Mind over matter

In the last week, the ground outside Kabul airport has been transformed. Throngs of people, trying to escape their own country as the TalibanA violent fundamentalist Islamic movement that enforces sharia law and denies education to women. seized power, waded through sewage in the hope of getting on a plane

Then, amidst this chaos, almost 200 dogs and cats were loaded onto one of the few precious aeroplanes on the runway. With them, Pen Farthing, the marine-turned-animal rescuer who has kicked off a major row.

Getting Farthing's ark off the ground required a huge effort by the British state that could, some claim, have been used to extract Afghans who worked with UK forces during the 20-year occupation.

As many as 1,100 of these Afghan alliesNato forces in Afghanistan relied on local people to act as translators, guides and political authorities. Many of these people now fear they will be killed by the Taliban for working with their enemies. have been left at the mercy of the Taliban. While the group's leadership has promised there will be no reprisals, there have been reports of interpreters being murdered.

Farthing also left behind his own Afghan staff, claiming he could not secure them a place on the flight because of rules on refugees.

For some, it is a national shame that the public and the government seem to have decided that the lives of dogs and cats are worth the same, or even more, than human lives.

Perhaps this is not surprising. Humans have always had a strange attachment to animals. In the ancient world, Alexander the GreatA king of ancient Macedon who is renowned as one of the greatest military leaders in history. He conquered a vast empire stretching from Greece to modern-day Pakistan. doted on his horse Bucephalus. The 16th-Century astronomer Tycho BraheAn eccentric Danish astronomer who made a number of groundbreaking discoveries about the universe. had a pet elk he liked to feed alcohol to.

Yet thinkers have rejected the idea that animals are worth the same as humans. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, God gave humanity dominion over the animals. Unlike humans, animals are not thought to have souls.

Philosophers have tended to agree. Rene DescartesA French philosopher, scientist and mathematician (1596 - 1650). claimed animals are no more than complex biological machines, with no consciousness. Immanuel KantA German Enlightenment philosopher who is regarded as one of the most important thinkers of the modern era. He fundamentally changed the way we think about a variety of subjects, from aesthetics to cognition to morality. argued humans have the capacity to reason, which prevents them from being used for someone else's purposes. Animals lack this capacity, so they can be used however we like.

However, utilitarianA school of ethics that focuses on maximising people's happiness and minimising their suffering. philosopher Peter Singer calls this attitude "speciesism" and insists there is no moral reason to separate humanity from animals.

New scientific research suggests humans are not the only intelligent animals. Octopuses and dolphins have solved complex puzzles. And recent studies found that crows have a concept of zeroWhile numbers are quite easy to understand because we can compare them with quantities in real life, the concept of "zero", a number which refers to the absence of a thing, is very abstract. Few animals have been able to understand it.. Some think if humans share the capacity for reason with a number of animals, we can no longer claim to be worth more than them.

Do animals matter as much as humans?

Yes. There is nothing that distinguishes all humans from all other animals. Pigs outperform 3-year-old children on cognition tests. Chickens have a very strong sense of empathy. If there is nothing that makes us different from animals, then it is hard to claim we matter more than them.

No. Trying to apply human morality to animals would lead us into all kinds of tangles. If a gazelle's life is just as important as that of a human, should we save it from being hunted by lions? How do we then keep the lions from starving? There is simply no way of imposing human moral structures on nature.