Comparative Evolutionary Approach to Pain Perception in Fishes
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Why Fish Do Not Feel Pain
Key, Brian (2016) Why fish do not eelf pain. Animal Sentience 3(1) DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1011 This article has appeared in the journal Animal Sentience, a peer-reviewed journal on animal cognition and feeling. It has been made open access, free for all, by WellBeing International and deposited in the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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 revised and accepted. Target article authors may respond to their commentaries individually or in a joint response to multiple commentaries. Instructions: http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/guidelines.html Why fish do not feel pain Brian Key Biomedical Sciences University of Queensland Australia Abstract: Only humans can report feeling pain. In contrast, pain in animals is typically inferred on the basis of nonverbal behaviour. Unfortunately, these behavioural data can be problematic when the reliability and validity of the behavioural tests are questionable. The thesis proposed here is based on the bioengineering principle that structure determines function. Basic functional homologies can be mapped to structural homologies across a broad spectrum of vertebrate species. For example, olfaction depends on olfactory glomeruli in the olfactory bulbs of the forebrain, visual orientation responses depend on the laminated optic tectum in the midbrain, and locomotion depends on pattern generators in the spinal cord throughout vertebrate phylogeny, from fish to humans. Here I delineate the region of the human brain that is directly responsible for feeling painful stimuli. -
Chrysippus's Dog As a Case Study in Non-Linguistic Cognition
Chrysippus’s Dog as a Case Study in Non-Linguistic Cognition Michael Rescorla Abstract: I critique an ancient argument for the possibility of non-linguistic deductive inference. The argument, attributed to Chrysippus, describes a dog whose behavior supposedly reflects disjunctive syllogistic reasoning. Drawing on contemporary robotics, I urge that we can equally well explain the dog’s behavior by citing probabilistic reasoning over cognitive maps. I then critique various experimentally-based arguments from scientific psychology that echo Chrysippus’s anecdotal presentation. §1. Language and thought Do non-linguistic creatures think? Debate over this question tends to calcify into two extreme doctrines. The first, espoused by Descartes, regards language as necessary for cognition. Modern proponents include Brandom (1994, pp. 145-157), Davidson (1984, pp. 155-170), McDowell (1996), and Sellars (1963, pp. 177-189). Cartesians may grant that ascribing cognitive activity to non-linguistic creatures is instrumentally useful, but they regard such ascriptions as strictly speaking false. The second extreme doctrine, espoused by Gassendi, Hume, and Locke, maintains that linguistic and non-linguistic cognition are fundamentally the same. Modern proponents include Fodor (2003), Peacocke (1997), Stalnaker (1984), and many others. Proponents may grant that non- linguistic creatures entertain a narrower range of thoughts than us, but they deny any principled difference in kind.1 2 An intermediate position holds that non-linguistic creatures display cognitive activity of a fundamentally different kind than human thought. Hobbes and Leibniz favored this intermediate position. Modern advocates include Bermudez (2003), Carruthers (2002, 2004), Dummett (1993, pp. 147-149), Malcolm (1972), and Putnam (1992, pp. 28-30). -
Cephalopods and the Evolution of the Mind
Cephalopods and the Evolution of the Mind Peter Godfrey-Smith The Graduate Center City University of New York Pacific Conservation Biology 19 (2013): 4-9. In thinking about the nature of the mind and its evolutionary history, cephalopods – especially octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid – have a special importance. These animals are an independent experiment in the evolution of large and complex nervous systems – in the biological machinery of the mind. They evolved this machinery on a historical lineage distant from our own. Where their minds differ from ours, they show us another way of being a sentient organism. Where we are similar, this is due to the convergence of distinct evolutionary paths. I introduced the topic just now as 'the mind.' This is a contentious term to use. What is it to have a mind? One option is that we are looking for something close to what humans have –– something like reflective and conscious thought. This sets a high bar for having a mind. Another possible view is that whenever organisms adapt to their circumstances in real time by adjusting their behavior, taking in information and acting in response to it, there is some degree of mentality or intelligence there. To say this sets a low bar. It is best not to set bars in either place. Roughly speaking, we are dealing with a matter of degree, though 'degree' is not quite the right term either. The evolution of a mind is the acquisition of a tool-kit for the control of behavior. The tool-kit includes some kind of perception, though different animals have very different ways of taking in information from the world. -
"Higher" Cognition. Animal Sentience
Animal Sentience 2017.030: Vallortigara on Marino on Thinking Chickens Sentience does not require “higher” cognition Commentary on Marino on Thinking Chickens Giorgio Vallortigara Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences University of Trento, Italy Abstract: I agree with Marino (2017a,b) that the cognitive capacities of chickens are likely to be the same as those of many others vertebrates. Also, data collected in the young of this precocial species provide rich information about how much cognition can be pre-wired and predisposed in the brain. However, evidence of advanced cognition — in chickens or any other organism — says little about sentience (i.e., feeling). We do not deny sentience in human beings who, because of cognitive deficits, would be incapable of exhibiting some of the cognitive feats of chickens. Moreover, complex problem solving, such as transitive inference, which has been reported in chickens, can be observed even in the absence of any accompanying conscious experience in humans. Giorgio Vallortigara, professor of Neuroscience at the Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences of the University of Trento, Italy, studies space, number and object cognition, and brain asymmetry in a comparative and evolutionary perspective. The author of more than 250 scientific papers on these topics, he was the recipient of several awards, including the Geoffroy Saint Hilaire Prize for Ethology (France) and a Doctor Rerum Naturalium Honoris Causa for outstanding achievements in the field of psychobiology (Ruhr University, Germany). r.unitn.it/en/cimec/abc In a revealing piece in New Scientist (Lawler, 2015a) and a beautiful book (Lawler, 2015b), science journalist Andrew Lawler discussed the possible consequences for humans of the sudden disappearance of some domesticated species. -
Animal Welfare and the Paradox of Animal Consciousness
ARTICLE IN PRESS Animal Welfare and the Paradox of Animal Consciousness Marian Dawkins1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 1Corresponding author: e-mail address: [email protected] Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Animal Consciousness: The Heart of the Paradox 2 2.1 Behaviorism Applies to Other People Too 5 3. Human Emotions and Animals Emotions 7 3.1 Physiological Indicators of Emotion 7 3.2 Behavioral Components of Emotion 8 3.2.1 Vacuum Behavior 10 3.2.2 Rebound 10 3.2.3 “Abnormal” Behavior 10 3.2.4 The Animal’s Point of View 11 3.2.5 Cognitive Bias 15 3.2.6 Expressions of the Emotions 15 3.3 The Third Component of Emotion: Consciousness 16 4. Definitions of Animal Welfare 24 5. Conclusions 26 References 27 1. INTRODUCTION Consciousness has always been both central to and a stumbling block for animal welfare. On the one hand, the belief that nonhuman animals suffer and feel pain is what draws many people to want to study animal welfare in the first place. Animal welfare is seen as fundamentally different from plant “welfare” or the welfare of works of art precisely because of the widely held belief that animals have feelings and experience emotions in ways that plants or inanimate objectsdhowever valuableddo not (Midgley, 1983; Regan, 1984; Rollin, 1989; Singer, 1975). On the other hand, consciousness is also the most elusive and difficult to study of any biological phenomenon (Blackmore, 2012; Koch, 2004). Even with our own human consciousness, we are still baffled as to how Advances in the Study of Behavior, Volume 47 ISSN 0065-3454 © 2014 Elsevier Inc. -
Wild Animal Suffering and Vegan Outreach
Paez, Eze (2016) Wild animal suffering and vegan outreach. Animal Sentience 7(11) DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1101 This article has appeared in the journal Animal Sentience, a peer-reviewed journal on animal cognition and feeling. It has been made open access, free for all, by WellBeing International and deposited in the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Animal Sentience 2016.087: Paez Commentary on Ng on Animal Suffering Wild animal suffering and vegan outreach Commentary on Ng on Animal Suffering Eze Paez Department of Legal, Moral and Political Philosophy Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona Abstract: Ng’s strategic proposal seems to downplay the potential benefits of advocacy for wild animals and omit what may be the most effective strategy to reduce the harms farmed animals suffer: vegan outreach. Eze Paez, lecturer in moral and political philosophy at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, studies normative and applied ethics, especially ontological and normative aspects of abortion and the moral consideration of nonhuman animals. He is a member of Animal Ethics. upf.academia.edu/ezepaez Underestimating the importance of wild animal suffering. Ng’s (2016) view is not that animal advocates should focus only on farmed animals, to the exclusion of those that live in the wild. He concedes that our efforts must also be directed toward raising awareness of the harms suffered by animals in nature. Nonetheless, he seems to suggest that these efforts should be minimal relative to those devoted to reducing the harms farmed animals suffer. Ng underestimates the potential benefits of advocacy for wild animals in terms of net reduction in suffering perhaps because he is overestimating people’s resistance to caring about wild animals and to intervening in nature on their behalf. -
Preference and Motivation Tests for Body Tactile Stimulation in Fish
animals Article Preference and Motivation Tests for Body Tactile Stimulation in Fish Ana Carolina dos Santos Gauy 1,2, Marcela Cesar Bolognesi 1,2, Guilherme Delgado Martins 1 and Eliane Gonçalves-de-Freitas 1,2,* 1 Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Rua Cristóvão Colombo, 2265, São José do Rio Preto 15054-000, SP, Brazil; [email protected] (A.C.d.S.G.); [email protected] (M.C.B.); [email protected] (G.D.M.) 2 CAUNESP—Centro de Aquicultura da UNESP, Jaboticabal 14884-900, SP, Brazil * Correspondence: [email protected] Simple Summary: Body tactile stimulation, such as human massage therapy, is a way to relieve stress in humans and other animals, therefore it could improve animal health and welfare. This physical stimulation can also be done through artificial devices, as a sensory enrichment. However, before using it in an artificial environment, it is imperative to test whether animals perceive such enrichment as positive (searching for it spontaneously) or negative (avoiding it). Here, we tested whether the Nile tilapia fish search for or avoid tactile stimulation. We used a rectangular PVC frame, filled with vertical plastic sticks sided with silicone bristles that provided tactile stimulation when fish passed through them. We carried out preference and motivation tests, in which fish could choose to cross through the device with and without tactile stimulus. The same procedure was repeated after fish were exposed to either isolation or social stress. We found that fish crossed less by tactile device than by open areas. -
The Cognitive Animal : Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition
Contents Introduction ix 11 Learning and Memory Without a Contributors xvii Brain 77 James W. Grau THE DIVERSITY OF 12 Cognitive Modulation of Sexual COGNITION Behavior 89 Michael Domjan The Inner Life of Earthworms: Darwin's Argument and Us 13 Cognition and Emotion in Concert Implications 3 in Human and Nonhuman Animals 97 Eileen Crist Ruud van den Bos, Bart B. Houx, and Berry M. Spruijt 2 Crotalomorphism: A Metaphor for U nderstanding Anthropomorphism 14 Constructing Animal Cognition 105 by Omission 9 William Timberlake Jesús Rivas and Gordon M. 15 Genetics, Plasticity, and the Burghardt Evolution of Cognitive Processes 115 3 The Cognitive Defender: How Gordon M. Burghardt Ground Squirrels Assess Their 16 Spatial Behavior, Food Storing, and Predators 19 the Modular Mind 123 Donald H. Owings Sara J. Shettleworth 4 Jumping Spider Tricksters: Deceit, 17 Spatial and Social Cognition in Predation, and Cognition 27 Corvids: An Evolutionary Approach 129 Stim Wilcox and Robert Jackson Russell P. Balda and Alan C. 5 The Ungulate Mind 35 Kamil John A. Byers 18 Environmental Complexity, Signal 6 Can Honey Bees Create Cognitive Detection, and the Evolution of Maps? 41 Cognition 135 James L. Gould Peter Godfrey-Smith 7 Raven Consciousness 47 19 Cognition as an Independent Bernd Heinrich Variable: Virtual Ecology 143 Alan C. Kamil and Alan B. Bond 8 Animal Minds, Human Minds 53 Eric Saidel 20 Synthetic Ethology: A New Tool for Investigating Animal Cognition 151 9 Comparative Developmental Bruce MacLennan Evolutionary Psychology and Cognitive Ethology: Contrasting but 21 From Cognition in Animals to Compatible Research Programs 59 Cognition in Superorganisms 157 Sue Taylor Parker Charles E. -
Emily Elizabeth Bray [email protected] [email protected]
Emily Elizabeth Bray www.emilyebray.com [email protected] [email protected] PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE University of Arizona, School of Anthropology, Tucson, AZ and May 2017 – Present Canine Companions for Independence®, Santa Rosa, CA Post-doctoral Research Associate Focus: Longitudinal cognitive and behavioral studies in assistance dogs Supervisors: Dr. Evan MacLean and Dr. Brenda Kennedy EDUCATION University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA May 2017 PhD in Psychology (Concentration in Animal Learning and Behavior) Center for Teaching & Learning Teaching Certificate in College and University Teaching Dissertation: “A longitudinal study of maternal style, young adult temperament and cognition, and program outcome in a population of guide dogs” Advisors: Dr. Robert Seyfarth, Dr. Dorothy Cheney, and Dr. James Serpell University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA May 2013 M.A. in Psychology Thesis: “Dogs as a model system for understanding problem-solving: Exploring the affective and cognitive mechanisms that impact inhibitory control” Advisors: Dr. Robert Seyfarth, Dr. Dorothy Cheney, and Dr. James Serpell Duke University, Durham, NC May 2012 B.A. in Cognitive Psychology and English (summa cum laude), Graduation with Distinction in Psychology Psychology GPA 4.0, Cumulative GPA 3.97 Graduation with Distinction Thesis: “Factors Affecting Inhibitory Control in Dogs” Advisors: Dr. Brian Hare and Dr. Stephen Mitroff University College London, London, UK August 2010 - December 2010 Semester Abroad through Butler University’s Institute for Study Abroad PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS 10. Bray, E.E., Gruen, M.E., Gnanadesikan, G.E., Horschler, D.J., Levy, K. M., Kennedy, B.S., Hare, B.A., & MacLean, E.L. (in press). Dog cognitive development: a longitudinal study across the first two years of life. -
Animal Cognition Research Offers Outreach Opportunity John Carey, Science Writer
SCIENCE AND CULTURE SCIENCE AND CULTURE Animal cognition research offers outreach opportunity John Carey, Science Writer In a classroom in Thailand, groups of elementary school human populations growing and wildlife habitat shrink- children are marching around large sheets of newspaper ing, there’s less room for people and animals. In Thai- on the floor. Music plays. Each group of five kids has a land, that’s led to increasing conflicts between newspaper sheet. When the music stops, the children crop-raiding elephants and farmers. These clashes rush to stand on their sheet. The first time, there’sroom go beyond the research realm, involving a complex for all. As music starts and stops, though, the teacher interplay of conservation, economics, and societal makes the newspaper sheet smaller and smaller. Eventu- concerns. So the scientist behind the exercise, ally, five pairs of feet can no longer fit on the sheet. Some Hunter College psychologist and elephant researcher of the children climb on their partners, cramming their Joshua Plotnik, figured he needed to branch out bodies together before tumbling to the ground laughing. beyond his fieldwork on elephant cognition and The children are having a great time. But this game find ways to use his research to help reduce those of “losing space” also has a serious message. With conflicts. “The fight to protect elephants and other Elephants can cooperate with one another by pulling simultaneously on both ends of the rope to gather food from a platform. Joshua Plotnik has sought to incorporate such results into education and conservation efforts. Image courtesy of Joshua Plotnik. -
An Assessment of Recent Trade Law Developments from an Animal Law Perspective: Trade Law As the Sheep in Wolf's Clothing?
AN ASSESSMENT OF RECENT TRADE LAW DEVELOPMENTS FROM AN ANIMAL LAW PERSPECTIVE: TRADE LAW AS THE SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING? By Charlotte Blattner* Further development within the field of animal law seems to be at an impasse, lost among the potential paths presented by its traditional influ- ences: international treaty law, domestic animal welfare regulations, and trade law. First, classical elements of global animal treaty law are limited to preservationist aspirations, insusceptible to the questions of how animals are treated or how they cope with their environment. Second, animal welfare regulation is understood as a matter confined to national territories. In cross-border dialogue, animal matters have been reduced to allegations of imperialism, which is not conducive to furthering animal interests. Third, animals are regarded as commodities in international trade law, rendering their regulation an undesirable barrier to trade. These present deficiencies deprive global animal law of its significance as a dynamic instrument re- sponsive to global challenges, be they ethical, environmental, economic, technological, or social in nature. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate future ways out of this impasse. Recent developments in trade law, as demonstrated by four exam- ples found within the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) ‘case law,’ mark an important development for animal law. State objectives expressed through trade law are slowly moving away from anthropocentric considera- tions (i.e., geared to preserve a fraction of animals for human interests) to- wards sentiocentric animal welfare (i.e., aimed at minimizing animal suffering and focusing on animal interests). Thereby, the quality of animal law that developed on the international scene through trade law exceeded the status quo of global animal treaty law. -
JAGE-691 Fish Cognition and Consciousness Colin Allen [email protected] Phone
JAGE-691 Fish Cognition and Consciousness Colin Allen [email protected] phone: +1-812-606-0881 fax: +1-812-855-3631 Program in Cognitive Science and Department of History and Philosophy of Science Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 USA ABSTRACT. Questions about fish consciousness and cognition are receiving increasing attention. In this paper, I explain why one must be careful to avoid drawing conclusions too hastily about this hugely di- verse set of species. Keywords. Fish, learning, cognition, consciousness 1. Introduction to the controversy The cognitive and mental capacities of fish are a current topic of scientific controversy, and consciousness is the most contentious of topics. In a recent review article, Michel Cabanac and coauthors (Cabanac et al. 2009) argue that consciousness did not emerge until the early Amniota, the group of species that includes mammals, birds, and "reptiles.” The latter term is in scare quotes because biologists consider it a paraphy- letic group (i.e., a group that contains just a subset of the descendants of its common ancestor) that is im- proper for classification purposes due to its exclusion of the birds, which descended from the saurians. Amniotes are characterized by an embryonic membrane that makes terrestrial reproduction feasible. The amphibians, lacking this adaptation, are constrained to place their eggs in an aqueous environment for proper development. These biological details are important because of the nature of some of the evidence that Cabanac et al. bring to bear on the question of consciousness in fish – evidence that I shall maintain seems skewed towards other adaptations that have to do with terrestrial life.