What role does language play in the development of our cognitive abilities? Some might think that language is simply an expression of our abilities, but there are good reasons to think that the development of language ability is, itself, the way we develop our cognitive abilities in general. This has implications for who we are as individuals and as social beings.

In issue 23 of The Philosophers' Magazine, Jeremy Stangroom interviews Kenan Malik:

One striking thing about Malik’s view is that he thinks that it is only human beings who have the capacity for self-consciousness, agency, and so on. It is fairly uncontentious to claim that a stag-beetle doesn’t have these capacities, but it isn’t so clear that our close relatives in the animal kingdom do not. So, for example, there is an argument about whether or not the great apes are self aware, have a moral sense, and so on. ... According to Malik, language plays a crucial role in facilitating the self-consciousness, rationality and agency of human beings. Indeed, he makes use of a Wittgenstein-inspired argument in order to show that these kinds of things are, in a certain sense, dependent upon language, and also to argue that they have social and public aspects.

“Very simply put, my claim is that meaning is social,” he tells me. “If you are a solitary creature, you might experience redness or pain or a whole host of other things, but attributing meaning to all those things only comes about through our existence as social beings, because meaning derives from social existence. The contents of my inner world mean something to me, in part at least, insofar as they mean something to others. I can make sense of my self only insofar as I live in, and relate to, a community of thinking, feeling, talking beings. Language is critical to this, in part because it underpins our capacity to be social, and therefore it plays a role in allowing us to attribute meaning to our inner feelings or thoughts.”

The argument that the meanings which one might attribute to something like one’s own pain are mediated by language and its attendant public and social aspects is relatively uncontentious. What seems less certain is that the actual experience of pain might be transformed in the same kind of way. Is this what Malik thinks occurs?

“There are instances of children who from birth have been deprived of social contact and language, and the way that they understand the world, the concepts they form about the world are very different from those of other children their age,” he replies. “Concepts of time, place and space, for example, are either absent or highly impoverished in their view of the world. So yes, I do think that social interaction and language play a very important part in mediating our experiences - and in allowing us to make sense of our experiences.”

What might the implications for this be for the question of animal rights?

“Do I think animals should have rights? No, I don’t. Rights are expression of our existence as conscious agents, capable of taking responsibility for our actions. Just as we don’t put chimps on trial for murder, nor do we accord them rights. It would be absurd to accord them rights, and anyway in a sense we would not be according them rights at all - in order to have a right, you must be able to assert that right, but chimps cannot do so. You might say that they have rights, but in fact their rights must be invested in human beings who in effect act on their behalf. So even if we wished to give rights to apes it would not be possible without distorting the very meaning of ‘rights’.

If it's true that rights come with responsibilities, then of course animals cannot have rights because they also cannot have responsibilities. If you can't hold a chimp legally accountable for murder or theft, then you can't have it benefit from legal rights, either. Animals can have extensive protections, naturally, but protections aren't the same as rights.

On the other hand, many human beings can't be held legally accountable for things like murder or theft. Children can't. Those with severe mental retardation can't. Does this mean that they also don't have rights? Everything that Malik says above could be said about children or the retarded. It might be plausible to argue that they have protections rather than rights, but that seems like a radical step which most people wouldn't accept. There's something intuitively disturbing about removing rights from human beings, even if it seems logically consistent, and there are too many examples of such steps leading to horrific results.

Perhaps there is something in language which can help us? Children and those suffering from mental retardation or insanity are capable of using complex language which, in turn, is part of being a rational, self-conscious agent. They may be impaired in this in some way, but perhaps language abilities point to the presence of a being which deserves protection of rights. Of course, if we take that line, we would have to seriously consider the existence of rights in a number of animals with language capabilities.

 

Read More:

• Guide to Ethics and Morality
• News About Ethics
• Bioethics