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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Aquatic Animals, Cognitive Ethology, And Ethics: Questions About Sentience And Other Troubling Issues That Lurk In Turbid Water, Marc Bekoff
Marc Bekoff, PhD
In this general, strongly pro-animal, and somewhat utopian and personal essay, I argue that we owe aquatic animals respect and moral consideration just as we owe respect and moral consideration to all other animal beings, regardless of the taxonomic group to which they belong. In many ways it is more difficult to convince some people of our ethical obligations to numerous aquatic animals because we do not identify or empathize with them as we do with animals with whom we are more familiar or to whom we are more closely related, including those species (usually terrestrial) to whom we refer …
Animal Suffering In China, Peter J. Li
Animal Suffering In China, Peter J. Li
Peter J. Li, PhD
Chinese policy has been aimed at maximizing GDP; it is time to focus also on minimizing animal suffering.
Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown
Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown
Culum Brown, PhD
Whether fish feel pain is a hot political topic. The consequences of our denial are huge given the billions of fish that are slaughtered annually for human consumption. The economic costs of changing our commercial fishery harvest practices are also likely to be great. Key outlines a structure-function analogy of pain in humans, tries to force that template on the rest of the vertebrate kingdom, and fails. His target article has so far elicited 34 commentaries from scientific experts from a broad range of disciplines; only three of these support his position. The broad consensus from the scientific community is …
Cognitive Evidence Of Fish Sentience, Jonathan Balcombe
Cognitive Evidence Of Fish Sentience, Jonathan Balcombe
Jonathan Balcombe, PhD
I present a little-known example of flexible, opportunistic behavior by a species of fish to undermine Key’s (2016) thesis that fish are unconscious and unable to feel. Lack of a cortex is flimsy grounds for denying pain to fish, for on that criterion we must also then deny it to all non-mammals, including birds, which goes against scientific consensus. Notwithstanding science’s fundamental inability to prove anything, the precautionary principal dictates that we should give the benefit of the doubt to fish, and the state of the oceans dictates that we act on it now.
Capacities, Universality And Singularity, Stuart M. Glennan
Capacities, Universality And Singularity, Stuart M. Glennan
Stuart Glennan
In this paper I criticize Cartwright's analysis of capacities and offer an alternative analysis. I argue that Cartwright's attempt to connect capacities to her condition CC fails because individuals can exercise capacities only in certain contexts. My own analysis emphasizes three features of capacities: 1) Capacities belong to individuals; 2) Capacities are typically not metaphysically fundamental properties of individuals, but can be explained by referring to structural properties of individuals; and 3) Laws are best understood as ascriptions of capacities.
Contextual Unanimity And The Units Of Selection Problem, Stuart M. Glennan
Contextual Unanimity And The Units Of Selection Problem, Stuart M. Glennan
Stuart Glennan
Sober and Lewontin’s critique of genic selectionism is based upon the principle that a unit of selection should make a context‐independent contribution to fitness. Critics have effectively shown that this principle is flawed. In this paper I show that the context independence principle is an instance of a more general principle for characterizing causes,called the contextual unanimity principle. I argue that this latter principle, while widely accepted, is erroneous. What is needed is to replace the approach to causality characterized by the contextual unanimity criterion with an approach based on the concept of causal mechanism. After sketching such an approach, …
The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche & The Network-Centric Condition
The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche & The Network-Centric Condition
Dan Mellamphy
No abstract provided.