Lucy and the squirrel

Now, Lucy could care about the squirrel. She could have read that squirrels have some peculiarly charming characteristics or she could just like the way they looked. She could add a concept of squirrels to her affective niche (the range of things she cares about and that affect her emotions) and feel an interest in their welfare. She could be sad when she saw a flattened squirrel on the road and happy when a squirrel fed on her nut feeder.

The squirrel might well add the nut feeder to its affective niche, upon finding that it was regularly filled with nuts. But it seems highly unlikely that the squirrel could add an abstract concept of humans. Indeed, the squirrel, even if it saw Lucy fill the feeder, might be interested, but Lucy qua Lucy, it seems, would not matter to the squirrel. It would not care about Lucy's welfare.

All that said, Lucy could become part of the squirrel's affective niche if, say, Lucy hand reared the squirrel, or nursed it, and she and the squirrel began to match their breathing or heart rate - this is what happens between people who help each other to 'manage their body budget'. Essentially, the homeostatic process is put out of kilter by stress, this kind of resonant connection lessens stress. We can have an embodied emotional responsivity with another being. Humans and their dogs can be in this kind of relationship. It seems likely that it is also part of what is involved in healthy attachment between caregivers and infants.

Still, the point I wanted to make is that Lucy can choose to care for the squirrel and take a moral stance concerning it. This, it could be argued, puts her in a different position. This could be the quality that distinguishes mature, cognitively normal humans from infants, the severely cognitively impaired and NHA. Some animals appear to care for others (and other species) - this has been observed with chimpanzees, elephants, dogs and dolphins, maybe other NHA too. This would be something surely that would earn them categorisation as 'persons'.