Valuing Non-Human Beings: From Diversification to Recognition
The modern scientific view of humanity is not of a distinct kind, but of a diversified chimpanzee. The idea that humans are somehow set apart from other species, especially our primate cousins, rests on ancestral models that have become increasingly untenable in light of evolutionary theory. What we call the human species is one particular line of divergence from a shared primate ancestry. Like other species, our traits have evolved along paths of gradual modification, leading to the immense differentiation we now interpret as species boundaries.
To understand this more accurately, we must start by rejecting the idea of humanity as a fixed kind. Every so-called human trait is a variant of a more general, evolutionarily prior trait shared with other organisms. As evolution differentiates traits over time, categories that seem fixed in a synchronic frame—like 'human'—are seen in a diachronic frame to be points along a continuum. The boundaries we draw are not intrinsic, but imposed; they are the products of categorising practices, shaped as much by interpersonal and ideological concerns as by ideational ones.
This realisation forces a reconsideration not only of how we define 'human', but also of how we understand consciousness, mind, and personhood. These are not monolithic phenomena exclusive to Homo sapiens, but semiotic constructs arising within particular cultural and biological contexts. While the Western philosophical tradition often conflates 'mind' with the rational self or ego, a more consistent evolutionary approach understands mind as the emergent organisation of experience through processes of meaning-making.
This in turn entails a reconceptualisation of consciousness: not as a binary switch, but as a graded and dynamic unfolding of meaningful experience. To be conscious is not merely to think, but to interact meaningfully with an environment. The experience of personhood, therefore, is not a prerequisite for meaning, but a product of semiotic individuation — a cultural and interpersonal process shaped over time.
Within this framework, the notion of 'free will' must also be re-examined. The popular dualism that opposes determinism and freedom rests on a conceptual mistake: the presumption that causality and freedom are incompatible. But this opposition depends on conflating metaphysical determinism with behavioural determination. What matters, from a semiotic perspective, is not whether an action is caused, but whether it is interpretable — whether it functions as a meaning-bearing act within a system of semiosis.
Freedom, then, is not metaphysical exemption from causality but the capacity to act within a field of semiotic potential — to select among possible meanings. When this capacity is exercised in a way that is socially recognisable and responsive to meaning systems, we call it free will. But such a capacity is not exclusive to humans. Other species, too, act within their own systems of meaning, constrained and enabled by their evolved potentials and social ecologies.
The insistence on a sharp distinction between human and non-human beings often reflects deeper ideological investments. Ancestral models of humanity have positioned us as uniquely rational, uniquely moral, and uniquely valuable. These valuations influence scientific models, leading to the construction of theories that glorify human traits as the apex of evolution. They also lead to the undervaluing of other species — as if lacking human traits were equivalent to lacking value.
During ontogenesis — the development of an individual — humans gradually learn that, though perception places them at the centre of their experiential world, they are one among many in a network of interdependent social relations. A similar realisation occurs in phylogenesis — the development of our species' models over time — as we are gradually displaced from the centre of the cosmos. The Earth is no longer the centre of the universe; humans are no longer the summit of creation. We are one node in a web of richly experiencing, interactive beings.
This shift challenges us to rethink what we mean by anthropomorphism. The charge of anthropomorphism rests on the presumption that certain traits — like intelligence, emotion, or semiosis — are exclusively human. But this is an illusion sustained by denying our evolutionary continuity with other species. If all traits evolve, then human variants are simply more differentiated versions of shared ancestral traits. To accuse someone of anthropomorphism for attributing such traits to non-humans is often to betray an unacknowledged anthropocentrism: a fear of being less than unique, less than divine, less than immortal.
Indeed, many accusations of anthropomorphism are not about other animals at all, but about humans. They reflect fears of being just another animal — of having no special status in the cosmos. These fears are often projected onto animals through claims of their incapacity, such as the now-discredited ideas that animals lack brain lateralisation, use of tools, or complex sociality. The less value we attribute to a species, the more intense the denial that we might share anything with them.
Even when similarities are acknowledged, the human variant is frequently used as the standard by which others are judged. This practice ignores the fact that traits evolve to meet species-specific needs. To fault a species for lacking the human form of intelligence or language is to fault them for not being human. But semiosis and intelligence are not monolithic. They are families of behaviours and capacities, realised differently in different contexts. Treating the human version as the benchmark imposes interpersonal consistency at the expense of ideational consistency.
Such triumphalism is the interspecies analogue of intraspecies chauvinisms like racism or nationalism. It serves the interpersonal function of asserting human superiority by defining others as inferior. This includes the pervasive identification of intelligence with humanity — encoded in our species name, Homo sapiens sapiens. The evaluation of other species by their inability to do what humans can do, rather than by their ability to do what they need to do, perpetuates a form of semiotic colonialism.
In this context, scientific experiments demanding that nonhuman animals prove their capacity for semiosis are both ideationally and interpersonally inconsistent. They overlook the fact that meaning-making depends not just on behaviour, but on the interpretation of behaviour within a system of values. In human development, it is the recognition of infant behaviour as meaningful that enables the development of meaning potential. Similarly, researchers who treat animal behaviours as meaningful are not being unscientific — they are being consistent with the logic of semiotic individuation.
This is especially evident in the use of caregiver language in interspecies research — a mode of communication that mirrors the way humans speak to infants. Such language is often dismissed as evidence of researcher bias, when it could just as easily be taken as evidence of interspecies semiotic engagement. Rather than deriding the engagement of researchers with their subjects, we should see it as part of the very process they are studying.
To do justice to the semiosis of other species, we must model what they can do, not what they can't; attend to what is meaningful to them, not just what is meaningful to us. This requires acknowledging the biases embedded in our models — especially those that glorify humanity or impose human limitations onto others. The world is not a stage populated by mechanical automata, but a network of richly experiencing beings. To model this world accurately, we must value the meaning-making of others — not just because they are like us, but because they are.