“I prefer a simpler and less fashionable version, which admits that a badger has a real sense of self, and real pleasures that it judges as outweighing its pains. Badgers are philosophers. They have an idea of the Good Life, which presumes there is a self that can lead that life. This is a self that doesn’t want to lose the neurological joys of nuzzling cubs, or the smell of wild garlic, or the smack of earthworms against the tongue. Insist if you like that all these things are the payment given by the genes for the mercenary services in their defense of the strong-jawed phenotype. That’s fine. Your insistence doesn’t dispose of the self, or the Goodness of the Life that self leads.”
Charles Foster – Being a Beast