Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Course Syllabus (W19 Online) Coli 331t--Television Culture: "Lens, Mirror, Screen: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

Or a conjuncture of three moments in the dialectic of television as technical apparatus and cultural practice. In this course, we will read George Orwell’s 1984, view Michael Radford’s filmic adaptation of the novel, and consider a number of critical texts in order to think the psychological and social implications of television as an instrument of control, manipulation, and knowledge production. What, we ask, are the implications, in both 1984 and concrete experience, of light-speed communication capabilities for sense perception, consciousness, language, and awareness? In its dissemination of images and information, how does television impede and/or facilitate politics …

Pursuing Natural Unity, Consciousness Included, Rowen Cox-Rubien

Scripps Senior Theses

An ontological exploration of consciousness and how it is related to the body and other aspects of physical reality. Framed by David Chalmers' conception of "The Hard Problem", we begin from a physicalist perspective to discuss the problem of mental causation, which is the inquiry of how the mind communicates and interacts with the body. From here we examine the employment of identity reduction to functionalize and therefore physically explain mentality. We find that reductionist methods, the backbone of scientific investigation, do not work to explain conscious experience, because conscious experience is not quantifiable--it is qualitative. Thus we are left …

Sheeple? The Need For More Research On Sheep Cognition, Michael Colombo, Damian Scarf

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin (2019) provide a comprehensive review of the cognitive abilities of sheep. If research with other animals is any guide, there may be justification for the view that the abilities of sheep have been underestimated, and their review will likely stimulate more research into sheep cognition.

Why Are Sheep Sheepish? How Perception Affects Animal Stereotyping, Robert G. Franklin Jr.

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin present compelling evidence that many stereotypes of sheep are incorrect. One factor that may play an important role in animal stereotyping is the physical appearance of animals, which can directly lead to stereotyping through automatic mental processes. Sheep have a round and babyish appearance that directly evokes judgments of warmth and docility. Depictions of sheep in art, and especially cartoons, reinforce this stereotype.

Sheep In Aesop’S And Phaedrus’S Fables, Matteo Colombo, Chiara Raucea

Animal Sentience

Sheep feature in various animal fables. Marino & Merskin suggest that “we” view sheep as “docile, passive, unintelligent, and timid,” but animal fables do not support this view. In Aesop’s and Phaedrus’s fables, sheep are a primary target of injustice; but they are not passive targets. Sheep endure injustice actively and honestly. They are intelligent, aware and outspoken about their own condition.

Time To Vary The Formula, Jon Mallatt

Animal Sentience

In the past few years, Marino and her colleagues have written a series of comprehensive and helpful review articles on the cognitive, emotional, and social complexity of pigs, chickens, cows, and most recently, sheep. These articles are similarly structured, even formulaic, which has benefits but also limitations. Here, I point out the limitations in order to suggest new directions and contributions for the authors in the future.

The Problem Is Not Discourses Of Production; It Is Production Itself, Sean Hermanson

Animal Sentience

The mistreatment of sheep is not because of fables, stereotypes, unconscious cultural paradigms, our collective consciousness, anthropocentricism, human arrogance, or our drive to dominate. Nonetheless, protections for sheep used in research and agriculture ought to be strengthened.

Debunking Human Prejudice And Blindness, Peter J. Li

Animal Sentience

Human prejudice and blindness to animal suffering are shocking. Despite their differences in culture, politics, and religious beliefs, humans have one thing in common. They see nonhuman animals as inferior and have since time immemorial assumed a dominant position in an asymmetrical human-animal relationship. When it comes to human-animal relations, there is no “clash of civilizations.” Human prejudice and blindness are predicated on “common sense assumptions” about the natural world and nonhuman animals in particular. Marino & Merskin’s review is part of the growing effort to debunk the assumptions that have shaped human actions so as to end the injustice …

Sheep Complexity Outside The Laboratory, Cheryl Abbate

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s review shows that sheep are intelligent and highly social but their methodology has some shortcomings. I describe five problems with reviewing only the academic and scientific literature and suggest how one might provide an even more compelling case for the complexity of sheep minds.

Cognitive Dissonance About Sheep Cognition And Consumption, Catia Correia Caeiro

Animal Sentience

Sheep are perceived as mere resources under the massive demand of the food and wool industry. Evidence that sheep cognition is comparable to that of other species may inspire reflection on sheep consumption. Dogs may be a promising comparison species.

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.

Domestication And Cognitive Complexity, David R. Brodbeck, Madeleine I. R. Brodbeck, Keeghan Rosso

Animal Sentience

Marino and Merskin (2019) list a number of tasks that sheep can perform well. As comparative psychologists, we are not surprised by these results. Indeed, many domesticated animal species show similar abilities.

Can A Mirror Capture The Self?, Cynthia Willett

Animal Sentience

Is the mirror a reliable indicator of self-awareness for any species, whether sheep or human? Taking a cue from feminist, phenomenological, and cross-cultural philosophy, a relational self rather than a reflective one might better capture what is at stake for the lives of social animals and for science.

Volition And The Readiness Potential, Paul David Sanford

Online Theses and Dissertations

In the “Libet study” the onset of movement-related brain activity preceded the reported time of the conscious intention to move, suggesting that non-conscious brain processes predetermine voluntary movements (Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983). While the study’s basic results have been replicated, its validity and assumptions have been questioned. Dominik et al. (2017) provided evidence against the study’s assumption that movement and intention to move are distinct events. In this study, in which researchers did not train participants to distinguish between movement and intention, reports for intention and movement were identical. This differed from the Libet study, in which intention …

Octopus Sentience: Three Criteria, Alix Noël-Guéry

Animal Sentience

The first question to ask is whether octopuses are sentient, so that, if so, they can be protected. Three consensual criteria to evaluate animal sentience can be applied to the octopus. Octopuses meet all three of them.

Reconciling Just Preservation, Shelley M. Alexander

Animal Sentience

Treves et al.’s target article can play an important role in reconciling the needs of future generations and non-human animals in conservation. Human capacities are adequate for interpreting and defining many non-human animal needs. Worldviews are more complex, however, and conservation science, like the target article itself, suffers from a lack of diversity and inclusiveness. This may pose practical impediments to realizing just preservation.

The Mental Lives Of Sheep And The Quest For A Psychological Taxonomy, Carrie Figdor

Animal Sentience

Research into nonhuman cognition has broadened and deepened in recent years. It supports and motivates a shift toward an ecological rather than an anthropocentric approach to cognition.

A Spectacle And Nothing Strange, Taylor Z. King

Theses and Dissertations

Working through methods of abstraction and comedic mimicry I choreograph awkwardly balanced sculpture with objects of adornment as a means to defuse personal sensitivities surrounding my experiences of gender, desire, and home. The research that follows is concerned with the adjacent, the in between, above and underneath, because I feel that this kind of looking means that you are, to some degree, aware of what lies at the edges. Maybe this is what Gertrude Stein means to act as though there is no use in a center—because this concerns a way of relating, though there are many things in the …

Nigga Is Historical: This Is Not An Invitation For White People To Say Nigga, Sandy Williams Iv

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past several years I have been on a quest to locate a world beyond the one I’ve been presented. I am interested in the history of atomic particles - like everything that radiates off of a monument (both literally and those things that are metaphorically reified) - invisible things, and the ways in which these things insect beyond our knowledge systems. This inquiry takes many forms. Mine is a conceptually based practice linked to record keeping and time, and the ways in which these concepts find plurality within our culture; or more pointedly, the importance that we attach …

“I Am Not An Animal”, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

The answer to Chapman & Huffman’s question — “Why do we want to think humans are different?” — lies in the work of Ernest Becker and the social psychology literature known as Terror Management Theory, according to which our deep anxiety about animality and death can drive our need to feel superior to the other animals.