You Are Still an Animal

From an evolutionary point of view, self-consciousness is a very late product and cannot be expected to make us understand ourselves. Consciousness is like the water lilies in a pond: we see the flowers, but not how they are nourished by long stems from the dark dune.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche writes: “This ridiculous overestimation and misjudgment of consciousness has the great advantage of preventing it from developing too rapidly. Because man has already believed himself to be in possession of consciousness, he has not taken much trouble to acquire it—and this is still the case today.” Nietzsche was quick to point out the limitations of reason, and experimental science has come to reaffirm his insights into the limited ability of humans to see themselves.

Perhaps natural selection has added illusory mirrors to our ability to reflect on ourselves so that we are not too disappointed by the gaps in our self-awareness. Your image of yourself is like the field of vision with the blind spot—you do not notice that it is not complete. The illusion gives you a certain security and sense of self-control. Without it, you probably wouldn't be able to put up with yourself—there would hardly be a 'self.'

With the limited reason we have, the world cannot be understood, and neither can humans. One reason for this is that the brain is not made for understanding itself—as for other animals, it is made for action in the world.

We should realize that our reason and our self-consciousness are limited and that our will is deceptive. We should accept that we are still animals. It is only pride and self-deception to believe that we are so much more. Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz said, “I think I have found the missing link between animals and humans: it is us.” Humans are the animals that think they are no longer animals.

It may be objected that, after all, we are the only animals that have language, religion, art, and science. What are, then, the consequences for our view on knowledge of realizing that the self is limited and that reason is deceptive?

As regards religion, there are, on the one hand, religious people whose faith rests on their experiences of the divine. Their view of their experiences is a variant of the Cartesian view of knowledge: I experience the divine, therefore it exists. Modern neuroscience shows, however, that many of these experiences can be explained physiologically, for example that in extreme circumstances, one can have the experience of traveling through a tunnel that is light at the end. One can experimentally induce experiences of a god by stimulating the brain appropriately. It is also possible to create out-of-body experiences.

On the other hand, there are scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, who believe that science can eventually explain everything and that religion leads astray. However, such a view of knowledge is based on the dogma that humans can use scientific methods to access everything that can be known. Such a dogma cannot, of course, be proven in science. A humble attitude towards the results of man's limited thinking abilities makes the dogma questionable. In brief, we should adopt the Socratic view that the only thing we know is that we do not know.

The following is a quote from Ambrose Bierce’s book The Devil’s Dictionary:

Man -n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.