Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

by Susana Monsó

For the minimal concept of death to be a concept, it has to fulfill the six conditions I set out in the second chapter: (1) it has to allow the animal who possesses it to distinguish dead entities with some degree of reliability, (2) it has to come with a certain understanding of what philosophers of language call the semantic content of the property of being dead, (3) it has to leave room for a variation across cultures, species, and individuals, (4) it has to allow for inferences to be made with it, (5) it can’t be linked to a concrete sensory stimulus, and (6) it mustn’t generate a fixed behavioral response. This way, we will ensure that animals that are only capable of stereotypical reactions to death won’t count as possessing a concept of death.