Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Nonhuman Mind-Reading Ability, Marthe Kiley-Worthington

Animal Sentience

Harnad (2016) is mistaken that humans are better at mind-reading than other species. Humans have context-independent language, but nonhuman species, especially mammals, have context-dependent nonverbal skills – perceptual, communicative and social -- that can be much keener than our own.

Modulation Of Behavior In Communicating Emotion, Martin Gardiner

Animal Sentience

King discusses many examples where two animals, as they bond, behave in ways we interpret as expressing love for one another. If one of the bonded animals then dies, signs of loving are replaced by signs we interpret as expressing grief by the animal who remains. I propose a pathway for emotional communication between an animal and an observer that can have a central role in these and other observations by King and in our overall ability to interpret observed behavior in relation to emotion. This pathway provides evidence of emotion in an observed animal by communicating evidence of emotion’s …

Leaving The Door Open For Fish Pain: Evolutionary Convergence And The Utility Of ‘Just-So Stories’, David B. Edelman

Animal Sentience

Key argues that fish do not experience pain because they lack the necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) brain structures and associated functional circuitry to engender such conscious percepts. I propose that fish pain may be dependent on neuroanatomical regions and pathways that are structurally and/or functionally analogous — but not strictly homologous — to well-characterized mammalian substrates of pain. An example is the convergent appearance of the complex, single-compartment eye across invertebrate and vertebrate phylogeny. Structural-functional convergence is ubiquitous in evolution. Comparative inferences and correlative lines of evidence play an important role in building evolutionary arguments. The dismissal of the …

Spinning Our Wheels And Deepening The Divide: Call For An Evidence-Based Approach To The Fish Pain Debate, Steven J. Cooke

Animal Sentience

There is vigorous ongoing debate about whether fish feel pain and have the capacity to suffer. The body of literature dedicated to the topic is increasing but what is particularly problematic is that the majority of the contributions represent opinion pieces and thus fall within the realm of advocacy. Many of the empirical research papers purporting that fish do or do not feel pain have problems with cavalier use of definitions, poor experimental design, or statistical/technical issues and tend to include advocacy statements in their interpretations. Rather than continuing to spin our wheels and deepen the divide, I would advocate …

How Welfare Biology And Commonsense May Help To Reduce Animal Suffering, Yew-Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

Welfare biology is the study of the welfare of living things. Welfare is net happiness (enjoyment minus suffering). Since this necessarily involves feelings, Dawkins (2014) has suggested that animal welfare science may face a paradox, because feelings are very difficult to study. The following paper provides an explanation for how welfare biology could help to reduce this paradox by answering some difficult questions regarding animal welfare. Simple means based on commonsense could reduce animal suffering enormously at low or even negative costs to humans. Ways to increase the influence of animal welfare advocates are also discussed, focusing initially on farmed …

End-State Welfarism, Joel Marks

Animal Sentience

Yew-Kwang Ng’s research is the work of an obviously sincere, intelligent, and conscientious animal advocate. But I am unable to accept his starting assumption that animal welfare is an appropriate basis for animal ethics. More specifically I argue that animal welfare as a means to animal liberation is an issue that can be debated, but animal welfare as the ultimate end or goal of animal advocacy is misguided.

Animal Suffering Calls For More Than A Bigger Cage, Simon R. B. Leadbeater

Animal Sentience

Ng (2016) argues for incremental welfare biology partly because it would be impossible to demonstrate conclusively that animals are sentient. He argues that low cost changes in industrial practices and working collaboratively may be more effective in advancing animal welfare than more adversarial approaches. There is merit in some of Ng’s recommendations but a number of his arguments are, in my view, misdirected. The fact that nonhuman animals feel has already been adequately demonstrated. Cruelty to animals is intrinsic to some industries, so the only way to oppose it is to oppose the industry.

Considering Animals’ Feelings: Précis Of Sentience And Animal Welfare (Broom 2014), Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

The concept of sentience concerns the capacity to have feelings. There is evidence for sophisticated cognitive concepts and for both positive and negative feelings in a wide range of nonhuman animals. All vertebrates, including fish, as well as some molluscs and decapod crustaceans have pain systems. Most people today consider that their moral obligations extend to many animal species. Moral decisions about abortion, euthanasia, and the various ways we protect animals should take into account the research findings about sentience. In addition, all animal life should be respected and studies of the welfare of even the simplest invertebrate animals should …

Sentience And Animal Welfare: Affirming The Science And Addressing The Skepticism, Nancy Clarke

Animal Sentience

Broom’s (2014) book is a well-researched and thoroughly written exploration and evaluation of the journey from the origins of animal welfare science to what we can say we now know and need to consider in relation to animal sentience and welfare. This book will help to counter any skepticism among academics and policy makers.

Is Sentience Only A Nonessential Component Of Animal Welfare?, Ian J.H. Duncan

Animal Sentience

According to Broom (2014), animal welfare is a concept that can be applied to all animals, including single-celled organisms that are obviously not sentient. Such a stance makes it difficult to draw a connection between welfare and sentience, and that is the book’s downfall. Some excellent points are made about sentience and there are very good discussions on animal welfare. However, unless sentience is considered the essential component of welfare, any attempt to link the two phenomena will be unsuccessful — and that, indeed, is the case with this book.

Sentience And Animal Welfare: New Thoughts And Controversies, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Sentience involves having some degree of awareness but awareness of self is not as complex as some people believe. Fully functioning vertebrate animals, and some invertebrates, are sentient but neither humans nor non-humans are sentient early in development or if brain-damaged. Feelings are valuable adaptive mechanisms and an important part of welfare but are not all of welfare so the term welfare refers to all animals, not just to sentient animals. We have much to learn about what non-human animals want from us, the functioning of the more complex aspects of their brains and of our brains and how we …

Pain And Fish Welfare, Eliane Gonçalves-De-Freitas

Animal Sentience

The evolutionary approach of Key’s (2016) target article, generically comparing humans with fish of all kinds, is simplistic. The author ignores published research on structural and molecular aspects of pain in fish. The target article reads more like a selective polemic against fish welfare than an even-handed analysis.

Brain Processes For “Good” And “Bad” Feelings: How Far Back In Evolution?, Jaak Panksepp

Animal Sentience

The question of whether fish can experience pain or any other feelings can only be resolved by neurobiologically targeted experiments. This commentary summarizes why this is essential for resolving scientific debates about consciousness in other animals, and offers specific experiments that need to be done: (i) those that evaluate the rewarding and punishing effects of specific brain regions and systems (for instance, with deep-brain stimulation); (ii) those that evaluate the capacity of animals to regulate their affective states; and (iii) those that have direct implications for human affective feelings, with specific predictions — for instance, the development of new treatments …

Locke, Judgment, And Figure: A Consistent Answer To The Molyneux Problem, Jamale Nagi

Anthós

John Locke has been famously credited with resurrecting the distinction between common and proper sensibles, better known in the Essay as primary and secondary qualities. Although some argue that Locke’s adherence to the doctrine of the common sensibles is in conflict with his empiricist sensibilities, I will show this is not likely to be the case. In order to achieve this I will argue that Locke held there to be cross-modal connections in the mind for the representational content of ideas of primary quality, through the relation of resemblance, but that these representations need to be empirically verified to …

Locke, Figure, And Judgement: A Consistent Answer To The Molyneux Problem, Jamale Nagi

Student Research Symposium

Ever since the early modern period the Molyneux Problem has been a topic of debate both in the philosophy of perception and the psychology of perception. The problem centers on whether the senses share representational content between one another, or does each sense modality have its own stock of representational content that becomes associated with the others after some habituation. For example, if you knew a shape only by touch, could you identify that shape when seeing it for the first time without being allowed to touch the object? Typically, rationalists have held to the former claiming yes, while empiricists …

How The Phoenix Took Wing: An Examination Of The Humanities Canon As It Relates To The Psychology Of Posttraumatic Growth, Stephen Dalton

Senior Theses

The investigation of posttraumatic growth as a psychological principle is giving researchers new ways to understand how it is that some people seem to thrive following events that are normally perceived as tragic and wholly negative. These survivors do not just bounce back from their tragedies; the researchers describe these people as “bouncing forward” – that is, the survivors report that their lives now are profoundly better than they were before the trauma. While the psychological research into posttraumatic growth is relatively new, the field of Humanities has conducted this same inquiry for several thousand years. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

Reducing Subjectivity: Meditation And Implicit Bias, Diana M. Ciuca

CMC Senior Theses

Implicit association of racial stereotypes is brought about by social conditioning (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). This conditioning can be explained by attractor networks (Sharp, 2011). Reducing implicit bias through meditation can show the effectiveness of reducing the rigidity of attractor networks, thereby reducing subjectivity. Mindfulness meditation has shown to reduce bias from the use of one single guided session conducted before performing an Implicit Association Test (Lueke & Gibson, 2015). Attachment to socially conditioned racial bias should become less prevalent through practicing meditation over time. An experimental model is proposed to test this claim along with a reconceptualization of consciousness …

On Reporting The Onset Of The Intention To Move, Uri Maoz, Liad Mudrik, Ram Rivlin, Ian Ross, Adam Mamelak, Gideon Yaffe

Psychology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"In 1965, Hans Kornhuber and Luder Deecke made a discovery that greatly influenced the study of voluntary action. Using electroencephalography (EEG), they showed that when aligning some tens of trials to movement onset and averaging, a slowly decreasing electrical potential emerges over central regions of the brain. It starts 1 second ( s) or so before the onset of the voluntary action1 and continues until shortly after the action begins. They termed this the Bereitschaftspotential, or readiness potential (RP; Kornhuber & Deecke, 1965).2 This became the first well-established neural marker of voluntary action. In that, the RP allowed for more …

A Girl Power Study: Looking And Listening To The Role Of Emotions And Relationality In Developing Critical Consciousness, Jennifer Wallin-Ruschman

Dissertations and Theses

The concept of critical consciousness centers on the capacity for involvement in social change efforts. Its development has been the aim of many recent social movements (e.g., the consciousness raising groups of the women's movement). In this work, critical consciousness is defined as the highest level of socio-political-cultural (SPC) consciousness development. SPC consciousness is characterized by the linking of the personal and the political so that structures and discourses of oppression are not only understood but also lead to critical action and transforming relations of domination. Additionally, critical consciousness includes the ability to tolerate ambivalence and conflict as well as …

Psychological Continuity: A Discussion Of Marc Slors' Account, Traumatic Experience, And The Significance Of Our Relations To Others, Pieranna Garavaso

Philosophy Publications

This paper addresses a question concerning psychological continuity, i.e., which features preserve the same psychological subject over time; this is not the same question as the one concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions for personal identity. Marc Slors (1998, 2001, 2001a) defends an account of psychological continuity that adds two features to Derek Parfit’s Relation R, namely narrativity and embodiment. Slors’ account is a significant improvement on Parfit’s, but still lacks an explicit acknowledgment of a third feature that I call relationality. Because they are usually regarded as cases of radical discontinuity, I start my discussion from the experiences of …

Psychotherapy And The Embodiment Of The Neuronal Identity: A Hermeneutic Study Of Louis Cozolino's (2010) The Neuroscience Of Psychotherapy: Healing The Social Brain , Ari Simon Natinsky

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

In recent years, there have been several ways in which researchers have attempted to integrate psychotherapy and neuroscience research. Neuroscience has been proposed as a method of addressing lingering questions about how best to integrate psychotherapy theories and explain their efficacy. For example, some psychotherapy outcome studies have included neuroimaging of participants in order to propose neurobiological bases of effective psychological interventions (e.g., Paquette et al., 2003). Other theorists have used cognitive neuroscience research to suggest neurobiological correlates of various psychotherapy theories and concepts (e.g., Schore, 2012). These efforts seem to embody broader historical trends, including the hope that neuroscience …

A Heart-Based Sufi Mindfulness Spiritual Practice Employing Self-Journeying, Faruk Arslan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Spiritual Psychology is the study and practice of the art and science of the human evolution of consciousness. The heart occupies an important place in Sufism and is considered to contain the divine spark that leads to spiritual realization. Fethullah Gülen’s action-oriented Sufi methods described in his book series “The Emerald Hills of the Heart” provides the basis for a heart-based therapeutic intervention through self-journeying, which is the objective of this thesis. These self-purification and mindfulness-related transpersonal methods generate a form of treatment that is culturally sensitive. Through my reflections in this research, I transformed my personal experiences into …

Decentering Anthropocentrisms: A Functional Approach To Animal Minds, Matthew C. Altman

Between the Species

Anthropocentric biases manifest themselves in two different ways in research on animal cognition. Some researchers claim that only humans have the capacity for reasoning, beliefs, and interests; and others attribute mental concepts to nonhuman animals on the basis of behavioral evidence, and they conceive of animal cognition in more or less human terms. Both approaches overlook the fact that language-use deeply informs mental states, such that comparing human mental states to the mental states of nonlinguistic animals is misguided. In order to avoid both pitfalls -- assuming that animals have mental lives just like we do, or assuming that they …

Can Enlightenment Be Traced To Specific Neural Correlates, Cognition, Or Behavior? No, And (A Qualified) Yes, Jake H. Davis, David R. Vago

Publications and Research

The field of contemplative science is rapidly growing and integrating into the basic neurosciences, psychology, clinical sciences, and society-at-large. Yet the majority of current research in the contemplative sciences has been divorced from the soteriological context from which these meditative practices originate and has focused instead on clinical applications with goals of stress reduction and psychotherapeutic health. In the existing research on health outcomes of mindfulness-based clinical interventions, for example, there have been almost no attempts to scientifically investigate the goal of enlightenment. This is a serious oversight, given that such profound transformation across ethical, perceptual, emotional, and cognitive domains …

Inception And Ibn 'Arabi, Oludamini Ogunnaike

Journal of Religion & Film

Many philosophers, playwrights, artists, sages, and scholars throughout the ages have entertained and developed the concept of life being a "but a dream." Few works, however, have explored this topic with as much depth and subtlety as the 13thC Andalusian Muslim mystic, Ibn 'Arabi. Similarly, few works of art explore this theme as thoroughly and engagingly as Chistopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception. This paper presents the writings of Ibn 'Arabi and Nolan's film as a pair of mirrors, in which one can contemplate the other. As such, the present work is equally a commentary on the film based on …

Course Syllabus (Fa13) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "Power, The Subject, And Technological Rationality", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description and Objectives:

In this course, we will examine mechanisms of power and the processes by which these produce categories of subjectivity. Theoretically speaking, we will begin by considering these processes at the level of society and then dwell on their human experience at the level of the psyche. Here, we will aim to discover processes by which the subject reproduces conditions of domination by power at the level of psychic experience. Power-practices assume their condition of possibility by positing, on the one hand, that the category of the subject is a priori existent and, on the other, that …

Pursuing The Good Life, Kevin Corcoran

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Christopher Peterson's Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology

Schemas, Core Beliefs, Worldviews, And Clinical Practice, Chad A. Houchin, Rodger K. Bufford

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

No abstract provided.

'I Am Rooted, But I Flow': Virginia Woolf And 20th Century Thought, Emily Lauren Hanna

Scripps Senior Theses

My thesis is about Virginia Woolf’s novels, Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, and To the Lighthouse. I examine these novels in relation to the theories of Henri Bergson, William James, and Sigmund Freud, and the groundwork of Modernism. I relate Woolf's use of water imagery and stream of consciousness technique to Bergson’s theory of “la durée,” or psychological, subjective time, James’ “stream of consciousness” theory in psychology, and Freud’s theory of the “oceanic” feeling of religious experience.