Animal Consciousness Program Option II
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Harnad (1994) Computation Is Just Interpretable Symbol Manipulation
Computation Is Just Interpretable Symbol Manipulation: Cognition Isn't http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad94.computa... Harnad, S. (1994) Computation Is Just Interpretable Symbol Manipulation: Cognition Isn't. Special Issue on "What Is Computation" Minds and Machines 4:379-390 [Also appears in French translation in "Penser l'Esprit: Des Sciences de la Cognition a une Philosophie Cognitive," V. Rialle & D. Fisette, Eds. Presses Universite de Grenoble. 1996] COMPUTATION IS JUST INTERPRETABLE SYMBOL MANIPULATION; COGNITION ISN'T Stevan Harnad Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM email:[email protected] ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/ http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ gopher://gopher.princeton.edu/11/.libraries/.pujournals phone: +44 703 592582 fax: +44 703 594597 ABSTRACT: Computation is interpretable symbol manipulation. Symbols are objects that are manipulated on the basis of rules operating only on the symbols' shapes , which are arbitrary in relation to what they can be interpreted as meaning. Even if one accepts the Church/Turing Thesis that computation is unique, universal and very near omnipotent, not everything is a computer, because not everything can be given a systematic interpretation; and certainly everything can't be given every systematic interpretation. But even after computers and computation have been successfully distinguished from other kinds of things, mental states will not just be the implementations of the right symbol systems, because of the symbol grounding problem: The interpretation of a symbol system is not intrinsic to the system; it is projected onto it by the interpreter. -
Affective Sentience and Moral Protection
Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Articles Faculty & Staff Scholarship 1-9-2021 Affective sentience and moral protection Russell Powell Boston University Irina Mikhalevich Rochester Institute of Technology Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/article Recommended Citation Powell, Russell and Mikhalevich, Irina (2020) Affective sentience and moral protection. Animal Sentience 29(35). DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1668 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty & Staff Scholarship at RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Animal Sentience 2020.397: Powell & Mikhalevich Response to Commentary on Invertebrate Minds Affective sentience and moral protection Response to Commentary on Mikhalevich & Powell on Invertebrate Minds Russell Powell Department of Philosophy, Boston University Irina Mikhalevich Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology Abstract: We have structured our response according to five questions arising from the commentaries: (i) What is sentience? (ii) Is sentience a necessary or sufficient condition for moral standing? (iii) What methods should guide comparative cognitive research in general, and specifically in studying invertebrates? (iv) How should we balance scientific uncertainty and moral risk? (v) What practical strategies can help reduce biases and morally dismissive attitudes toward invertebrates? Russell Powell, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Boston University, specializes in philosophical problems in evolutionary biology and bioethics. Website Irina Mikhalevich, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, specializes in conceptual and methodological problems in comparative cognitive science and their implications for the treatment of nonhuman animals. -
The Evolution of Human Vocal Emotion
EMR0010.1177/1754073920930791Emotion ReviewBryant 930791research-article2020 SPECIAL SECTION: EMOTION IN THE VOICE Emotion Review Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2021) 25 –33 © The Author(s) 2020 ISSN 1754-0739 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073920930791 10.1177/1754073920930791 The Evolution of Human Vocal Emotion https://journals.sagepub.com/home/emr Gregory A. Bryant Department of Communication, Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Abstract Vocal affect is a subcomponent of emotion programs that coordinate a variety of physiological and psychological systems. Emotional vocalizations comprise a suite of vocal behaviors shaped by evolution to solve adaptive social communication problems. The acoustic forms of vocal emotions are often explicable with reference to the communicative functions they serve. An adaptationist approach to vocal emotions requires that we distinguish between evolved signals and byproduct cues, and understand vocal affect as a collection of multiple strategic communicative systems subject to the evolutionary dynamics described by signaling theory. We should expect variability across disparate societies in vocal emotion according to culturally evolved pragmatic rules, and universals in vocal production and perception to the extent that form–function relationships are present. Keywords emotion, evolution, signaling, vocal affect Emotional communication is central to social life for many ani- 2001; Pisanski, Cartei, McGettigan, Raine, & Reby, 2016; mals. Beginning with Darwin -
Science News | December 19, 2009 Feature | Humans Wonder, Anybody Home?
FEATURE | HUMANS WONDER, ANYBODY HOME? To prevent Shania the octopus from becom- Humans wonder, ing bored, keepers at the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C., gave her a Mr. Potato Head filled with fish to snuggle. Researchers anybody are now looking beyond behavior into the brain for signs of awareness in birds and invertebrates. home? Brain structure and circuitry offer clues to consciousness in nonmammals By Susan Gaidos ne afternoon while participat except for the fact that Betty was a New ing in studies in a University Caledonian crow. of Oxford lab, Abel snatched Betty isn’t the only crow with such a hook away from Betty, leav conceptual ingenuity. Nor are crows the Oing her without a tool to complete a task. only members of the animal kingdom to Spying a piece of straight wire nearby, exhibit similar mental powers. Animals POST WASHINGTON THE she picked it up, bent one end into a can do all sorts of clever things: Studies EARY/ L ’ hook and used it to finish the job. Noth of chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins and O ILL ing about this story was remarkable, birds have found that some can add, B 22 | SCIENCE NEWS | December 19, 2009 www.sciencenews.org FEATURE | HUMANS WONDER, ANYBODY HOME? subtract, create sentences, plan ahead objects in their visual field. “This raises or deceive others. the intriguing question whether con Brain-on-brain comparisons To carry out such tasks, these animals scious experience requires the specific In an effort to find signs of conscious- ness, scientists are identifying analo- must be drawing on past experiences and structure of human or primate brains,” gous structures (same coloring) among then using them along with immediate biologist Donald Griffin wrote inAnimal the brains of humans, birds, octopuses perceptions to make sense of it all. -
Going Beyond Just-So Stories Response to Commentary on Key on Fish Pain
Animal Sentience 2016.022: Response to Commentary on Key on Fish Pain Going beyond just-so stories Response to Commentary on Key on Fish Pain Brian Key School of Biomedical Sciences University of Queensland Abstract: Colloquial arguments for fish feeling pain are deeply rooted in anthropometric tendencies that confuse escape responses to noxious stimuli with evidence for consciousness. More developed arguments often rely on just-so stories of fish displaying complex behaviours as proof of consciousness. In response to commentaries on the idea that fish do not feel pain, I raise the need to go beyond just-so stories and to rigorously analyse the neural circuitry responsible for specific behaviours using new and emerging technologies in neuroscience. By deciphering the causal relationship between neural information processing and conscious behaviour, it should be possible to assess cogently the likelihood of whether a vertebrate species has the neural hardware necessary to — at least — support the feeling of pain. Brian Key [email protected] is Head of the Brain Growth and Regeneration Lab at the University of Queensland. He is dedicated to understanding the principles of stem cell biology, differentiation, axon guidance, plasticity, regeneration and development of the brain. http://www.uq.edu.au/sbms/staff/brian-key Just-so stories In this response to commentaries on the target article “Fish do not feel pain” (Key), I do not plan to interrogate either the putative behavioural evidence or the just-so stories previously proposed as supportive of fish feeling pain (Balcombe; Braithwaite & Droege; Broom; Brown; Dinets; Ng). These claims have been adequately addressed and refuted in recent literature (Key, 2015a and 2015b; Rose et al., 2014). -
A Novel Reinforcement Model of Birdsong Vocalization Learning
A Novel Reinforcement Model of Birdsong Vocalization Learning Kenji Doya Terrence J. Sejnowski ATR Human Infonnation Processing Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Laboratories UCSD and Salk Institute, 2-2 Hikaridai, Seika, Kyoto 619-02, Japan San Diego, CA 92186-5800, USA Abstract Songbirds learn to imitate a tutor song through auditory and motor learn ing. We have developed a theoretical framework for song learning that accounts for response properties of neurons that have been observed in many of the nuclei that are involved in song learning. Specifically, we suggest that the anteriorforebrain pathway, which is not needed for song production in the adult but is essential for song acquisition, provides synaptic perturbations and adaptive evaluations for syllable vocalization learning. A computer model based on reinforcement learning was con structed that could replicate a real zebra finch song with 90% accuracy based on a spectrographic measure. The second generation of the bird song model replicated the tutor song with 96% accuracy. 1 INTRODUCTION Studies of motor pattern generation have generally focussed on innate motor behaviors that are genetically preprogrammed and fine-tuned by adaptive mechanisms (Harris-Warrick et al., 1992). Birdsong learning provides a favorable opportunity for investigating the neuronal mechanisms for the acquisition of complex motor patterns. Much is known about the neuroethology of bird song and its neuroanatomical substrate (see Nottebohm, 1991 and Doupe, 1993 for reviews), but relatively little is known about the overall system from a computational viewpoint. We propose a set of hypotheses for the functions of the brain nuclei in the song system and explore their computational strength in a model based on biological constraints. -
Minds Without Spines: Evolutionarily Inclusive Animal Ethics
Animal Sentience 2020.329: Mikhalevich & Powell on Invertebrate Minds Call for Commentary: Animal Sentience publishes Open Peer Commentary on all accepted target articles. Target articles are peer-reviewed. Commentaries are editorially reviewed. There are submitted commentaries as well as invited commentaries. Commentaries appear as soon as they have been reviewed, revised and accepted. Target article authors may respond to their commentaries individually or in a joint response to multiple commentaries. INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMMENTATORS Minds without spines: Evolutionarily inclusive animal ethics Irina Mikhalevich Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology Russell Powell Department of Philosophy, Boston University Abstract: Invertebrate animals are frequently lumped into a single category and denied welfare protections despite their considerable cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary diversity. Some ethical and policy inroads have been made for cephalopod molluscs and crustaceans, but the vast majority of arthropods, including the insects, remain excluded from moral consideration. We argue that this exclusion is unwarranted given the existing evidence. Anachronistic readings of evolution, which view invertebrates as lower in the scala naturae, continue to influence public policy and common morality. The assumption that small brains are unlikely to support cognition or sentience likewise persists, despite growing evidence that arthropods have converged on cognitive functions comparable to those found in vertebrates. The exclusion of invertebrates is also motivated by cognitive-affective biases that covertly influence moral judgment, as well as a flawed balancing of scientific uncertainty against moral risk. All these factors shape moral attitudes toward basal vertebrates too, but they are particularly acute in the arthropod context. Moral consistency dictates that the same standards of evidence and risk management that justify policy protections for vertebrates also support extending moral consideration to certain invertebrates. -
Quantification of Developmental Birdsong Learning from The
Quantification of developmental birdsong learning from the subsyllabic scale to cultural evolution Dina Lipkind1 and Ofer Tchernichovski Department of Psychology, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY 10065 Edited by Donald W. Pfaff, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, and approved February 4, 2011 (received for review August 31, 2010) Quantitative analysis of behavior plays an important role in bird- The genome of a songbird was sequenced earlier this year (12), song neuroethology, serving as a common denominator in studies motivated in part by the goal of discovering the genetic spanning molecular to system-level investigation of sensory-motor changes (as revealed by comparison with the chicken genome) conversion, developmental learning, and pattern generation in that led to the evolution of vocal learning. In contrast to auditory the brain. In this review, we describe the role of behavioral analysis learning (the ability to discriminate between sounds), vocal in facilitating cross-level integration. Modern sound analysis ap- learning (the ability to imitate complex sounds) is rare in nature, but in birds it probably evolved in three out of the 25–28 known proaches allow investigation of developmental song learning across – multiple time scales. Combined with novel methods that allow orders: songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds (13 17). Aside experimental control of vocal changes, it is now possible to test from humans, vocal learning in mammals has been conclusively hypotheses about mechanisms of vocal learning. Further, song demonstrated only in dolphins, whales (18), and bats (19), but not in apes. Vocal learners share similar forebrain structures neces- analysis can be done at the population level across generations to sary to produce and acquire their learned vocalization (whether track cultural evolution and multigenerational behavioral processes. -
A Resonant Message: Aligning Scholar Values and Open Access Objectives in OA Policy Outreach to Faculty and Graduate Students
Please do not remove this page A Resonant Message: Aligning Scholar Values and Open Access Objectives in OA Policy Outreach to Faculty and Graduate Students Otto, Jane https://scholarship.libraries.rutgers.edu/discovery/delivery/01RUT_INST:ResearchRepository/12643424420004646?l#13643501240004646 Otto, J. (2016). A Resonant Message: Aligning Scholar Values and Open Access Objectives in OA Policy Outreach to Faculty and Graduate Students. In Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication (Vol. 4). Rutgers University. https://doi.org/10.7282/T3HT2RMZ This work is protected by copyright. You are free to use this resource, with proper attribution, for research and educational purposes. Other uses, such as reproduction or publication, may require the permission of the copyright holder. Downloaded On 2021/10/02 11:21:37 -0400 A RESONANT MESSAGE 1 A Resonant Message: Aligning Scholar Values and Open Access Objectives in OA Policy Outreach to Faculty and Graduate Students A RESONANT MESSAGE 2 Abstract INTRODUCTION. Faculty contribution to the institutional repository is a major limiting factor in the successful provision of open access to scholarship, and thus to the advancement of research productivity and progress. Many have alluded to outreach messages through studies examining faculty concerns that underlie their reluctance to contribute, but specific open access messages demonstrated to resonate most with faculty have not been discussed with sufficient granularity. Indeed, many faculty benefits and concerns are likely either unknown to the faculty themselves, or unspoken, so the literature’s record of faculty benefits and perceptions of open access remains incomplete at best. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM. At Rutgers University, we have developed a targeted message that both addresses these unspoken/unknown concerns and benefits and speaks to the promise and inevitability of open access in a changing scholarly communication landscape. -
DOING the RIGHT THING an Interview with Stevan Harnad (By
DOING THE RIGHT THING An Interview With Stevan Harnad (by Mark Bekoff, Psychology Today, January 2015) https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201501/doing-the-right-thing- interview-stevan-harnad MB: You’re Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Sciences at University of Quebec in Montreal and Professor of Web Science at University of Southampton in the UK: What do you actually do? SH: I do research on how the brain learns and communicates categories. Categorization is a very general cognitive capacity. I think it covers most of cognition. It just means doing the right thing with the right kind of thing: Eat what’s edible; avoid predators; and call a spade a “spade” (because most of language is categorization too). http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/261725/ And how do you do research on how the brain learns and communicates categories? Do you study animals’ brains? No. I study how humans do it, I try to model the mechanism generating that capacity computationally, and I test for clues and correlates with brain imagery (event- related potentials). Of these three methods, the third – observing and measuring brain events – is actually the least informative. Is that just because you can’t get deep enough into the brain, and manipulate it? No, even if we could manipulate people’s brains any way we wanted, what the brain can do, as an organ, is anything and everything we can do. The brain does not wear its functioning on its sleeve, to be read off by observation and manipulation, like the heart, which just pumps blood, or the lungs, which just pump air. -
Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, May 8, 1999
Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, May 8, 1999 [This is a revised draft of comments on the ebiomed proposal, sent to Harold Varmus earlier.] The following are my comments on: http://www.nih.gov/welcome/director/ebiomed/ebiomed.htm This extremely welcome and important initiative is deserving of the strongest support. The following recommendations are made in the interests of strengthening the proposal by clarifying some crucial central aspects and modifying or eliminating some minor, weaker aspects. E-BIOMED: A PROPOSAL FOR ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION IN THE BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES Prologue The full potential of electronic communication has yet to be realized. The scientific community has made only sparing use thus far of the Internet as a means to publish scientific work and to distribute it widely and without significant barriers to access. This generally accurate assessment of the current failure to exploit the full potential of the Internet for scientific publication has one prominent and extremely relevant and important exception. It would be much more accurate as well as helpful to note this explicitly from the outset, as this notable exception is very likely to be the model for all the rest of the disciplines: Physics is the exception (and to some degree, mathematics). It is now both an empirical and a historical fact that well over half of the current physics (journal) literature is freely available online from the Los Alamos Archive and its 14 mirror archives worldwide, and is being used by perhaps 50,000 physicists a day. http://xxx.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/show_monthly_submissions It would be misleading in the extreme to describe this as "sparing use"! Instead, it should be acknowledged that this has been a revolutionary change in Physics, and if there were a way to extend it to the other sciences (and the other learned disciplines) then the full potential of electronic communication WOULD indeed be realized. -
Isochrony, Vocal Learning and the Acquisition of Rhythm and Melody - Andrea Ravignani in Press: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Isochrony, vocal learning and the acquisition of rhythm and melody - Andrea Ravignani In press: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Isochrony, vocal learning and the acquisition of rhythm and melody Andrea Ravignani Comparative Bioacoustics Group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, NL [email protected] ABSTRACT A cross-species perspective can extend and provide testable predictions for Savage et al.’s framework. Rhythm and melody, I argue, could bootstrap each other in the evolution of musicality. Isochrony may function as a temporal grid to support rehearsing and learning modulated, pitched vocalizations. Once this melodic plasticity is acquired, focus can shift back to refining rhythm processing and beat induction. Musicality consists of the lobster rattles to sea lion barks: Patek & (neuro)biological underpinnings to perceive Caldwell, 2006; Schusterman, 1977), and produce music. Research in the evolution autonomously-regulated behavior or of musicality needs cross-species evidence. As (neuro)physiology. Synchrony is widespread a parallel, to understand the evolution of bat but scattered across taxonomic groups wings, one asks why all other mammals lack (Ravignani et al., 2014; Wilson & Cook, 2016). wings and why other flying animals have Vocal learning is rare but potentially arose evolved them. Likewise, our species only multiple times in evolution due to different constitutes one datapoint to construct pressures across species (Nowicki & Searcy, evolutionary hypotheses on musicality. 2014; Garcia & Ravignani, 2020; Martins & Comparisons with other species are necessary Boeckx, 2020). Beat induction has only been to avoid post-hoc explanations of evolutionary found in a few animals, as acknowledged by traits. Savage and colleagues (Kotz et al., 2018; cf.