PHI 200 : Modern Philosophy

Francisco Jung
Essay I
Write a four to six page essay, double spaced, on the following question:
Why does Montaigne think animals are as intelligent as humans. Are his
arguments sound?

Michel De Montaigne seems to have a firm belief that animals are as

intelligent as humans. It is apparent in his Apology for Raymond Sebond,
that he is convinced that humans are no better or smarter than other
animals. He tries to prove his argument by giving a plethora of cases where
animals show signs of intelligence or similarities to human interaction.
However, all of his arguments are flawed thus disproving his stance that
animals have the ability to reason.
Montaigne belittles the human knowledge of medicine by comparing it
with the actions of animals that treat themselves. He states that since the art
of cure and medicine has been derived by reasoning, animals can also
reason since the goats of Gandia, when wounded by an arrow, choose
dittany for their cure out of a million herbs (page 25). He further fortifies
his argument with more examples like the tortoise, when it has eaten a
viper, at once look for oregano to purge itself[and the] dragon [that] rubs
and clears its eyes with fennel [and the] storks [that] give themselves
enemas of seawater [and the] elephants [that] extract javelins and darts that

have been hurled at them in combat, not only from their own bodies and
those of their comrades(page 25). The case of the goat can be easily
disproven by the fallacy of assumption. When Montaigne states that goats
can reason because they treat themselves with dittany over a million other
herbs when injured but this is assuming that they have found the cure
through deductive reasoning. Humans find cures through a process of
elimination or a trial and error. This is a high level of reasoning that goats
cannot achieve. Perhaps an injured goat happened to absorb dittany and
another goat witnessed its cure. This seems more plausible than a goat
going through millions of different herbs and finding the cure to a certain
injury. The same applies for the tortoise, dragon (which does not even matter
since it is a fictional creature, and elephants. Another possibility that is more
likely than the aforementioned animals logically finding a cure is inherent
instincts. Perhaps looking for oregano after feasting on a viper is just
inherently natural to tortoise as it is natural for humans to look for water
when dehydrated. It is scientifically impossible for animals to reason like
humans due to physical features such as the size and capacity of their
brains.
The assumption that animals are capable of higher level computations
like mathematics, which require logic and reason, is absurd but Montaigne
tries to prove it with more cases of animal behaviors. He states that tuna fish
are fond of astrology because they stop at the place where the winter
solstice overtakes them and do not stir from there until the following

equinox (page 41). Once again it is more believable to say that the fish
have a developed sense of warmth, which allow it to follow the winter
solstice than to say that the fish can calculate the trajectory of the winter
solstice and position themselves beneath it. He pushes further and says that
tuna fish are able to do geometry and arithmetic because they always form
their school in a cubic shape, square in every direction, and arrange it into a
solid battalion, closed and surrounded on all sides with six surfaces all equal;
then they swim in this square formation, as wide in the rear as in front, so
that whoever sees and counts one side can easily number the whole troop,
since the number in depth is equal to the width, and the width to the length
(page 41). When humans make a square formation, do they use geometry
and arithmetic to do so? Does it require reason to follow or stand behind the
person directly in front of you? It has been scientifically proven that fish have
extremely short term memory and thus makes it impossible to do such
complicated calculations. The fish probably do not even know how to count
moreover know the properties of a square. It is probably inherent instincts
that push fish to create such formations, in which humans look at and find
complex relations to its formation and geometry.

Montaigne mistakes the more heightened senses of certain animals as

the capability to reason. He gives an example of the dog that finds itself at
crossing of three roads when in pursuit of the master it has lost, or when
chasing some prey running away from itthe dog goes and tries one road

after the other, and when it has made sure of two of them and found no
trace of what it is looking for, it rushes into the third without haggling (page
25). Dogs have a more heightened sense of smell than humans and thus it
does not have to reason where its master is. Once again Montaigne commits
the fallacy of assumption because he assumes that the dog does a process
of elimination with the three roads when it could have simply just followed
the scent trail of its owner. He goes on to make more arguments with the
intelligence of a dog having trouble reaching the oil that was in the bottom
of a jug, where he could not get at it with his tongue because of the narrow
mouth of the vessel, went to look for some pebbles and put some of them
into the jug until it made the oil rise closer to the rim, where he could reach
it (page 28). If the dog had truly used reason and logic to drink from the
bottom of a jug it would know what water is and the properties of volume
and mass but it seems more believable that it did what it did out of
experience or schemata. When humans climb stairs for the first time, they do
not sit down and think about the laws of gravity and the physics of bodily
coordination. They watch and learn. The same thing applies to the dog : it
saw from experience or acquired schemata that adding something to
something makes another thing bigger or closer to its tongue. This also
applies to the elephant that found itself caught in certain deep ditches that
are prepared for them and covered with small branches to fool them, its
companions diligently brought it large stones and pieces of wood to help it
get out (page 28). Adding more of something to the ditch will bring its

companion closer to ground level and out of harms way. In fact, a counter
example would be the hunting of a wolf. When hunting wolves, hunters
prepare frozen blood on the tip of a spear and stick it in the ground so the tip
is facing the sky. When the wolf smells the blood it finds and licks it until no
more blood remains except for its own as the spear slices through its tongue.
Another example is when goldfish eat their own excretes due to their short
term memory. Animals are simple creatures that execute action based on
experiences or built cognitive schemata such as licking and eating but little
do they know what they are licking or eating.
Montaigne overrates the intelligence of animals and underrates the
intelligence of man. He has a story about an elephant, who had a keeper
who mixed stones in its feed to increase the quantity, approached the pot in
which he was cooking the meat for his dinner and filled it with ashes (page
28). However, it does not take intelligence to know who gave you your food
and what it feels like to eat stones. Also, he is assuming that the elephant
gave its owner the same caliber of punishment as its own but it could quite
possibly be just a random act of anger. The elephant was probably in shock
or angry that it was fed stones and during its rampage ash ended up in the
pot. In fact, if the elephant had reasoning capabilities it would be able to
discern stone from food and just avoided eating it. Reaction out of emotion is
far from reason. He continues to overrate the intelligence of animals by
giving an example of the hedge-hog that leaves its burrow open at different
places and to different winds, and when it anticipates the winds coming, it

proceeds to close its hold on the side of that wind (page 31). But can that
hedge hog do math or build a wall that requires complex calculations of
bending moment diagrams to fend off the winds without collapsing? It is
quite possible that the hedge-hog was able to feel or sense a gust of wind
coming and thus decided to brace itself. All animals abide by the
evolutionary theory of survival of the fittest. Certain animals have acute
senses acquired by adapting to the harsh living conditions of nature and this
is a physical phenomena rather than a mental capability.
Montaigne digresses and contradicts himself as he elaborates on more
examples in an attempt to back his argument. He likens humans to
chameleons in that we both passively change the color of our complexion
involuntarily whereas the octopus is able to voluntarily change color (page
31). This does not prove in any way that the octopus is more intelligent than
the chameleon or human. It just merely proves the fact that some animals
have more developed senses that allow them to have a physical advantage.
It does not require reason for the octopus to assume for itself whatever
color it likes (page 31). Just like the aforementioned dog example, the dog
has a better sense of smell than we do but we have the capability for reason
and higher thinking capacities, which was the argument. But he digresses
from this to just show that animals are better than humans. His stance
seems to be this instead of: animals are as intelligent as humans because he
talks about the looks and behaviors of animals that seem to be better in
general.

Montaignes logical argument are as follows :

Animals are as good as humans in thinking
1. same effects have same causes
2. we build houses and organized structures and so do animals
3. the cause of houses and organized in ourselves is intelligence
4. if 1) there should be some cause in animals
However, all animals have instincts, which is very different from reason.
Instinct is more of a bodily reaction like schemata. When we are infants we
have trouble climbing stairs at first but after failing several times we become
masters of climbing stairs without reason. Schemata in our cognitive map
allows us to absorb instinctive information, which allows us to live or
overcome obstacles. The same applies for animals: the animals that he
mentioned were not reasoning but rather following its instincts and more
developed senses. Thus, building a house is an inherent schemata that most
of all animals are born with for the sake of prolonging life as stated in the
evolutionary theory of survival of the fittest. It is because they do not have
the ability to reason that restricts them from building wonders like humans
do.

Works Cited
De Montaigne, Michel. Apology for Raymond Sebond. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing
Company, 2003. Print.