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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Limits Of Neuroscience, Paul Morris Jan 2018

Limits Of Neuroscience, Paul Morris

Animal Sentience

Examining the relationship between jealous behaviour and the amygdala may be quite informative about the function of the amygdala, but the amygdala may be less helpful in informing us about jealous behaviour. Claims about the potential practical relevance of the results also require that the magnitude of the effects inform the relevant discussion. The dogs used in the study probably share some very important personality characteristics; this too limits the practical implications of Cook et al.’s findings for dogs in general. It is nevertheless a testament to the skill of the experimenters, and the amazing bond between dogs and humans, …


Fake Or Not: Two Prerequisites For Jealousy, Juliane Bräuer, Federica Amici Jan 2018

Fake Or Not: Two Prerequisites For Jealousy, Juliane Bräuer, Federica Amici

Animal Sentience

Cook and colleagues (2018) use a novel approach to test jealousy in dogs. Although such a non-invasive approach is more than welcome in comparative research, several methodological shortcomings limit the impact of this study. We briefly outline two main problems. (1) There is no evidence that the fake dogs in the study were perceived as real, and thus as social rivals, which would be a prerequisite for jealousy. (2) It is questionable whether dogs generally show the cognitive prerequisites for jealousy, such as attentiveness toward a social rival, the ability to understand intentions, and a sense of fairness. We suggest …


Fill-In-The-Blank-Emotion In Dogs? Evidence From Brain Imaging, Alexandra Horowitz, Becca Franks, Jeff Sebo Jan 2018

Fill-In-The-Blank-Emotion In Dogs? Evidence From Brain Imaging, Alexandra Horowitz, Becca Franks, Jeff Sebo

Animal Sentience

What is needed to make meaningful claims about an animal’s capacity for subjective experience? Cook et al. (2018) attempt to study jealousy in dogs by placing them in a particular context and then seeing whether they display a particular brain state. We argue that this approach to studying jealousy falls short for two related reasons. First, the relationship between jealousy and the selected context is unclear. Second, the relationship between jealousy and the selected brain state (indeed, any single brain state) is unclear. These and other issues seriously limit what this study can show. It is important not to see …


Situating The Study Of Jealousy In The Context Of Social Relationships, Christine E. Webb, Frans B. M. De Waal Jan 2018

Situating The Study Of Jealousy In The Context Of Social Relationships, Christine E. Webb, Frans B. M. De Waal

Animal Sentience

Whereas the feelings of other beings are private and may always remain so, emotions are simultaneously manifested in behavior, physiology, and other observables. Nonetheless, uncertainty about whether emotions can be studied adequately across species has promoted skepticism about their very presence in other parts of the animal kingdom. Studying social emotions like jealousy in the context of the social relationships in which they arise, as has been done in the case of animal empathy, may help dispel this skepticism. Empathy in other species came to be accepted partly because of the behavioral similarities between its expression in nonhuman animals and …


Why Do We Want To Think Humans Are Different?, Colin A. Chapman, Michael A. Huffman Jan 2018

Why Do We Want To Think Humans Are Different?, Colin A. Chapman, Michael A. Huffman

Animal Sentience

One harmful consequence of creating categories where one group is unique and superior to others is that it justifies committing negative, often atrocious, acts on the members of the inferior group. Correcting divisive human categorizations (racial superiority, gender superiority) has bettered society. Scholars have often claimed that humans are unique and superior to nonhuman animals. These claims need to be reevaluated. Many have already been refuted. Animals have been shown to outperform humans in many tasks, including cognitive ones. Here we raise the question: Has the false sense of superiority been used to justify human cruelty to animals?


Good News: Humans Are Neither Distinct Nor Superior, Anne Benvenuti Jan 2018

Good News: Humans Are Neither Distinct Nor Superior, Anne Benvenuti

Animal Sentience

Chapman & Huffman suggest that to correct our thinking about the supposed superiority of humans over other animals, we must train our reasoned investigation upon ourselves. Their thesis may usefully be viewed from within the general findings of the cognitive revolution in science, particularly findings that speak to the limits of rationality in everyday thought of humans. That we have failed — throughout a long history of scientific and philosophical thought — to ask fundamental questions about animal cognition and emotion is rooted in the fact that much of our thinking, feeling, and behaving is beyond our own immediate grasp. …


Using Anthropocentrism To The Benefit Of Other Species, Vanessa Wilson Jan 2018

Using Anthropocentrism To The Benefit Of Other Species, Vanessa Wilson

Animal Sentience

Chapman & Huffman (2018) argue that we should not consider humans as unique or superior to other animals when we have the chance to explore the diversity of the traits of other species. This is a valid and progressive point in our approach to research, but I suggest that an anthropocentric approach can have animal welfare benefits when it helps us perceive other species – especially distantly related ones such as crustaceans – in a human light.


Individuals In The Wild, Bob Fischer Jan 2018

Individuals In The Wild, Bob Fischer

Animal Sentience

If many wild animals have net negative lives, then we have to consider how likely it is that the good for animals, considered as individuals, aligns with the good for species, or the climate, or the preservation of wild spaces.


Two Fallacies In Comparisons Between Humans And Non-Humans, Don Ross Jan 2018

Two Fallacies In Comparisons Between Humans And Non-Humans, Don Ross

Animal Sentience

The hypothesis that humans are superior to non-humans by virtue of higher cognitive powers is often supported by two recurrent fallacies: (1) that any competence shown by humans but not by our closest living relatives (apes) must be unique to humans; and (2) that grades of intelligence can be inferred from behavior without regard to motivational structures.


Sentience In Fishes: More On The Evidence, Michael L. Woodruff Jan 2018

Sentience In Fishes: More On The Evidence, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

In my target article, I argued that the brains of ray-finned fishes of the teleost subclass (Actinopterygii) are sufficiently complex to support sentience — that these fishes have subjective awareness of interoceptive and exteroceptive sense experience. Extending previous theories centered on the tectum, I focused on the organization of the fish pallium. In this Response to the commentaries, I clarify that I do not propose that the fish pallium is, or must be, homologous to the mammalian neocortex to play a role in sentience. Some form of a functionalist approach to explaining the neural basis of sentience across taxa is …