Support for the Precautionary Principle
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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. -
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. -
Comparative Evolutionary Approach to Pain Perception in Fishes
Brown, Culum (2016) Comparative evolutionary approach to pain perception in fishes. Animal Sentience 3(5) DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1029 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 2016.011: Brown Commentary on Key on Fish Pain Comparative evolutionary approach to pain perception in fishes Commentary on Key on Fish Pain Culum Brown Biological Sciences Macquarie University Abstract: Arguments against the fact that fish feel pain repeatedly appear even in the face of growing evidence that they do. The standards used to judge pain perception keep moving as the hurdles are repeatedly cleared by novel research findings. There is undoubtedly a vested commercial interest in proving that fish do not feel pain, so the topic has a half-life well past its due date. Key (2016) reiterates previous perspectives on this topic characterised by a black-or-white view that is based on the proposed role of the human cortex in pain perception. I argue that this is incongruent with our understanding of evolutionary processes. Keywords: pain, fishes, behaviour, physiology, nociception Culum Brown [email protected] studies the behavioural ecology of fishes with a special interest in learning and memory. He is Associate Professor of vertebrate evolution at Macquarie University, Co-Editor of the volume Fish Cognition and Behavior, and Editor for Animal Behaviour of the Journal of Fish Biology. -
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. -
Science, Sentience, and Animal Welfare
WellBeing International WBI Studies Repository 1-2013 Science, Sentience, and Animal Welfare Robert C. Jones California State University, Chico, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/ethawel Part of the Animal Studies Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, and the Nature and Society Relations Commons Recommended Citation Jones, R. C. (2013). Science, sentience, and animal welfare. Biology and Philosophy, 1-30. This material is brought to you for free and open access by WellBeing International. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Science, Sentience, and Animal Welfare Robert C. Jones California State University, Chico KEYWORDS animal, welfare, ethics, pain, sentience, cognition, agriculture, speciesism, biomedical research ABSTRACT I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on sentience and cognition. Introduction The contemporary connection between research on animal1 cognition and the moral status of animals goes back almost 40 years to the publication of two influential books: Donald Griffin’s The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience (1976) and Peter Singer’s groundbreaking Animal Liberation (1975). -
Broom Fish Brains Pain
Pre-publication copy Broom, D.M. 2016. Fish brains and behaviour indicate capacity for feeling pain. Animal Sentience, 2016.010 (5 pages). Fish brains, as well as fish behaviour, indicate capacity for awareness and feeling pain Donald M. Broom Centre for Anthrozoology and Animal Welfare Department of Veterinary Medicine University of Cambridge Madingley Road Cambridge CB3 0ES U.K. [email protected] http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/directory/profile.php?dmb16 Keywords pain sentience welfare fish feelings emotions brain behaviour Abstract Studies of behaviour are of major importance in understanding human pain and pain in other animals such as fish. Almost all of the characteristics of the mammalian pain system are also described for fish. Emotions, feelings and learning from these are controlled in the fish brain in areas anatomically different but functionally very similar to those in mammals. The evidence of pain and fear system function in fish is so similar to that in humans and other mammals that it is logical to conclude that fish feel fear and pain. Fish are sentient beings. Key (2015) is scornful about evidence from studies of fish behaviour indicating that fish are aware and feel pain but presents a thorough explanation of the pain system in the human brain and concludes that fish could not feel pain, or have any other feelings, as they do not have the brain structures that allow pain and other feelings in humans. Section 2 of his paper emphasises “the cortical origins of human pain” and states that “structure determines function”, eXplaining the functions of the five layers of the human cortex. -
Animal Sentience? Neuroscience Has No Answers
Gutfreund, Yoram (2017) Animal sentience? Neuroscience has no answers. Animal Sentience 13(4) DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1231 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 2017.035: Gutfreund on Woodruff on Fish Feel Animal sentience? Neuroscience has no answers Commentary on Woodruff on Fish Feel Yoram Gutfreund Department of Neurobiology Technion Abstract: Woodruff’s target article provides a detailed review of comparative studies on brain and behavior in teleosts. However, the relevance of the scientific data to the question of consciousness rests solely on the validity of a small set of so-called "requirements for consciousness." I use the target article to demonstrate that the neuroscientific study of animal consciousness in general relies on external, highly questionable and unfalsifiable criteria, and therefore fails to resolve the question of which animal species are sentient. Fish behavior can be remarkably complex, but whether fish are conscious remains a matter of belief. Yoram Gutfreund is Associate Professor of Neurobiology in the Faculty of Medicine of the Technion. His specialization is in Neuroethology, the comparative study of the neural basis of animal behavior. His current research focuses on attention behavior in birds. yoramg.technion.ac.il/ In a recent paper (Gutfreund 2017), I argued that scientific conclusions on consciousness in animals are mostly premature, and that given our current state of knowledge, neuroscientific data cannot help us resolve the question of animal consciousness, i.e., which animal species possess phenomenal consciousness or sentience. -
Roots of Human Resistance to Animal Rights: Psychological and Conceptual Blocks
\\Server03\productn\L\LCA\8-1\LCA105.txt unknown Seq: 1 14-MAY-02 15:16 ROOTS OF HUMAN RESISTANCE TO ANIMAL RIGHTS: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CONCEPTUAL BLOCKS By Steven J. Bartlett* Animal law has focused attention on such interconnected issues as the prop- erty status of nonhuman animals, juristic personhood, and standing. These subjects are undeniably central concerns that dominate discussions of animal rights, but they do not relate to the most fundamental factors that are responsible both for human resistance to animal rights and for our spe- cies' well-entrenched, cruel, and self-righteous exploitation and destruction of nonhuman animals. In this comment, the author reviews recent advocacy of animal rights and offers the first study of human psychological and con- ceptual blocks that stand in the way of efforts on behalf of animal law and legislation. Paying long overdue attention to these obstacles provides a real- istic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of attempts to initiate mean- ingful change. I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. ÐAbraham Lincoln I. INTRODUCTION: ANIMALS AS PROPERTYÐIS THIS THE PROBLEM? Animals are property. These three wordsÐand their legal implications and practical ramificationsÐdefine the most significant doctrines and cases . and the realities for current practitioners of animal law.1 For many people in our society, the concept of legal rights for other animals is quite ªunthinkable.º That is because our relationship with the * Senior Research Professor of Philosophy, Oregon State University; Visiting Scholar in Psychology & Philosophy, Willamette University; Previously Professor of Philosophy, St. -
Animal Sentience and Emotions
Animal Sentience and Emotions: The Argument for Universal Acceptance © iStock.com/TheImaginaryDuck © iStock.com/Eriko Hume © iStock.com/Eriko © iStock.com/global_explorer © iStock.com/Delpixart Prepared by Ingrid L. Taylor, D.V.M. Research Associate, Laboratory Investigations Department 1 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals | 2021 © iStock.com/Jérémy Stenuit than “learning and memory.”4 Thus, in observations of Introduction animal behavior, descriptive labels that did not attribute any intentionality were acceptable. Noted primatologist Frans de Though the fact of animal sentience is implicit in Waal describes how, when he observed the way chimpanzees experimentation,1 researchers have traditionally downplayed would reconcile with a kiss after a fight, he was pressured to and ignored certain aspects of it, and in nonvertebrate use the phrase “postconflict reunions with mouth-to-mouth species they have often denied it altogether. While it is contact” rather than the terms “reconciliation” and “kiss.” established that vertebrate animals feel pain and respond to He goes on to state that for three decades in primatology pain drugs in much the same ways that humans do,2 emotions research, simpler explanations had to be systematically such as joy, happiness, suffering, empathy, and fear have countered before the term “reconciliation” was accepted often been ignored, despite the fact that many psychological in situations in which primates quite obviously “monitored and behavioral experiments are predicated on the assumption and repaired social relationships.”5 De Waal notes that this that animals feel these emotions and will consistently react dependence on descriptive labels, i.e., that animals can be based on these feelings. -
A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics
University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2012 Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics Joel P. MacClellan University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation MacClellan, Joel P., "Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2012. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1433 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Joel P. MacClellan entitled "Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. John Nolt, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Jon Garthoff, David Reidy, Dan Simberloff Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) MINDING NATURE: A DEFENSE OF A SENTIOCENTRIC APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Joel Patrick MacClellan August 2012 ii The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing. -
1 Nietzsche on the Nature of the Unconscious Paul Katsafanas
Nietzsche on the Nature of the Unconscious Paul Katsafanas Forthcoming in Inquiry (Special Issue on Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology) Note: this is the penultimate draft, not the final version. In a list of the most puzzling claims made by Nietzsche, pride of place might well be given to his idea that consciousness is necessarily superficial and falsifying. Nietzsche writes, “Due to the nature of animal consciousness, the world of which we can become conscious is merely a surface- and sign-world, a world generalized and made common” (GS 354). He tells us that consciousness is a “simplifying apparatus” (WLN 2/KSA 11: 34[46]); it “is presented only with a selection of experiences—experiences, furthermore, that have all been simplified, made easy to survey and grasp, thus falsified” (WLN 30/KSA 11:37[4]). For these reasons, Nietzsche maintains that consciousness “involves a vast and thorough corruption, falsification, superficialization, and generalization” (GS 354) What does Nietzsche mean by these claims? Why and in what sense does consciousness render our experiences superficial and falsifying? In Katsafanas (2005), I argued that we could explain these claims by investigating Nietzsche’s account of the conscious/unconscious distinction. In particular, I argued that Nietzsche endorses a novel view of consciousness: he argues that conscious mental states have conceptual content, whereas unconscious mental states have nonconceptual content. Nietzsche understands concepts as generalizations from experience; accordingly, I argued, any conceptual mental state will be a generalized or superficial version of a nonconceptual state. Moreover, because concepts have their meanings determined in holistic fashion, and because no one 1 system of concepts is best or uniquely correct, pressing nonconceptual content into a conceptual framework will distort or falsify that content.