I am Not a Brain: Philosophy of Mind for the 21st Century

by Markus Gabriel

Perhaps, from a bad conscience toward the other animals (whom we gawk at in zoos and happily grill on warm, summer evenings with a bottle of beer in one hand), we wish to pretend that the human being is no exception in the animal realm but rather, simply by coincidence, also a living being with a very peculiar kind of mind – and, by the way, most likely the only animal worried about its position in the animal realm in light of the very idea of such a realm. This is one of the reasons why, as far as I know, we are the only animals that rip other animals to shreds with machines, pack their meat into their intestines, turn this mess into a sausage, and then enter into a dialogue over the most skillful preparations for roasting them. In its sophistication, this goes way beyond any kind of cruelty we find in the animal kingdom, and it serves the function of creating a culture of meat consumption which makes it look as if meat was not really meat, given that sausages are highly artificial products obscuring their origins.