Challenging human exceptionalism: What can we learn about emotional thinking from orca biopsychology?


Annette Louise Bickford, York University

The emotion-processing area in all mammal brains is found in the limbic system. MRI results of orca brain matter shows a paralimbic lobe that enables them to process emotions, memory, abstract thinking and problem solving—not in parallel or in sequence like humans, but simultaneously. We can we infer from neuroscientists’ research that orcas process emotions with facility, and they may well be capable of more emotional depth than humans. Orca behavior in the wild demonstrates compulsive sharing and social cohesion unmatched in humans and other mammals, including ungulates or other herd-like animals. Observations of orcas’ communication amongst themselves suggests group-dependent identity, even, and perhaps especially, in the face of danger. How might orcas’ empathic collective cultural organization inform our ways of looking at ourselves and Nature that have proven disastrous? I am interested in what we can learn from orcas’ empathic collective cultural organization, and how analyses of histories of consciousness can inform a better understanding of how we might move beyond human exceptionalism.

This paper will be presented at the following session: