Last October, a breakthrough in the animal sciences was shared with the public — its researchers are members of the FlyWire consortium, coordinated by Princeton University neuroscientists Sebastian Seung and Mala Murthy. The study found that neurons that were previously believed to be part of “one sensory wiring circuit, such as a visual pathway, tended to receive cues from multiple senses, including hearing and touch.”
The researchers used AI tools in order to create an artificial replica of microscopic evidence and information to map the brain of a fruit fly.
So, why a fruit fly? They are just flies, right? Well, no, not really.
Within the animal sciences, it is evident that studying and observing animal behaviour is essential to predicting what they are doing. Studying their behaviour is important in helping us understand how other beings think differently than us humans. To learn about non-human beings, especially small ones like fruit flies, is a huge step forward in technology and theory. To elaborate, not only can we say that these beings are biologically and neurologically intelligent, but we can now make assumptions based on what their thought processes consist of — whether their limbic system is intact, whether they can feel and experience emotion, if they have self-awareness, if they are conscious of other conspecifics, and much more.
Another key finding in this discovery makes us understand that we can become less anthropocentric by rethinking the way we perceive these ‘lower-level beings’ — cognition in non-human animals has been a deep interest to scientists, and even philosophers. In her book The Animal Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animal Cognition, Kristin Andrews, a professor of philosophy at York whose research focuses on the philosophy of animal minds, wrote: “One way of saying what animals think is to ascribe concepts to them. A concept is often taken to play the same role in thought that a word plays in language. However, concepts can be had without language. Psychologists and philosophers take concepts necessary for a number of psychological processes such as categorization, logical reasoning, memory, and learning.”
We could say that these animals think in concepts, whether that is representational or non-representational, using maps or diagrams, or thinking without a language. This means that these ‘lower-level beings’ are not less intelligent than us just because we recognize them as non-human; it shows that they can think differently than us, so there is no need for an anthropocentric view. As Andrews puts it, they can have concepts to their thinking, which is a higher order of cognition. To quote Descartes: “Cogito, ergo sum,” — I think, therefore I am.
Andrews wrote about primates, animals such as baboons and other great apes. While that is useful to understanding the animal mind, we also need to investigate insects. Thus, we turn to another philosopher studying the animal mind, Susana Monsó, and her theory behind the insect mind, specifically ants, and the concept of death. In her book Playing Possum, Monsó developed a “minimal concept of death” and stated that just like children, ants can only understand what their cognitive ability allows them to.
What do these two examples prove? We start with the question of whether insects like the fruit fly can think in the same way as humans, other insects, or other non-human animals. But with that arises another question: What does that thinking entail? Thinking philosophically about insects’ and other animal minds, and knowing the neurological and biological facts, can not only broaden our minds in turn, but can help us understand the minds of others.
