Philosophy Commons^™

Other Perspectives On Animals, Their Sentience And Cognition, Joyce M. D'Silva Mrs

Animal Sentience

For those of us who work to achieve legal recognition that animals are sentient beings, and should in many cases be allotted personhood, Donald Griffin is indeed an inspiration and a true game-changer. He put paid to the narrow behaviourist interpretation of animals’ lives promoted by Skinner et al. He became a real heir to Darwin’s belief in animal emotions. He enabled campaigners for animal welfare and indeed animal rights to quote his work as a distinguished scientist to give gravitas to their calls for legal recognition and protection of animals.

An Individuals-Oriented Approach To Conservation, Kristy M. Ferraro

Animal Sentience

Individual cognitive and emotional differences in personality among animals, along with differences in their behavioral traits, are increasingly important in conservation efforts. It is not only more effective but more ethical to take both collective and individual perspectives into account in both research and practice.

Wildlife Conservation And Adaptation To Humans, Valeria Mazza Phd, Claudio Carere

Animal Sentience

For many animal species, the ability to adapt to coexistence with the human species and to the environmental changes that humans cause is a biological imperative. This adaptive capacity varies not only between species, but within species. Studying individual differences in animals’ behavioral, cognitive and physiological adaptability is important for integrating ethology and conservation. Findings about animal cognitive capacities, including learning, need to be applied in conservation—but humans need to be educated about ethology, coexistence and conservation too.

The Ethics Of Brain-Machine Interfaces, Devon J. Lynn

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) are a rapidly developing technology that raise unique ethical issues that demand review. They have demonstrated impressive restorative potential, particularly for individuals living with epilepsy, and those who are locked in. Although BMIs have the potential to provide significant benefit to millions of users, further advancement of the technology should proceed cautiously, according to the guidelines outlined in this paper. Failure to adhere to ethical guidelines could lead to severe privacy concerns, and would violate moral principles of beneficence, virtue ethics, care ethics, and utilitarianism. Despite the moral risks, BMIs hold promise for reshaping future healthcare …

A Framework For Transparency In Precision Livestock Farming, Kevin C. Elliott, Ian Werkheiser

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Simple Summary

The emergence of precision livestock farming (PLF) raises important issues for many different social groups, including farmers, consumers, regulators, and the food industry. This paper explores how those who develop PLF systems can communicate more effectively with different groups about the technologies that they are creating. We suggest that developers reflect on four issues: (1) the different kinds of information that various groups might want to know; (2) the audiences that might care about these different kinds of information; (3) the major difficulties involved in providing the information; and (4) potential strategies for overcoming those difficulties.

Abstract

As …

The Vices Of Virtues: Making Room For Moral Testimony In The Life Of The Virtuous Person, Maria Waggoner

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation sheds light on new and unacknowledged difficulties that we face in striving to be (more) virtuous. By making use of empirical literature from moral, affective, and perceptual learning, I explore the potential cognitive and psychological relationships between having a virtue in one context and the tendency to exhibit vices in another. I do this by showing how morally good behavioral habits can also lead to morally inappropriate actions, when a virtuous moral perceptual system can give rise to moral illusions, and when our basic evaluative affective responses differ in their degree of sensitivity, leading to having some virtues …

Multiple Ways To Implement And Infer Sentience, Nicolas Rouleau, Michael Levin

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin & Calvo’s (S&C’s) thorough review of “plant neurobiology” presents evidence supporting the possibility of plant sentience. They make a compelling case that plants anticipate, assess risk, cooperate, mimic, and pursue goals, as do their animal counterparts. S&C point out that there is a double standard: behavioural patterns associated with subjective experiences in humans are considered valid for inferring cognition in non-human animals but not in diverse other systems including plants. We argue that cognitive functions, including sentience, can potentially be achieved by very different systems and their disparate substrates. We offer some context from the basal cognition literature and …

Plant Sentience: Not Now, Maybe Later?, Helen Tiffin

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin’s target article provides compelling evidence for physiological and behavioral complexity in plants, bringing us closer to a recognition of some kind of plant cognition – but it does not as yet offer firm grounds for inferring sentience (feeling) in plants, The recent history of the scientific demonstration and recognition of animalsentience in invertebrates, for example, does not entirely rule out the possibility that further research might provide support for plant sentience. Should this ever turn out to be the case, the ethical problems raised are not insurmountable, and would not threaten the now proven case for animal sentience

A Review Of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons From Marine Mammals, Nadia G. Dresscher-Lambertus

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Limits To Sentience, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

There are many parallels between cellular function in animals and plants. Plants can have complex interactions with their environments. But they lack a central nervous system, which is a prerequisite for sentience (the capacity to feel). In my view the suggestion that plants are sentient is not only empirically incorrect but potentially harmful to the efforts to protect the welfare of sentient beings.

Creating Project Contrast: A Video Game Exploring Consciousness And Qualia, Pierce Papke

Honors Projects

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a …

Disentangling Sentience From Developmental Plasticity, Jonathan Birch

Animal Sentience

Plants, like animals, display remarkable developmental plasticity, inviting the metaphorical use of terms like “decision” and “choice”. In the animal case, this is not taken to be evidence of sentience, because sentience is a complex product of development, not something that guides it. We should apply the same standards when evaluating the evidence in plants. It is hard to overstate the contrast with the case of invertebrates such as octopuses, where pain markers that were originally developed for use in mammals have been clearly demonstrated and plausible neural substrates for sentience have been identified.

Eco-Interoception: What Plants, Fungi And Protista Have Taught My Body, Sara Riley Dotterer

Art Theses and Dissertations

To me, ecology is the relational, full-body awareness that I am made up of and deeply connected to everything around me; and for better or worse, this is reciprocal. I form ecotones, an ecological transitional zone between two ecosystems, with the world around me. I use this ecotonal lens to blur binaries and dissolve boundaries between me and the world “outside my body.” During my Masters of Fine Arts at Southern Methodist University, I have continuously explored and represented the lives of various more-than-human species outside of my body, including plants, fungi and protista through an ecotonal lens. Although these …

The Elephant In The Garden, Ila France Porcher

Animal Sentience

The other commentators on Chapman & Huffman (2018) have pointed out in different ways that despite our biological nature, there is a widespread tendency for humans to believe that we are not only superior to animals, but that we are not animals at all. Alongside our denial of animal sentience and cognition, this has resulted in the denial of our own instinctive natures. It is this denial that is our error, for it is only by understanding our true natural heritage that we can begin to change the runaway path we are on.

Elsewhere: In Defense Of Daydreaming, Alex Braden

MFA in Visual Art

Much like music, organic life is an absurd, improbable, and serendipitous instance. I set circular, electric, acoustic, and magnetic forces in motion and allow them to coalesce freely in the hopes of synthesizing unexpected moments of beauty, connection, and harmony.

The Ethics Of Governance Of Data Analytics In Healthcare, Andrew Harrington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent literature and studies on data governance usually focus on data ethics and governance from a specific country or industry, which has been mostly business, without considering the larger global impact that is affected. Data is a worldwide asset; thus, its implications and considerations should be viewed as such. Hence, this dissertation attempts to incorporate this view by weaving together topics in healthcare, such as the blending of finance and delivery, data governance at the micro and macro levels, data analytics in healthcare, ethics of AI and information management, and technology’s impact on end-of-life practices. Through highlighting these areas of …

Plant Sentience: "Feeling" Or Biological Automatism?, Andrea Mastinu

Animal Sentience

Sentience refers to the ability of an organism to have subjective experiences such as sensations, emotions and awareness. Whereas some animals, including humans, are widely recognized as sentient, the question of whether plants are sentient is still debated among scientists, philosophers, and ethicists. Over the past 20 years, many scientists such as Trewavas, Baluška, Mancuso, Gagliano, and Calvo have reported interesting discussions about memory, behavior, communication, and intelligence in plants. However, the reported conclusions have not convinced the entire scientific community. In this commentary, I would like to focus on two critical aspects related to sentience: cognition and emotion

Volume 14, Ireland Seagle, Dalton C. Whitby, Cassandra Poole, Rachel Cannon, Heidi Parker-Combes, Devon G. Shifflett, Antonio Harvey

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Dr. Amorette Barber
• From the Editor: Dr. Larissa "Kat" Tracy
• From the Designers: Rachel English, Rachel Hanson
• Hungry Like the Wolf: The Wolf as Metaphor in Paramount Network’s Yellowstone: Ireland Seagle
• “Floating Cities”: Illustrating the Commercial and Conservation Conflict of Alaskan Cruise Ship Tourism: Dalton C. Whitby
• What Can You Do When Your Genes are the Enemy? Current Applications of Gene Manipulation and the Associated Ethical Considerations: Cassandra Poole
• La doble cara: un tema romántico en las obras de Larra y Hawthorne: Rachel Cannon
• Resolving a Conflict: How to …

Plant Sentience: Bias And Promise, Sidney Carls-Diamante

Animal Sentience

Whichever side of the debate one chooses, plant sentience is a fertile research area that challenges received views and assumptions, generates novel insights, and suggests new ways that felt states might arise. My commentary discusses methodological and philosophical implications.

From Animal To Plant Sentience: Is There Credible Evidence?, Leonard Dung

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin & Calvo argue that plants have a surprisingly varied and complex behavioral repertoire. Which of these behavioral capacities are credible indicators of sentience? If we use the standards of evidence common in discussions of animal sentience, the behavioral capacities reviewed are insufficient evidence of sentience. Even if some putative indicators of animal sentience are present in plants, it is not clear whether what we should conclude is that plants are sentient or that those indicators are inadequate.

What Can Plant Science Learn From Animal Nervous Systems?, Luiz Pessoa

Animal Sentience

I welcome Segundo-Ortin & Calvo’s (2023) call for a rigorous science of plant behavior and physiology. My commentary addresses three points drawn from the literature on animal brains that could help elucidate the possibility of cognition and sentience in plants: (1) the presumed requirement of a centralized brain; (2) centralization of control versus heterarchical organization; and (3) connecting plant research with research on animal nervous systems.

Plant Sentience And The Case For Ethical Veganism, Josh Milburn

Animal Sentience

Does the possibility of plant sentience pose a problem for ethical veganism? It has not yet been demonstrated that plants are sentient (i.e., that they can feel). Moreover, even if it were demonstrated that plants could feel, it would also have to be demonstrated that they can feel the affectively “valenced” feelings that are ethically significant, such as pain and fear, rather than just neutral sensations such as darker/lighter, or wetter/drier. Finally, if plants could feel valenced feelings, veganism would likely still be the ethical option, on the principle of causing the least harm.

Plants Detect And Adapt, But Do Not Feel, Paul C. Struik

Animal Sentience

Plant sentience is a hot topic in scientific and popular media. There are moral reasons to respect both the service of plants to humanity and their natural integrity as creatures playing their own significant role in a complex ecosystem. However, to infer that plants have certain cognitive capacities that are present also in certain human and nonhuman animals calls for scientific rigor beyond mere analogy. The unique capacities of plants identified by Segundo-Ortin & Calvo are not necessarily linked to sentience. Nor is it likely that sentience is an evolutionary trait that is present to some extent in all living …

Discovering Dune: Essays On Frank Herbert’S Epic Saga., Edited By Dominic J. Nardi And N. Trevor Brierly, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

G. Connor Salter reviews Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert’s Epic Saga, edited by Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly, considering its new contributions to studies of Frank Herbert's work. Essays included fit into four categories (Politics and Power, History and Religion, Biology and Ecology, and Philosophy, Choice and Ethics) and range from Herbert's use of ecology in Dune to how game theory may help explain certain characters' apparent ability to see the future. Discovering Dune also includes an appendix which contains the only up-to-date bibliography of Herbert's work (primary and secondary sources).

Insentient “Cognition”?, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

A sentient state is a state that it feels like something to be in. Cows have them, cars don’t. Cognitive capacities are a subset of behavioral capacities. Not all behavioral capacities are cognitive (but the distinction is fuzzy). Might the difference have something to do with whether the behaver is sentient?

Nonobvious Design, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

To earn patent protection, a claimed product design must be “nonobvious.” Yet while nonobviousness has been described as “the heart” and “cornerstone” of the utility patent system, in the design patent context, the term has become next to useless. Instead of actually policing nonobviousness in design, modern courts grant patent rights to any work that is not an exact replica of another. The problem, judges maintain, is that comparing one visual design against another demands the use of aesthetic judgment and aesthetic judgment is an instinctual, subjective process incapable of legal definition. Recent neuroscientific studies of aesthetic judgment dispel some …

Language Matters, Teya Brooks Pribac

Animal Sentience

The term sentience tends to be associated with affective valence along with affectively neutral sensory states. In the absence of evidence for affectively laden states in plants, the use of the term sentience in the exploration of plant sensory and behavioral complexity is misleading and ethically problematic for its potential to trivialize animal sentience.

Plant Sentience Revisited: Sifting Through The Thicket Of Perspectives, Paco Calvo, Miguel Segundo-Ortin

Animal Sentience

In our target article (Segundo-Ortin & Calvo 2023), we proposed the intriguing possibility of plant sentience, drawing parallels with non-human animal studies. This response aims to sift through the rich thicket of perspectives offered by our commentators. To do so, we assess the risks of employing double standards, as well as the tendencies of anthropomorphizing and zoomorphizing in plant studies. We also emphasize the need for clarity in linguistic and conceptual terms, examine the neurophysiological evidence for plant sentience, and discuss the ethical implications of such recognition.

Middle Savannah River: An A/R/Tographic Ecopedagogical Ethnography Experimenting With Rhizomatic Perspectives, Lisa Augustine-Chizmar

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This research is an experiment in perspective. Using the four commonplaces (Schwab, 1978), I practiced letting the Savannah River teach me what there is to know about the water, the land, the people, and the other entities that depend on ki through artistic, ethnographic, and ecopedagogical lenses. The ethnographic findings describe the social actors that depend on ki and give a voice to the River. The a/r/tographic findings display the River on a canvas map through two hundred years using paint, clay, photography, video, abstract acrylics, and fabric. Together, these methods contribute to a unique ecopedagogical journey. This word cloud …

Secondary Traumatic Stress Is An Occupational Hazard For Pet Hospice Support Staff: Psychoeducational Support Groups Provide The Cure, Kari Hayden

DSW Capstone Projects

There are three separate yet interrelated products presented in this final capstone product. The completed product is focused on pet hospice veterinary support staff and the need for an evidence-based social work intervention to combat secondary traumatic stress. This capstone uses the andragogical approach to adult learning theory as the foundation to construct a psychoeducational peer support group specific to this population. Implications for clinical social work in veterinary medicine are presented within this project.

The first scholarly product presented is the Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The SLR utilizes a scoping review process in an attempt to locate prior research …