Descriptive
The inner life of animals
On the axis: Moral circle · an animal's mental life
The whole debate assumes that animals feel something: but can we know it? Descartes saw them as machines without consciousness; how can we be sure there is "something it is like" to be a bat?
Philosophers' positions
Major
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Justification
Deprived of thought and therefore of soul, animals are for Descartes mere automata, the famous beast-machine: they neither feel nor suffer in the proper sense, their cries being only mechanical effects. Moral consideration is thereby restricted to thinking beings alone, a strict anthropocentrism.
Discourse on Method, V · Letter to the Marquess of Newcastle, 23 November 1646
Anchors: Descartes · Nagel
leads to: Can a machine think (The imitation game)