Per un’etologia vegetale post-egomorfica

Résumé

Between the 1960s and the 1970s, field and laboratory studies began to demonstrate the existence of two aspects of animal behavior, considered impossible until then: (i) the ability of some animals (apes in this case) to translate their thoughts and desires into human-produced languages, such as American Sign Language and other techniques used to teach verbal language to deaf children; (ii) the widespread diffusion among birds and mammals of communicative and behavioral traditions that differentiate, within a species, each community from the others. Since then, these discoveries and others, such as the fact that some animals can recognize themselves in the mirror or the observation of deliberate deception and prolonged cooperative activity in the apes, have sparked reactions polarized between two extremes: an anthropocentric minimization of their relevance and an egomorphic interpretation of it, aimed at applying categories such as “Awareness” and “Consciousness” – derived from the metaphysical forms in which traditionally Western philosophy has represented human knowledge – to the non-human animals. During the new millennium, this latest trend has also spread in the field of plant ethology. This article offers some reflections on these recent developments, starting with the analysis of the results produced by the introduction of these concepts in the field of animal ethology.