This book, Corporal Compassion by Ralph Acampora, provided me not just with inspiration but offered some validation for what I have been writing about the robins. Here are two long quotes.
One does not have to actually become somebody else to be familiar with that other. Further, it is not necessary even to know precisely what it is like (hypothetically, in thought) to be that other subject-of-a-life in its own right. For our present purposes, it will suffice “merely” to arrive at some comprehension of what it means to be-with other individuals of different yet related species, because that experience of “being-with” gives us all the mileage we need for tracking cross-species community. Hence our mission is to articulate a transpecific form of a fundamental characteristic of experience, namely what Heidegger calls Mitsein. More specifically, what we seek is familiarity with cross-species “conviviality,” a shared experience of interactivity. Indeed, as Michael Steinberg notes, “we can understand what animals do— including animals like ourselves—only as a continuing transformative interaction with each other and the world.” While “what it is like” to have such experiences might differ among the participants, consideration of such experiences at least provides a shared point of reference, one that potentially provides for there being at least some points of overlap in the varying phenomenal experiences of those involved.
If we want philosophy to be faithful to experience, then, it is important not to alienate ourselves from the actual lifeworld we share with others. It is not necessary, from the start, to figure out how we could possibly share experiences with other animals. They are part of the community of others populating the world in which we find ourselves already immersed. Being in the world with others is one of the major ways in which our experience is structured. It partially organizes what it means to have an experience at all.
I like this idea of conviviality. Acampora uses the example of a park and watching an animal (he chooses a squirrel), which in turn allows him to come to know that de-tailing would be painful and is thus not-to-be-done, as indeed is any other harm. The book is deep and uses stylised language, so it's not an easy read, but there was so much in it that I liked.
Even so, spending time with robins doesn't necessarily offer answers to all the questions I have. I mean, sure, the badness of harm and death, of pain and suffering. The goodness of having safe places to sing and preen; for there to be food available.
But, take today. Tane, who'd been distant for a few days, then spent a lot of time with me (when I got these pictures). Something caught his attention. He flew to the fence, alert. Then he cheeped and there was an answering cheep from, I assume, Chestnut, in the garden. That prompted him to fly away - but it wasn't just that he'd been chased off. No: there was a load of robin alarm calls, from all over. I saw a robin - I think Tane - in a place I'd never seen him and the robin was cheeping. Then that robin flew and another or the same robin was on the path by the kitchen door. Then Chestnut started singing, but with the angry-style aggressive song.
After a while, the birds settled. But I just wondered what on earth was going on in their world?
Looking at them, hearing them, being with them, I have a sense of the feeling, but none of the richness of motive, intention, desire that I assume they are experiencing. There remains this shut-out-ness. In a way, I guess I can feel like that with people too. Maybe the stories we make up about other people are just as far off the mark as those we make up about animals, or, maybe, even more so.
Indeed.