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Articles 61 - 90 of 752

Full-Text Articles in Cognition and Perception

Revisiting Donald Griffin, Founder Of Cognitive Ethology, Carolyn A. Ristau Jan 2022

Revisiting Donald Griffin, Founder Of Cognitive Ethology, Carolyn A. Ristau

Animal Sentience

Donald Griffin’s writings, beginning with The Question of Animal Awareness (1976), strove to persuade scientists to study the possibility of animal sentience, the basis of Rowan et al.’s efforts to promote animal well-being. Facing great hostility (but also some acceptance) for his ideas, Griffin initially avoided animal welfare advocacy, fearing it would further undermine his efforts to gain recognition of animal sentience. In later years, however, he began to ponder the ethical implications of animal sentience, intending to study wild elephants’ communication and social behavior to better understand their experienced life and apply it to improving conservation methods. As he …


Defining And Assessing Sentience, Barry O. Hughes Jan 2022

Defining And Assessing Sentience, Barry O. Hughes

Animal Sentience

Precisely what is meant by the term sentience and how does it overlap with being conscious? We accept that animals have feelings but how do we know what they are and can we measure them? It is important that we clarify the terminology underlying these difficult concepts. Over the last 50 years a scientific discipline has developed to tackle these questions in a systematic way. We have to avoid thoughtless anthropomorphism yet we have to try to relate sentience in animals, as appropriate, to corresponding experiences in humans.


Pain Sentience Criteria And Their Grading, Eva Jablonka, Simona Ginsburg Jan 2022

Pain Sentience Criteria And Their Grading, Eva Jablonka, Simona Ginsburg

Animal Sentience

On the basis of the target article by Crump and colleagues, we suggest a more parsimonious scheme for evaluating the evidence for sentience. Since some of the criteria used by Crump et al. are not independent and some are uninformative we exclude some criteria and amalgamate others. We propose that evidence of flexible learning and prioritization, in conjunction with relevant data on brain organization, is sufficient for assigning pain-sentience to an animal and we suggest a scoring scheme based on four criteria.


Free Will And Animal Suicide, Sabina Schrynemakers Jan 2022

Free Will And Animal Suicide, Sabina Schrynemakers

Animal Sentience

David Peña-Guzmán presents two arguments against the view that because only humans have free will only humans can commit suicide: (1) nonhuman animals may possess free will, and (2) the libertarian notion of free will is incompatible with scientific explanation. The free will objection to animal suicide is indeed mistaken, but Peña-Guzmán’s criticism of the libertarian notion of free will seems misplaced. His target should instead be the assumption that free choices must be made consciously or self-reflectively or the assumption that freedom cannot come in degrees.


Truly Minimal Criteria For Animal Sentience, Mark Solms Jan 2022

Truly Minimal Criteria For Animal Sentience, Mark Solms

Animal Sentience

The criteria for determining animal sentience proposed in the target article are sensible but they lack an explicit functional justification for the focus on pain. This commentary provides an abbreviated account of the most basic functional principles that underpin animal sentience and articulates some minimal criteria for determining its presence.


Of Course Crustaceans Are Sentient: But There's More To The Story, Arthur S. Reber, Frantisek Baluska, William B. Miller Jr. Jan 2022

Of Course Crustaceans Are Sentient: But There's More To The Story, Arthur S. Reber, Frantisek Baluska, William B. Miller Jr.

Animal Sentience

We are in basic agreement with Crump et al. that animal welfare, particularly with regard to the experience of pain, is a topic of importance. However, we come to the issue from a different perspective, one in which all species are sentient and can feel pain. The implications of this theory are discussed.


Independence, Weight And Priority Of Evidence For Sentience, Elizabeth Irvine Jan 2022

Independence, Weight And Priority Of Evidence For Sentience, Elizabeth Irvine

Animal Sentience

This commentary maps out relationships of dependency between the criteria proposed in the target article (Crump et al. 2022), identifying the criteria that carry most of the weight of the evidence, and suggesting which criteria should have priority in research on sentience.


Generalizing Frameworks For Sentience Beyond Natural Species, Michael Levin Jan 2022

Generalizing Frameworks For Sentience Beyond Natural Species, Michael Levin

Animal Sentience

Crump et al. (2022) offer a well-argued example of an essential development: a rigorous framework for assessing sentience from the perspective of moral concern over an agent’s welfare. Current and forthcoming developments in bioengineering, synthetic morphology, artificial intelligence, biorobotics, and exobiology necessitate an expansion and generalization of this effort. Verbal reports (the Turing Test) and homology to human brains are utterly inadequate criteria for assessing the status of novel, unconventional agents that offer no familiar touchstone of phylogeny or anatomy. We must develop principled approaches to evaluating the sentience of (and thus, our responsibility to) beings of unfamiliar provenance and …


Distinguishing Epistemic And Moral Grounds For Legal Protection, Carlos Montemayor Jan 2022

Distinguishing Epistemic And Moral Grounds For Legal Protection, Carlos Montemayor

Animal Sentience

The criteria proposed by Crump et al. are based on various cognitive roles associated with sentience. A subset of them may be sufficient for certain kinds of welfare, but the presence of all of them should be considered as clearly sufficient for substantial kinds of legal protection based on their relation to capacities that we consider essential for moral standing in human beings.


Does The Sentience Framework Imply All Animals Are Sentient?, Kristin Andrews Jan 2022

Does The Sentience Framework Imply All Animals Are Sentient?, Kristin Andrews

Animal Sentience

The eight criteria proposed in Crump et al.’s framework for evaluating pain sentience in decapod crustaceans are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to markers that could increase confidence in an animal’s sentience more generally. Some of the commentaries have already pointed out that pain is only one kind of sentience (Souza Valente). It has also already been pointed out that there are other criteria for pain that could be usefully added to the framework’s eight (Burrell). This expansive thinking about criteria that can be used to increase confidence in sentience raisess the question: in an expansive …


Sentience As Part Of Emotional Lives, Frans B. M. De Waal Jan 2022

Sentience As Part Of Emotional Lives, Frans B. M. De Waal

Animal Sentience

It is high time to explore the sentience of invertebrate animals, but this topic cannot be discussed without also exploring their emotional lives, including positive emotions. Sentience probably evolved to allow the regulation of emotions by endowing them with feelings.


Sentience Criteria To Persuade The Reasonable Sceptic, Patrick Butlin Jan 2022

Sentience Criteria To Persuade The Reasonable Sceptic, Patrick Butlin

Animal Sentience

When presented with evidence that Crump et al.’s criteria are satisfied for the animals in some taxon, a sceptic could reasonably continue to suspend judgement about whether those animals are sentient. This is because the criteria refer to abilities which are associated with sentience in humans, but it is not clear that sentience is necessary for these abilities. The criteria could be strengthed by requiring evidence of a contrast in performance between cases in which information is carried by felt and unfelt states.



Pros And Cons Of A Framework For Evaluating Potential Pain In Decapods, Robert W. Elwood Jan 2022

Pros And Cons Of A Framework For Evaluating Potential Pain In Decapods, Robert W. Elwood

Animal Sentience

The rigorous framework for research into potential pain in decapods was successful in allowing legislators in the United Kingdom to evaluate a complex scientific issue. However, it might produce problems for research. I discuss doubts about the usefulness of the eight criteria. Some have yet to receive any investigation and others do not allow much inference about pain. In addition, some existing studies are not covered in the framework. Most worrying, however, is the potential for stifling future research of novel areas that are excluded from the framework.


A Framework For Evaluating Evidence Of Pain In Animals, Matilda Gibbons, Lars Chittka Jan 2022

A Framework For Evaluating Evidence Of Pain In Animals, Matilda Gibbons, Lars Chittka

Animal Sentience

Crump et al. define eight criteria indicating sentience in animals, with a focus on pain. Here, we point out the risk of false negative or false positive diagnoses of pain. Criteria of different levels of inclusivity are useful for using the precautionary principle in animal welfare considerations, and for more formal scientific evidence of pain. We suggest tightening the criteria -- from more general evidence of sentience to pain alone -- because crucial evidence for animal welfare decisions might otherwise be missed for animals subjected to invasive and injurious procedures.


Eye-Movements Of Vocal Performers Across Experience Levels, Charlotte Kelly Jan 2022

Eye-Movements Of Vocal Performers Across Experience Levels, Charlotte Kelly

Honors Program Theses

Expertise, such as music expertise, is commonly studied through an analysis of eye-movements. Experts typically have fewer fixations, longer saccade amplitudes, and thus greater perceptual spans when reading music than non-experts. Most musical expertise literature is focused on instrumentalists and sight-reading. The current study aimed to extend the research to include vocalists and to see if there are still expertise effects when both experts and non-experts are familiar with the piece of music. Participants were recruited to sing a piece from their choir once when they had first started learning the piece and again right before their concert. They were …


Defending Human Difference By Raising The Bar, Joe Gough Jan 2022

Defending Human Difference By Raising The Bar, Joe Gough

Animal Sentience

Chapman & Huffman (C&H) offer a theory of why we humans want to believe that we are different: to justify our cruelty to animals. This commentary offers further supporting evidence of this and examines more closely what the claim that humans are ‘different’ amounts to. It also considers some methodological issues in animal psychology closely related to C&H ‘s theory. These problems result from a common strategy for defending hypotheses about human difference.


Sentience Politics : A Fishy Perspective, Culum Brown Jan 2022

Sentience Politics : A Fishy Perspective, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

The plight of fishes has almost certainly got worse since Bentham (1789) coined the phrase “The question is not Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?” Despite the fact that fishes are increasingly recognised as sentient animals worthy of protection under animal welfare legislation in many countries around the world, fishing practices are almost universally exempt activities. The human population continues to grow, and, surprisingly, per capita intake of fish is still increasing (FAO 2020). The source of this fish is not wild stocks (catches of which have remained more or less stagnant for …


Wild Animal Welfare, Clare Palmer, Peter Sandøe Jan 2022

Wild Animal Welfare, Clare Palmer, Peter Sandøe

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al’s article provides an overview of developments in the science of animal sentience and its links to animal welfare policy, especially regarding farm animals. But changing ideas of animal sentience and welfare are also important for managing wild and other free-living animals. We ask how the welfare of these animals differs from that of farmed animals, especially how the ability to make autonomous choices may matter. We suggest that more research into wild animal welfare is needed to make informed policy decisions, for example, about using animals in rewilding projects and choosing between policies of culling and fertility …


The Reality And Prevalence Of Animal Sentience, Antonio Damasio Jan 2022

The Reality And Prevalence Of Animal Sentience, Antonio Damasio

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al use findings from neurobiology, clinical neurology, and general biology to argue for the extensive presence of sentience in animals, but they are wisely cautious concerning when in the phylogenetic scale that emergence occurred.


Getting Under Your Skin Until You Jump Out Of It: The Psychological Effects Of Music On The Experience Of Film, Clare Ellen Herzog Jan 2022

Getting Under Your Skin Until You Jump Out Of It: The Psychological Effects Of Music On The Experience Of Film, Clare Ellen Herzog

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Music is like magic. It can sweep you off your feet and spirit you away to places you never thought possible: it can serve as a teleportation device, achieve time travel, and let us read minds. Some pieces of music exist for their own sake, like Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead, while others accompany different forms of media: ballets such as The Nutcracker and operas like La Bohème are instantly recognizable for their grandiose and immersive scores. For a moment in time, audiences can really believe that they are traveling to a magical world with Clara, and even without the …


Sentience And Sentient Minds, John Anthony Webster Jan 2022

Sentience And Sentient Minds, John Anthony Webster

Animal Sentience

My commentary builds on Rowan et al.’s (2022) comprehensive review to address the question ‘what do we mean by sentience?’ It suggests how we might recognise degrees of sentience within the animal kingdom, ranging from primitive sensations such as hunger and pain to more complex emotions that determine quality of life.


History, Cognition And Nostromo: Conrad’S Explorations Of Torture, Trauma, And The Human Rage For Order, Richard Ruppel Jan 2022

History, Cognition And Nostromo: Conrad’S Explorations Of Torture, Trauma, And The Human Rage For Order, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

Focusing on Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, this essay historicizes the treatment of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, demonstrating how Conrad anticipated our current understanding and treatment of the illness. The second part of the essay addresses Nostromo’s treatment of historiography. Part three is concerned with epistemology and the relationship between neurological discoveries concerning the gap between perception and consciousness, relating those discoveries to Conrad’s use of delayed decoding.


The Measurement Of Product Typicality In Design Research. A Basic And Applied Approach, Travis Kent Jan 2022

The Measurement Of Product Typicality In Design Research. A Basic And Applied Approach, Travis Kent

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

The objective of this study was to examine the use of the cognitive construct of “typicality” to guide design decisions in the development of consumer products. Increasing products that will appeal to consumers, designers strive to balance novelty and familiarity. A potential way to thread this needle is to understand how “typical” a design is of its particular product category. The construct of typicality has been used by psychologists to understand how people create and represent categories. Objects that are more typical of a category are often associated with positive responses from observes (e.g., greater visual appeal, faster recognition). In …


Emotion And Judgment In Young Women Of A Society In Transition, Maura A. E. Pilotti, Khadija El Alaoui Jan 2022

Emotion And Judgment In Young Women Of A Society In Transition, Maura A. E. Pilotti, Khadija El Alaoui

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The present study asked whether emotional responses to narratives of moral transgressions are shaped by the reader’s assumed relationship with the injured party (i.e., oneself, familiar other, and unfamiliar other). Its goal was to test a cultural, religious, and individualistic account of such responses in young females of a traditional society in transition towards a sustainable integration into the global economy. To this end, female college students from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were asked to identify their emotional reaction to each of several moral transgressions, report its intensity and then judge the severity of the transgression. In agreement with …


How Perception Meets Hermeneutics: An Empirical Investigation Of Tasseography, Elizabeth Avetisian Jan 2022

How Perception Meets Hermeneutics: An Empirical Investigation Of Tasseography, Elizabeth Avetisian

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Tasseography is a divination method to provide insight about the seeker’s past, present, or future life by interpreting patterns in the dregs of a liquid. Although it has been practiced with coffee throughout Europe and Middle East, particularly among women, no known studies exist on the seer’s perceptual process of the ambiguous patterns or how the roles of the seeker and seer, symbols, ritual, and cultural epistemology shape the divinatory hermeneutics. This study focused on the Armenian coffee divination ritual, asking what are the processes and conditions that enable experienced cup readers to obtain divinatory insight in tasseography? Two seekers …


The Role Of Spiritual Intelligence And Differentiation In Predicting Marital Adjustment Of Married Iranian Students, Sedigheh Ahmadi, Richard H. Morley, Faezeh Ghalebi, Hossein Ilanloo, Christine D. Nguyen Jan 2022

The Role Of Spiritual Intelligence And Differentiation In Predicting Marital Adjustment Of Married Iranian Students, Sedigheh Ahmadi, Richard H. Morley, Faezeh Ghalebi, Hossein Ilanloo, Christine D. Nguyen

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of spiritual intelligence and differentiation in predicting marital adjustment of Iranian students. The participants of this study were 312 married students from Yazd University. The instruments used in this study were the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) to measure marital adjustment, Differentiation of Self- Inventory, and the Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (SISRI). The results of the study demonstrated that spiritual intelligence predicted the marital adjustment of married students (p


Calls For Change: Seeing Cancel Culture From A Multi-Level Perspective, Tomar Pierson-Brown Jan 2022

Calls For Change: Seeing Cancel Culture From A Multi-Level Perspective, Tomar Pierson-Brown

Articles

Transition Design offers a framework and employs an array of tools to engage with complexity. “Cancel culture” is a complex phenomenon that presents an opportunity for administrators in higher education to draw from the Transition Design approach in framing and responding to this trend. Faculty accused of or caught using racist, sexist, or homophobic speech are increasingly met with calls to lose their positions, titles, or other professional opportunities. Such calls for cancellation arise from discreet social networks organized around an identified lack of accountability for social transgressions carried out in the professional school environment. Much of the existing discourse …


Prudence, Ethics And Anticipation In Visionary Leaders, Yanick Farmer Dec 2021

Prudence, Ethics And Anticipation In Visionary Leaders, Yanick Farmer

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

In ethics, prudence is an essential skill in making informed decisions. Although several studies in various fields have dealt with the notion, few empirical studies have addressed one of its inextricable aspects: anticipation. To gain a better understanding of the notion, this study questioned fifteen leaders whose peers consider to be “visionary” in their respective fields. The results of this qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews describe the fundamental aspects of anticipation according to three categories: reasoning and trend analysis, implementation and strategy, and personality and values.


Growth In Confidence And Search For Belonging: A Case Study Of Muslim Student Experience At An American College, Amir Duric Dec 2021

Growth In Confidence And Search For Belonging: A Case Study Of Muslim Student Experience At An American College, Amir Duric

Muslim Student Life

The broader perception of Muslim Student Association (MSA) in the wider society is not always positive. It is often viewed as a conservative organization where all members need to be a specific type of Muslim to fit in or a political space influenced by a foreign group or ideology. Because of this I studied the group, and my findings challenge this view drawing from the semester-long fieldwork, participant observations, and four in-depth interviews with MSA members at Salt City University (SCU). Data collected shows how the group and its members and the broader Muslim community on campus made Muslim students …


A Schema-Theoretic Approach To Hierarchy In Eighteenth-Century Tonality, Simon K. S. Prosser Sep 2021

A Schema-Theoretic Approach To Hierarchy In Eighteenth-Century Tonality, Simon K. S. Prosser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prevalent modern-day theories of tonal hierarchy for eighteenth-century music, especially those influenced by the ideas of Heinrich Schenker, have been called into question by schema theorists such as Robert Gjerdingen and Vasili Byros, who argue from both cognitive and historical evidence that eighteenth-century tonal cognition was sequential or “windowed” rather than hierarchical. This dissertation seeks to recuperate the concept of tonal hierarchy in eighteenth-century music, drawing on research that reconstructs the implicit tonal theories of the partimento and thoroughbass traditions, as well as concepts of hierarchy from schema theory itself, to formulate a historically and cognitively grounded theory of tonal …