On Professor Ardell’s Proposed Taxonomy

I had intended not to answer Professor Ardell. His recent monograph, On the Cognitive Limits and Natural Disposition of the Bestial Races, seemed at first to belong to that unfortunate class of publication which is best allowed to exhaust itself quietly: badly reasoned, extravagantly confident, and sufficiently long that few readers will ever reach the most objectionable portions without first being defeated by the prose. Unfortunately the work has attracted attention, and worse than attention, agreement, so I am obliged to discuss it.

Professor Ardell’s central proposition is that the Drau, Ogres, Kobolds, and Gorillas ought to be recognised as neither animals nor members of the Principal Peoples, but as a distinct intermediate category which he terms the sub-rational races. According to Ardell, these peoples possess language only in a rudimentary sense, culture only through imitation, social organisation only through instinct, and violence in such disproportion as to demonstrate an innate incapacity for the moral judgement found among the Principal Races. He further argues that their various anatomical resemblances to Elves, Aesir, Dwarves, and Humans represent, not evidence of kinship, but examples of what he calls “degraded convergence toward the civilised form.” It is an impressive phrase, and it means nothing.

Let us begin with the term sub-rational, since the entire structure depends upon it. Ardell provides no measurable threshold by which rationality begins, no experimental standard by which it may be identified, and no reason why the abilities he regards as sufficient evidence of intellect in a Human suddenly become inadequate when demonstrated by a Kobold. A Human child who learns a language is intelligent; a Drau child who learns a language is mimicking. A Human village that maintains oral law possesses government, while an Ogre clan maintaining oral law possesses dominance ritual. The Dwarven engineer who strengthens a tunnel against collapse demonstrates applied mechanics, and the Kobold who does precisely the same thing demonstrates instinct. As comparative science this is worthless. It is a conclusion wandering about in search of observations willing to wear it.

The Kobolds alone ought to have prevented publication. Their settlements are frequently dismissed as crude because their tools are simple, their chambers are irregular, and they possess little interest in decoration recognisable to Dwarven or Human taste. Yet several excavated Kobold tunnel systems extend for miles, incorporate ventilation shafts, drainage gradients, food-storage chambers, defensible choke points, waste channels, nurseries, and redundant passages permitting escape after partial collapse. I have walked through one, and I became lost. The Kobold guiding me did not.

Professor Ardell describes these structures as “the enlarged burrow systems of a highly organised social animal.” One wonders at what precise depth a burrow becomes architecture. If thirty Kobolds excavate a drainage channel according to a shared plan, repair it across generations, teach its maintenance to their young, and modify its gradient after flooding, it becomes difficult to argue that they are acting through blind instinct unless one is willing to extend the same courtesy to civil engineers. Perhaps we should. It would explain several canals.

The linguistic argument is no better. Ardell claims that Kobold speech consists primarily of “alarm, appetite, submission, and territorial vocalisation,” a conclusion based largely upon the work of Doctor Pell, who spent eleven days observing a population from outside the entrance of a settlement whose inhabitants had repeatedly asked him to leave. I cannot imagine why their conversation with him lacked philosophical depth.

Actual linguistic study has identified distinct Kobold terms for past and future action, kinship relations, possession, obligation, location, tool categories, and quantities well beyond the immediate perceptual range. Their languages contain personal names and insults, and, inconveniently for Ardell, jokes. Jokes require more cognition than many scholars appear to appreciate, since to understand one the listener must recognise expectation, infer intention, perceive a contradiction between literal and intended meaning, and share enough cultural context with the speaker for the contradiction to be amusing. I once heard a Kobold make a joke about Dwarven tunnel supports. The Dwarves present did not laugh; the Kobolds did. This proves, at minimum, that their sense of humour is sophisticated enough to include professional rivalry.

The Drau present an even greater difficulty for Ardell, which he solves by ignoring most of what is known about them. Drau communities vary widely in size and organisation, but they possess kinship structures, territorial agreements, religious practices, funerary rites, specialised crafts, oral histories, and systems for resolving disputes. Several populations maintain genealogies extending back dozens of generations. Ardell acknowledges these facts and then informs us that they do not constitute civilisation because they lack written records, which is a curious standard to adopt in a world in which numerous cultures among the Principal Races, whose standing nobody disputes, remained predominantly oral for substantial portions of their history. Traditional Elven communities, in particular, may wish to inquire when literacy became a prerequisite for personhood, and I recommend Professor Ardell explain it to them personally.

His treatment of Drau language is especially revealing. He concedes that several Drau dialects possess complex grammar, metaphor, personal pronouns, hypothetical constructions, and vocabulary describing events which have not yet occurred. He nevertheless argues that such speech “need not demonstrate reasoning comparable to civilised thought.” What, then, would? I ask this sincerely. If a creature can tell another creature, “If the hunters return before sunset, we will cross the eastern ridge tomorrow because the river may flood,” what additional grammatical ornament must it supply before Professor Ardell permits it consciousness? Must it conjugate irregular verbs, write a dissertation, acquire tenure?

The matter of Gorillas is perhaps the most embarrassing. No one disputes their physical similarity to Humans, which is so obvious that generations of naturalists have expended considerable effort explaining why it supposedly means less than it appears to mean. The debate over common ancestry remains unresolved and ought to remain so until better evidence is obtained.

Their intelligence, however, is not remotely as mysterious. Gorillas have been observed forming persistent social bonds, recognising individuals after years of separation, teaching tool use, organising collective defence, grieving the dead, bargaining over food, deceiving rivals, reconciling disputes, and altering behaviour according to the known temperament of particular companions. Captive Gorillas trained in symbolic communication have demonstrated vocabularies large enough to express desire, refusal, location, identity, memory, and simple abstraction, and some have invented combinations of symbols not explicitly taught to them. Ardell dismisses this as conditioning, of course. If a Human acquires vocabulary through repeated association between words and objects, we call the process education; if a Gorilla does so, Professor Ardell calls it conditioning. I encourage parents everywhere to consider the distinction before becoming too proud of their children.

The Ogre question is more difficult, though not in the manner Ardell imagines. Ogres are violent, and no serious observer disputes it. Interpersonal aggression occurs at unusually high rates in many documented Ogre populations, territorial conflicts can be severe, and homicide is distressingly common. Several forms of ritual combat tolerated within Ogre communities would be regarded as criminal assault almost anywhere else. These facts deserve study. They do not justify stupidity.

Ardell repeatedly treats violence as though it were the opposite of reason, and history should have cured us of that assumption. The Principal Peoples have organised armies, engineered siege weapons, constructed fortresses, devised increasingly efficient firearms, calculated artillery trajectories, written military doctrine, established supply systems, and developed entire bureaucracies devoted to killing strangers at governmental expense. No one has suggested that these accomplishments demonstrate an absence of sophisticated reasoning. Indeed, medals are often awarded. An Ogre who breaks another Ogre’s jaw during a territorial dispute may be violent, while a Human ministry capable of arranging the bombardment of a distant city may be considerably more violent and inconveniently literate besides. Violence and cognition are different questions, and conflating them serves only those who wish a moral judgement to masquerade as an anatomical one.

There are also substantial differences between Ogre communities which Ardell’s theory cannot comfortably explain. Rates of lethal aggression vary according to population density, food scarcity, neighbouring threats, age structure, and established social custom, and Ogres raised in stable mixed settlements often display lower rates of violence than populations living under persistent resource pressure. This does not prove that environment accounts for every feature of Ogre temperament, and it almost certainly does not. What it proves is that “Ogres are violent because Ogres are incapable of reason” is an explanation suitable primarily for people who dislike explanations containing more than one clause.

The strongest portion of Ardell’s argument concerns anatomical resemblance, which is unfortunately also the portion in which he does the least anatomy. The broad pattern is undeniably curious. Elves and Drau share numerous structural similarities, as do Aesir and Ogres. Kobolds possess proportions and several skeletal peculiarities strongly reminiscent of Dwarves despite their otherwise striking differences, and Humans and Gorillas require no introduction. The temptation to arrange these pairs into some simple biological hierarchy is considerable, and we should resist it.

There are several plausible explanations. Each of the Other Sapient Races may share ancestry with its counterpart among the Principal Races. One may descend from the other, or both from a third population now extinct. The similarities may instead arise through convergent pressures we do not yet understand, and magical alteration, natural or deliberate, cannot be entirely excluded. Nor should we assume that the same explanation applies to all four pairs merely because arranging them into a table is satisfying. Nature has never demonstrated an obligation to organise itself according to the preferences of textbook authors.

What we cannot do is begin with the word degenerate and pretend that everything afterwards constitutes evidence. Ardell repeatedly refers to the Other Sapient Races as “arrested,” “failed,” “primitive,” and “debased,” and each of those words implies a direction of development. To call the Drau a degraded Elf assumes that Elf is the intended destination, and to call a Gorilla an incomplete Human assumes Humanity is the standard against which successful nature must be measured. Why? Because we build universities, while Kobolds build tunnel cities? Because we write books, while Drau preserve their histories orally? Because we govern nations? I have attended parliamentary sessions which should make us cautious about advertising that last accomplishment too loudly.

The entire hierarchy rests upon the flattering assumption that the Principal Races occupy the summit of some natural staircase. Professor Ardell has not demonstrated such a staircase. He has simply placed himself at the top of one and begun labelling everyone below.

There is, however, a more serious defect in his work than poor taxonomy, which is that Ardell wishes biological classification to settle a moral question, and it cannot. Suppose tomorrow we discover beyond reasonable doubt that Drau and Elves share a recent ancestor. Would that grant Drau moral consideration they did not possess yesterday? Suppose instead we demonstrate that the resemblance is entirely coincidental and that their lineages have been separate for a million years. Would this make it permissible to enslave them?

The proposition is absurd because ancestry has nothing to do with it. A Drau does not acquire a right not to be murdered by possessing Elven cousins, and a Kobold does not become eligible for legal protection when an anatomist discovers the proper shape of his pelvis. If a being can think, communicate, form relationships, understand obligation, experience suffering, remember injury, anticipate consequence, and participate in social life, then the practical moral question is already considerably advanced before we have examined a single bone.

This observation has caused some readers to accuse me of sentimentality, and I assure them that I am as disappointed as they are. I would prefer personhood to have a convenient anatomical marker. A particular ridge upon the skull would be excellent, since we could measure it with calipers and conclude the matter before luncheon. Nature has declined to provide one, and we must consequently do the harder work.

That work is made harder still by the disgraceful history of the subject. Classification of the Other Sapient Races has changed repeatedly, and not always because new evidence emerged. Gorillas have been declared animals during periods when their territories were desirable for settlement and “natural dependents” when their labour became economically useful. Kobolds have acquired and lost legal personhood according to whether governments found their tunnel systems inconvenient or profitable. Drau have been treated as sovereign tribes, vermin, military auxiliaries, protected peoples, and poachers within the same century. Ogres have fared worst, partly because their violence makes fear unusually easy to justify.

One need not romanticise them to observe the pattern. The remarkable thing is how frequently scientific opinion has discovered exactly the classification most convenient to contemporary policy. I am expected to believe this is coincidence, and I do not.

None of this means every cultural practice of these peoples must be admired, nor that every population is equally safe to approach, nor that obvious biological differences should be politely ignored. There are Ogre territories into which I would not walk without armed escort, and Kobold settlements whose inhabitants respond to intrusion by placing sharpened stakes at approximately groin height. Several Drau groups have customs I find objectionable, and Gorillas have killed researchers. Humans have also killed researchers, usually over grants.

We do not solve prejudice by replacing it with romantic stupidity. The Other Sapient Races are not noble innocents waiting to demonstrate our moral enlightenment. They are populations of thinking beings with virtues, defects, customs, rivalries, stupidity, ingenuity, cruelty, generosity, and considerable variation between individuals. In other words, they possess the deeply inconvenient complexity ordinarily associated with people.

Professor Ardell’s thesis ultimately fails because he mistakes simplicity for explanation. He has observed four groups which the societies of the Principal Races have found troublesome to categorise and constructed a category designed precisely to contain them. Every ambiguous observation is then interpreted in support of the category, while every contradiction is redefined until it ceases to be troublesome. Language becomes vocalisation, engineering becomes burrowing, tradition instinct, violence incapacity, intelligence imitation, culture habit. One can prove almost anything by this method, and I could demonstrate that Professor Ardell himself is a moderately elaborate waterfowl if permitted sufficient freedom in my definitions.

The appropriate scholarly position is less satisfying. We do not know the precise relationship between these peoples and the Principal Races, nor whether the four apparent pairings share a common explanation. How much of the behavioural difference between populations is hereditary, environmental, cultural, or some combination of all three remains equally obscure, as do the conditions which produced them. These are excellent questions, made no less excellent by admitting that we do not yet possess the answers.

What we do know is that Drau speak, remember, teach, mourn, negotiate, and plan. Kobolds build, organise, transmit knowledge, and modify their environment according to intention. Gorillas form enduring social relationships and demonstrate flexible problem-solving, and Ogres establish customs, hierarchies, alliances, obligations, and recognisable traditions even while exhibiting levels of aggression that demand serious study. To examine these facts and conclude that the subjects are incapable of sophisticated reasoning requires either extraordinary evidence or extraordinary determination, and Professor Ardell has supplied only the latter.

I suspect that some readers will consider this response excessively severe, and they are correct. There are errors which deserve patience: a mistaken measurement deserves correction, a poor sample deserves repetition, and a plausible hypothesis contradicted by later evidence deserves no shame at all, since that is simply how scholarship proceeds.

Professor Ardell’s work belongs to another category. He has taken the prejudices of the street, translated them into Latin where convenient, arranged them beneath numbered headings, and presented the result as natural philosophy. Worse, he has done so while possessing enough education to recognise the weaknesses in his own argument. Ignorance is unfortunate; this is something else.

The purpose of scholarship is not to provide respectable vocabulary for conclusions we wished to believe before opening the laboratory door. It is precisely the opposite. Our obligation is to permit observation to inconvenience us, sometimes mildly, sometimes at the cost of an elegant theory, and sometimes, most irritatingly, by requiring us to acknowledge intelligence in a creature we have spent several centuries shooting, displacing, exhibiting, enslaving, or describing as vermin. That discomfort is not evidence against the conclusion. It is merely discomfort.

If Professor Ardell finds this unbearable, I recommend another profession. The sciences contain quite enough mysteries without manufacturing inferiors.