Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Wisdom: Understanding And The Good Life, Shane Ryan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is: understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well-regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lies within …

From Thinking Selves To Social Selves, Judith Benz-Schwarzburg

Animal Sentience

I argue that Rowlands’s concept of pre-reflective self-awareness offers a way to understand animals as Social Selves. It does so because it departs from the orthodox conception of self-awareness, which is both egocentric and logocentric. Instead, its focus is on the relation between consciousness and a person’s lived body, her actions and goals. Characterizing persons as pre-reflectively self-aware beings in Rowlands’s sense offers a much more useful conceptual tool to interpret social behaviour in animals.

What Do We Owe Animals As Persons?, Judith Benz-Schwarzburg

Animal Sentience

Rowlands (2016) concentrates strictly on the metaphysical concept of person, but his notion of animal personhood bears a moral dimension (Monsó, 2016). His definition of pre-reflective self-awareness has a focus on sentience and on the lived body of a person as well as on her implicit awareness of her own goals. Interestingly, these also play a key role in animal welfare science, as well as in animal rights theories that value the interests of animals. Thus, Rowlands’s concept shows connectivity with both major fields of animal ethics. His metaphysical arguments might indeed contain a strong answer to the question of …

If Insects Have Phenomenal Consciousness, Could They Suffer?, Elizabeth S. Paul, Michael T. Mendl

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s (K & B’s) suggestion that insects have the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is a refreshing and challenging departure from the cautious and agnostic stance that is taken by many researchers when considering this possibility. It is impossible to falsify the sceptic’s view that neural and behavioural parallels between humans and insects need not imply either similar conscious experience or even any phenomenal consciousness in insects at all. But if K & B are right, it is important to consider the possible contents of insect consciousness. Here we discuss whether affective consciousness, with its implications for potential suffering, …

Subjective Experience In Insects: Definitions And Other Difficulties, Shelley Adamo

Animal Sentience

Whether insects have the potential for subjective experiences depends on the definition of subjective experience. The definition used by Klein & Barron (2016) is an unusually liberal one and could be used to argue that some modern robots have subjective experiences. From an evolutionary perspective, the additional neurons needed to produce subjective experiences will be proportionately more expensive for insects than for mammals because of the small size of the insect brain. This greater cost could weaken selection for such traits. Minimally, it may be premature to assume that small neuronal number is unimportant in determining the capacity for consciousness.

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.

Unity Of Consciousness In Animals, Bernard E. Rollin

Animal Sentience

Both Descartes the rationalist and Hume the empiricist, polar opposites philosophically, denied the unity and continuity of animal mind. Kant pointed out that the presence of retrievable memories entails unity of consciousness. Rowlands now argues that animals too have unity of consciousness.

To Bee Or Not To Bee?, Shimon Edelman, Roy Moyal, Tomer Fekete

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s (2016) (K & B’s) case for insect consciousness is a welcome development in an area that, in all of the science and philosophy of mind, is probably the most anthropocentric. In this commentary, we seek to strengthen K & B’s side of the argument by appealing not just to putative neural mechanisms but also to computational theory that supports it (section 1). We also offer some remarks on three distinctions that are relevant to K & B’s thesis and are central to phenomenal awareness: between the capacity for awareness and its contents (section 2); between …

No Proof For Subjective Experience In Insects, Holk Cruse, Malte Schilling

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron (2016) provide an inspiring review collecting arguments that show quite related functions in humans and insects. Here we extend the comparison to robots, and formulate two critical objections. One concerns an epistemological question related to the phenomenon of subjective experience. The other questions whether insects need integrated spatiotemporal modeling for navigation.

The Moral Dimension Of Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness, Susana Monsó

Animal Sentience

Rowlands offers a de-intellectualised account of personhood that is meant to secure the unity of a mental life. I argue that his characterisation also singles out a morally relevant feature of individuals. Along the same lines that the orthodox understanding of personhood reflects a fundamental precondition for moral agency, Rowlands’s notion provides a fundamental precondition for moral patienthood.

What Makes Us Conscious Is Not What Makes Us Human, Ezequiel Morsella, Erica B. Walker

Animal Sentience

Consistent with the promising proposal of Klein & Barron (K & B), we discuss how what makes us conscious appears to be distinct from and more widespread in the animal kingdom than what distinguishes us from other species. Many of the abilities that do distinguish humans from other species (e.g., syntax and co-articulation in speech production) can be mediated unconsciously. The kind of functional architecture proposed by K & B may engender an “action selection bottleneck” in both humans and nonhuman species. As noted by K & B, this bottleneck is intimately related to conscious processing.

Insect Consciousness: Fine-Tuning The Hypothesis, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg

Animal Sentience

Although we are mostly supportive, we point out the strengths and weaknesses of Klein & Barron’s (2016) hypothesis that insects have the most basic form of consciousness. The strengths are in their application of Bjorn Merker’s vertebrate-derived ideas to arthropods, using their deep knowledge of insect brains. The weaknesses involve the controversial aspects of some of Merker’s ideas. We describe how the latter can be modified to strengthen the authors’ case for insect consciousness.

Feel Or Perspective?, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

The title of Klein & Barron’s well-argued and thought-provoking target article is, “Insects have the capacity for subjective experience.” However, they also frame their claim using the term “consciousness,” which they seem to take as equivalent to “subjective experience.” This assumed equivalence, I shall argue, is problematic in a way that might vitiate their central argument.

How To Become A Post-Dog. Animals In Transhumanism, Michael Hauskeller

Between the Species

This paper analyses and deconstructs the transhumanist commitment to animal rights and the well-being of all sentient beings. Some transhumanists have argued that such a commitment entails a moral imperative to help non-human animals overcome their biological limitations by enhancing their cognitive abilities and generally “uplifting” them to a more human-like existence. I argue that the transhumanist approach to animal welfare ultimately aims at the destruction of the animal as an animal. By seeking to make animals more like us the freedom to live their life as the kind of creature they are is being denied to them. It is …

Thou And It: Personhood Actualized Through Water Rights, Kierra M. Powell

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

While issues of racial and gendered discrimination are more visible and widely discussed, poverty and water based discrimination is often a silent fact of life for the many. As one of the most critical elemental resources required for the sustainability of human life, safe water has been designated a human right, but the current global distribution of water does not mirror this sentiment. The divide in quality water distribution provokes the question: whose life is intrinsically valued? This study seeks to determine the status of personhood as displayed by the movement of water in relation to the underprivileged. I first …

Universal Modes Of Awareness? A “Pre-Reflective” Premise, Uta M. Jürgens

Animal Sentience

Mark Rowlands holds that creatures endowed with pre-reflective awareness may qualify as persons: In pre-reflective awareness, the self and the unity of mental life are implicit in the stream of experience. Rowlands generalizes from an introspective analysis of pre-reflective consciousness in humans to pre-reflective awareness in general. I describe three examples of empirical findings that corroborate the assumption that animal minds have some of the same basic modes of pre-reflective awareness as human minds.

What If Klein & Barron Are Right About Insect Sentience?, Bob Fischer

Animal Sentience

If Klein & Barron are right, then insects may well be able to feel pain. If they can, then the standard approach to animal ethics generates some implausible results. Philosophers need to develop alternatives to this framework to avoid them.

Subjective Experience And Moral Standing, Andy Lamey

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s analysis focuses on the capacity for any subjective experience at all. It does not seek to demonstrate that insects can experience pleasure and pain in particular. This would be something of which insects have not traditionally been thought capable. If further research were to demonstrate that one or more insect species turn out to be conscious, yet incapable of experiencing pleasure and pain, it would give rise to a philosophical question that ethicists have yet to answer: Would a creature that is conscious, but lacks the capacity to feel pain, have moral standing?

Is Cortex Necessary?, Sean Allen-Hermanson

Animal Sentience

A key contention of Klein & Barron (2016) is that consciousness does not depend on cortical structures. A critical appraisal suggests they have overestimated the strength of their evidence.

Who Is A Person? Whoever You Want It To Be, Gwen J. Broude

Animal Sentience

Rowlands provides an expanded definition of personhood that preserves the requirement of unity of mental life from the orthodox definition but argues that implicit unity of mind is sufficient for conferring personhood. This allows more or all animals to be considered persons. Implicit unity of mind may be a bridge too far for those who endorse the orthodox account of personhood, and for good reasons. More fundamentally, who gets to decide what personhood entails or that personhood per se matters to such other issues as who receives legal or moral status and consideration? Perhaps we should worry less about definitions …

Are Insects Sentient?, Michael Tye

Animal Sentience

I comment on the methodology used by Klein & Barron for dealing with the question of insect sentience and I briefly make a proposal of my own. Once it is granted that insects are sentient, a further question arises: which insects are subject to which states of sentience? Do insects feel pain, for example? If so, which ones? On the further question, I note, Klein & Barron have nothing to say.

Animal Grieving And Human Mourning, Matteo Colombo

Animal Sentience

King’s How animals grieve beautifully describes several ways in which animals and humans show a similar capacity for grief. Yet this book does not sufficiently emphasise the language-empowered capacity to objectify thinking and sentiments about death, which makes human mourning unique. Here I put this capacity into focus and relate it to the social-normative aspect of human mourning that seems to be missing in other animals.

Insects Join The Consciousness Fray, Bjorn H. Merker

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron's review of recent insect neurobiology helps correct the impression that insect behavior is orchestrated without the benefit of central integrative mechanisms. Given their existence, the authors go on to ask whether these central mechanisms also feature the kind of integrative operations that support sentience, and propose that they do. Along the way they raise a number of conceptual and evidentiary issues of fundamental importance for the neuroscience of consciousness, allowing me to comment favorably on a number of them. I conclude by pointing to ways in which the conception of insect sentience they outline might be tested …

Insects Have Agency But Probably Not Sentience Because They Lack Social Bonding, J. H. Van Hateren

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron (2016) argue that insects have sentience because of functional similarities between the insect brain and vertebrate midbrain. Based on a recent theory of agency and consciousness, I argue that the functional similarities merely point to an advanced form of agency. Insects presumably lack the capacity for social bonding that may be required for subjective experiencing.

The Wooden Doctrine: Basketball, Moral Character, And The Successful Life, Janelle Dewitt

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

No abstract provided.

Crispr Humans: Ethics At The Edge Of Science, Insoo Hyun

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

No abstract provided.

Biocentrism In Environmental Ethics: Questions Of Inherent Worth, Etiology, And Teleofunctional Interests, David Lewis Rice Iii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Some biocentrists argue that all living things have "inherent worth". Anything that has inherent worth has interests that provide a reason for why all moral agents should care about it in and of itself. There are, however, some difficulties for biocentric individualist arguments which claim that all living things have inherent worth.

Some biocentrists maintain that all living things have inherent worth and that artificial living things do not because the former, but not the latter, have interests by recourse to their natural selection etiology. Some also argue that synthetic forms of life do not have moral standing because they …

Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere

Animal Sentience

Insects might have been the first invertebrates to evolve sentience, but cephalopods were the first invertebrates to gain scientific recognition for it.

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 …

Justice; Mater Et Magistra; Civil Rights; Zoning; Sociological Jurisprudence; Mr. Justice Brennan; Business Ethics

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.