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Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Cognition and Perception
Sentience And Sentient Minds, John Anthony Webster
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.
The Internet-Extended Mind: The Psychological Ramifications And Philosophical Implications Of Cognitive Offloading, Gloria Choi
The Internet-Extended Mind: The Psychological Ramifications And Philosophical Implications Of Cognitive Offloading, Gloria Choi
Scripps Senior Theses
In this thesis, I explore the internet-extended mind through both philosophical and psychological lenses in order to investigate the questions “To what extent is the mind extended onto the internet and, more generally, outside our bodies?” and “How will an increasingly internet-extended brain change the ways in which humans communicate, remember, and behave?”. First, I introduce the idea of a mind that extends out into the world, instead of lying solely in the brain. Then, I outline existing research that introduces the challenges and implications of an internet-extended mind in an ever-changing internet landscape. Next, I discuss how the internet …
What Is In An Octopus's Mind?, Jennifer Mather
What Is In An Octopus's Mind?, Jennifer Mather
Jennifer Mather, PhD
It is difficult to imagine what an animal as different from us as the octopus ‘thinks’, but we can make some progress. In the Umwelt or perceptual world of an octopus, what the lateralized monocular eyes perceive is not color but the plane of polarization of light. Information is processed by a bilateral brain but manipulation is done by a radially symmetrical set of eight arms. Octopuses do not self-monitor by vision. Their skin pattern system, used for excellent camouflage, is open loop. The output of the motor system of the eight arms is organized at several levels — brain, …
Aesthetics And Imagining The Octopus’S Mind, André Krebber, Maike Riedinger, Yvette Watt
Aesthetics And Imagining The Octopus’S Mind, André Krebber, Maike Riedinger, Yvette Watt
Animal Sentience
Several commentators on Mather’s target article discuss the challenges of finding adequate cognitive methods and concepts for accessing the mind and experience of octopuses. Building on Godfrey-Smith’s commentary, we propose aesthetics as a way. The arts provide means to perform what Godfrey-Smith calls an “imaginative leap” to access the experience of octopuses, especially mimesis. We are trying to do this in our current project Okto-Lab. Laboratory for Octopus Aesthetics.
What Is In An Octopus's Mind?, Jennifer Mather
What Is In An Octopus's Mind?, Jennifer Mather
Animal Sentience
It is difficult to imagine what an animal as different from us as the octopus ‘thinks’, but we can make some progress. In the Umwelt or perceptual world of an octopus, what the lateralized monocular eyes perceive is not color but the plane of polarization of light. Information is processed by a bilateral brain but manipulation is done by a radially symmetrical set of eight arms. Octopuses do not self-monitor by vision. Their skin pattern system, used for excellent camouflage, is open loop. The output of the motor system of the eight arms is organized at several levels — brain, …
What And Where Is An Octopus’S Mind?, Jennifer A. Mather
What And Where Is An Octopus’S Mind?, Jennifer A. Mather
Animal Sentience
It is gratifying to see the thorough discussion of whether octopuses have a mind, though perhaps a mind that is different from those of “higher” vertebrates. It stimulates us to look at the welfare of these animals and challenges us to find better ways to test mindfulness and cognition across animals with widely differing natural histories and sensory and motor capacities.
Still Wondering How Flesh Can Feel, Gwen J. Broude
Still Wondering How Flesh Can Feel, Gwen J. Broude
Animal Sentience
Reber believes he has simplified Chalmers’s “hard problem” of consciousness by arguing that subjectivity is an inherent feature of biological forms. His argument rests on the related notions of continuity of mind and gradual accretion of capacities across evolutionary time. These notions need to be defended, not just asserted. Because Reber minimizes the differences in mental faculties among species across evolutionary time, it becomes easier to assert, and perhaps believe, that sentience is already present in early biological forms. The more explicit we are about the differences among these mental faculties and the differences across species, the less persuasive is …
Reber’S Caterpillar Offers No Help, Carl Safina
Reber’S Caterpillar Offers No Help, Carl Safina
Animal Sentience
Reber’s target article “Caterpillars, consciousness and the origins of mind” seems only to shift but not to address the question of where the mind is and how minds occur.
Animals In The Wild, Brittany Samson
Animals In The Wild, Brittany Samson
The STEAM Journal
As a photographer, I am extremely interested in the concept of perception and I let this concept drive most of my artistic work. I present four images from my photographic series “Animals in the Wild,” which explore this idea of perception. These four images: Giraffe, Dinosaur, Buffalo, and Bunny—are drastically varied photos that include no real animals, but instead beg the mind to perceive shapes, colors, figure, and coincidence as an animal.
Consciousness: Where We Are At, Imants Barušs
Consciousness: Where We Are At, Imants Barušs
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
It is useful every couple of years to take a bird’s eye view of consciousness studies and reflect on what we see. When I look, I still see two streams, one of which is the social and political framework for the study of consciousness, and the other of which is the substance of what we know about consciousness. The former is still largely defined by the extent to which the scientific study of consciousness has been freed from a materialist agenda. The latter includes recent research into the clarity of cognitive functioning in the absence of sufficient neurological support for …
How Could Consciousness Emerge From Adaptive Functioning?, Max Velmans
How Could Consciousness Emerge From Adaptive Functioning?, Max Velmans
Animal Sentience
The sudden appearance of consciousness that Reber posits in creatures with flexible cell walls and motility rather than non-flexible cells walls and no motility involves an evolutionary discontinuity. This kind of “miracle” is required by all “discontinuity” theories of consciousness. To avoid miraculous emergence, one may need to consider continuity theories, which accept that different forms of consciousness and material functioning co-evolve but assume the existence of consciousness to be primal in the way that matter and energy are assumed to be primal in physics.
Bacteria And The Cellular Basis Of Consciousness, Michael L. Woodruff
Bacteria And The Cellular Basis Of Consciousness, Michael L. Woodruff
Animal Sentience
According to Reber’s theory, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), sentience originates as bio-sensitivity in unicellular organisms. For this reason, Reber regards sentience as evolutionarily foundational. Many bacteria show chemotaxis and, thus, according to CBC, they are sentient. Analysis of the genetic mechanisms underlying bacterial chemotaxis indicates that sentience has no explanatory power in this case. Genetic analysis also fails to show species continuity underlying bio-sensitivity in bacteria and bio-sensitivity in species with nervous systems, so it does not seem that sentience is evolutionary foundational. CBC is rejected on these grounds.
Caterpillars, Consciousness And The Origins Of Mind, Arthur S. Reber
Caterpillars, Consciousness And The Origins Of Mind, Arthur S. Reber
Animal Sentience
A novel framework for the origins of consciousness and mind, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), is presented. The model is based on a simple, perhaps radical axiom: subjectivity is an inherent feature of particular kinds of organic form. Experiential states, including those denoted as "mind" and "consciousness," are present in the most primitive species. The model has several conceptual and empirical virtues, among them: (a) it (re)solves the problem of how minds are created by brains ─ also known as the "Hard Problem" (Chalmers 1995) ─ by revealing that the apparent difficulty results from a category error, (b) it …
Stories In Mind – The Relationship Between The Narratological Categories Of Order And Time And The Reader’S Cognitive Structures As Exemplified In Büchner’S Play Woyzeck, Marc Breetzke
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
No abstract provided.
Animal Cognition, Kristin Andrews, Ljiljana Radenovic
Animal Cognition, Kristin Andrews, Ljiljana Radenovic
Kristin Andrews, PhD
Debates in applied ethics about the proper treatment of animals often refer to empirical data about animal cognition, emotion, and behavior. In addition, there is increasing interest in the question of whether any nonhuman animal could be something like a moral agent.