spot that humans carry around when it comes to defining all animals, including ourselves. It is too late to ask him about his intent because Lopez died almost exactly a year ago.

This one sentence had a big effect on me partly because I have been reading and thinking for a while about the topics of Artificial Intelligence, and Consciousness. One way to boil this mess down is to ask ourselves if we can combine hardware and software to duplicate ourselves in any meaningful sense. If we had this capability, we would produce what we might call intelligent “mechanisms”.?

By specifying “wild” animals, Lopez also blocks a potential path for people who might want to muddy the water by dragging in domesticated animals that we might train to serve us. This might imply that these beings are no longer purely animal and that our actions have moved them upward in the direction of “pet”, “assistant”, or “K9”. Wild animals are, by definition, not trained (yet), so we have to consider them as is, unless we have already managed to wipe them off the surface of this planet.

Wild animals are not, nor could they ever be assets, tools, objects or property of ours. Lopez says that it is our inability to fit wild animals within any of these other categories which is one factor that exposes wolves to either our blind, “instinctive” hatred and loathing, or our equally strong desire to romanticize them. Lopez says instead that “(t)hey cannot be summed up any more than Homo sapiens can be summed up”. Wild animals are no more programmable than we are. And we aren’t programmable, are we?[iii]

We humans have taught ourselves a powerful trick as we have slowly progressed to a more complete understanding of our place in the world. Instead of trying to digest the entire problem in a single gulp, we model a selected subset of that world so that we can generate a narrative. This trick contributed to the explosion of Science which ended up being a cultural phenomenon. But there is a price to pay for using this powerful tool. We must accept that by ignoring some inputs (ones that we hope are not critical for the success of the model), we have to agree that the model itself must always be wrong.?

Not coincidentally, Evolution appears to be in the midst of hardwiring our brains in a way that codes for a love of creating narratives and an even stronger and broader love of hearing them. Every single model produces a different narrative. Changing any input to the model automatically[iv]?generates a different story. We then digest these narratives in search of even a shred of meaning.??Further beyond that lies the human dream of contributing something useful to the theory of “who the hell are we?

To me, Lopez achieved something else that is more fundamental than the single thought that I have described so far. He summons the courage necessary to thoroughly examine both the bestial and Romantic sides of human behavior reflected in our relationships with all other animals, e.g., wolves. Here we see a trained biologist making assertions about moral practice. Bestial means “of or like and animal”[v]. I use this word deliberately in the sense of unacceptable, as in "WWII Concentration Camp” unacceptable”.

Lopez helps us clearly see the ambiguity and irony of forming a term tied so closely to “animals” and then applying it to behavior that only humans have ever displayed, either between themselves or toward other animals. He also makes it clear that he sees this as morally ambiguous.

To me, this demonstrates that humans have moved themselves (with plenty of assistance from Evolution) into a particular and peculiar position with regards to all other animals. More fully assessing this location of ours requires, among other things, a more complete and thorough understanding of our particular genome.?

What coalesced for me through reading this book?

It reinforced for me the fact that humans should tread with extreme care whenever we divide the natural world in way that isolates us (Homo Sapiens) from other members of the set of all animals. It is hard to avoid concluding that we were very wide of the mark during the decades that we spent trying to come up with a single characteristic that differentiated us from other animals, except insofar as that effort sheds a very bright light on our own insecurities. Are we the only species that “uses tools”? No. Are we the only species that uses language? No. Are we the only species that “thinks”? No.

Progress often occurs not so much when we learn new things but when we discard older viewpoints and attitudes that were vital for getting us here but whose time is now up because they are clogging and obscuring our selection of new options. Lopez helped with this task.

[i]?Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1995.

[ii]?A?Web?search on “mechanism” yields this from “oxford languages”.

[iii]?Some may complain that they have been?“triggered” or?they may?have a strong reaction when exposed to a meme or conspiracy theory. Can we say that these people?have?suffered from the results of being programmed?

[iv]?I can testify that the “automaticness” of?the?algorithms?that sit in the middle of models?has always fascinated?me. Model inputs not only map to outputs but they are functionally linked. Cool!

[v]?A?Web?search on “bestial” yields this from “oxford languages”.