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2017

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Articles 871 - 900 of 974

Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Clarifying Concepts In Cognitive Dissonance Theory, Eddie Harmon-Jones Jan 2017

Clarifying Concepts In Cognitive Dissonance Theory, Eddie Harmon-Jones

Animal Sentience

This commentary on Zentall’s target article focuses primarily on clarifying some postulates and variables in cognitive dissonance theory. I discuss the adaptive motivational functions of dissonance arousal and dissonance reduction, and attempt to clarify some past dissonance experiments and to tease apart a dissonance theory and contrast explanation of effort-justification-type effects. The evidence and arguments reviewed here support the explanatory power of cognitive dissonance theory in a wide variety of circumstances in human and nonhuman animals, but they depend on first defining concepts such as “cognitions” quite broadly, as Festinger did when he originally proposed the theory.

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Cognitive Dissonance Or Contrast? It Could Be Both, Thomas Zentall Jan 2017

Cognitive Dissonance Or Contrast? It Could Be Both, Thomas Zentall

Animal Sentience

My target article suggested that cognitive dissonance may be accounted for by a simpler mechanism: contrast. Whether contrast can explain all cognitive dissonance effects is an empirical question, but it is always useful to try to distinguish simpler mechanisms from more complex cognitive ones. The insistence that cognitive dissonance is a human-only process quite different from contrast may be a self-serving means of justifying the exploitation of animals.

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The Potential For Sentience In Fishes, Jay R. Stauffer Jr. Jan 2017

The Potential For Sentience In Fishes, Jay R. Stauffer Jr.

Animal Sentience

Balcombe’s book is filled with information on the biology, behavior, and life history of fishes. I do not agree with all his premises. I am still somewhat perplexed about the discussion of whether fish feel pain; I am not sure whether the distinction between nociception and pain makes any difference. Overall, however, his treatment of the principles of both natural and sexual selection is comprehensive and accurate, and has greatly increased my knowledge and awareness of the biology, ethology, and potential for sentience in fishes. In summary, this work has exposed me to new ideas about how to examine fishes …

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Fish Are Flexible Learners Who Can Discriminate Human Faces, Ulrike E. Siebeck Jan 2017

Fish Are Flexible Learners Who Can Discriminate Human Faces, Ulrike E. Siebeck

Animal Sentience

In his book “What a fish knows” Jonathan Balcombe (2016a, b) has created a comprehensive profile of a group of animals still often thought to have a 3-second memory, no ability to feel pain, and a generally limited ability to learn. Chapter by chapter, Balcombe dismantles these and other such assumptions and makes a convincing case that fish have many abilities that are not that different from our own. Here, I focus on one example which supports the notion that fish are flexible learners and able to perform tasks which are generally thought to require the advanced processing power of …

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Methodological Suggestions For Inferring Fear From Vigilance, Julie A. Teichroeb Jan 2017

Methodological Suggestions For Inferring Fear From Vigilance, Julie A. Teichroeb

Animal Sentience

I suggest some methods for data-collection and analysis that may help researchers infer fear from vigilance.

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The “Precautionary Principle” – A Work In Progress, Shelley Adamo Jan 2017

The “Precautionary Principle” – A Work In Progress, Shelley Adamo

Animal Sentience

The target article by Birch illustrates the practical difficulties with the “Animal Sentience Precautionary Principle” (ASPP) while presenting potential solutions. However, the ASPP will be difficult to use without guidelines detailing how evidence of sentience should be assessed. Moreover, extrapolating conclusions found for a single species to all species within an Order is problematic. Finally, I recommend that Birch demonstrate his ASPP framework using a controversial test case to help show how it could be used in real-world situations.

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What If All Animals Are Sentient?, Arthur S. Reber Jan 2017

What If All Animals Are Sentient?, Arthur S. Reber

Animal Sentience

Birch develops a useful framework for determining when the Animal Sentience Precautionary Principle (ASPP) should be invoked. He rightly notes that there is a lack of agreement among social scientists, ethicists, and legislators even about whether the precautionary principle is useful, let alone when and how it should be implemented. His proposal is to establish a kind of cognitive threshold, and only when an animal shows a sufficient level of sentience would the ASPP be appropriate. From the point of view of the Cellular Basis of Consciousness model (Reber, 2016), all animals are sentient. If correct, the problems Birch identifies …

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Shoring Up The Precautionary Bar, Jon Mallatt Jan 2017

Shoring Up The Precautionary Bar, Jon Mallatt

Animal Sentience

I offer four ways to reinforce Birch’s precautionary principle so it can be used effectively and practically in deciding which animals to cover by legislation for humane treatment: (1) add one more credible indicator of sentience to the BAR rule; (2) use phylogenetic classification, not the outdated Linnaean classification, to test which animal clades have sentience; (3) disentangle the pain of suffering from sentience; and (4) reconsider the sentient status of decapods and insects to remove potential inconsistencies in the proposed framework.

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Scientific Uncertainty And The Animal Sentience Precautionary Principle, Michael L. Woodruff Jan 2017

Scientific Uncertainty And The Animal Sentience Precautionary Principle, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

Jonathan Birch offers the animal sentience precautionary principle (ASPP) as a framework for assigning sentience to animals. In doing this, he defines a BAR which when crossed will lead to action (ACT) and implementation of the ASPP. His effort to create a clear empirical basis for implementation of the precautionary principle in the area of animal welfare regulation is important. I argue, however, that his BAR is so low that the evidence supporting ACT is in danger of being overwhelmed by the problems of induction and the underdetermination of theory by evidence. If this happens, policy makers might well disregard …

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Dogs Consciously Experience Emotions: The Question Is, Which?, Ralph Adolphs Jan 2017

Dogs Consciously Experience Emotions: The Question Is, Which?, Ralph Adolphs

Animal Sentience

I discuss three themes related to Kujala’s target article. First, the wealth of emerging data on cognitive studies in dogs will surely show that dogs have a very rich repertoire of cognitive processes, for most of which we find homologues in humans. Second, understanding the internal states that mediate social behaviors, such as emotions, requires us to consider both a dog’s behaviors with other dogs, and the emergence of new behavioral patterns in interaction with humans. Third, all of this will certainly narrow the range of justifications for denying that dogs have subjective experiences of emotions.

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The Study Of Emotion In Animals, Thomas R. Zentall Jan 2017

The Study Of Emotion In Animals, Thomas R. Zentall

Animal Sentience

The responsiveness of dogs to humans encourages us to attribute human-like emotions to them. Indirect evidence for emotions in other animals can be obtained but one must be careful to find means of distinguishing what we believe to be evidence for such emotions from simpler mechanisms. For example, is a dog’s growl an indication of anger, fear, or possibly an unemotional defense of territory? By carefully designing experiments, we may be able to rule out alternative accounts and show better evidence for underlying emotions.

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Direct Perception Of Animal Mind, Paul Morris Jan 2017

Direct Perception Of Animal Mind, Paul Morris

Animal Sentience

Kujala’s (2017) target article is ostensibly focused on how everyday folk (fail to) make sense of canine emotions. However, the theories outlined in the article apply to making sense of all aspects of the mentality of both human and non-human animals. The target article neglects the fundamental arguments surrounding the problem of other minds. I explore the relevant arguments and briefly review approaches suggesting that our everyday-life sense that both human and non-human animals are thinking, feeling, emotional beings has a secure epistemological basis.

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The Development And Expression Of Canine Emotion, Allison L. Martin Jan 2017

The Development And Expression Of Canine Emotion, Allison L. Martin

Animal Sentience

In her review of canine emotions, Kujala (2017) discusses how humans often attribute emotions such as fear, love, and jealousy to their canine companions. This attribution is often dismissed as anthropomorphism, suggesting that only humans can possess these emotions. I argue that emotions are not something we possess but features of certain behavioral patterns. Both human and canine emotions arise through evolution and conditioning; examining their development and expression may lead to new insights about both canine and human behavior.

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Studying Dog Emotion Beyond Expression And Without Concern For Feeling, Peter F. Cook Jan 2017

Studying Dog Emotion Beyond Expression And Without Concern For Feeling, Peter F. Cook

Animal Sentience

Studies of dog emotion have focused on the expression of social emotion, either because this is taken to suggest human-like feeling states in dogs or because it has been the most accessible signal of dog emotional processing. I argue for an approach grounded in affective neuroscience, relying on direct measures of physiology across different contexts. This work may be particularly fertile in exploring social emotion in the dog, not because dogs necessarily share human emotional states, but because they are unique in having likely evolved to fit a human social niche.

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Inferring Emotion Without Language: Comparing Canines And Prelinguistic Infants, Stefanie Hoehl Jan 2017

Inferring Emotion Without Language: Comparing Canines And Prelinguistic Infants, Stefanie Hoehl

Animal Sentience

Research on canine emotions has to deal with challenges quite similar to psychological research on social and emotional development in human infants. In both cases, verbal reports are unattainable, and behavioral and physiological methods have to be adjusted to the specific population. I will argue that both regarding empirical approaches and conceptual work, advances in research on social-cognitive development in human infants can inform the study of canine emotions.

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Positive Emotions And Quality Of Life In Dogs, Patrizia Piotti Jan 2017

Positive Emotions And Quality Of Life In Dogs, Patrizia Piotti

Animal Sentience

Positive affect is fundamental to ensuring good animal welfare. Discrete and dimensional theories of emotion have recently been used to explore the relation between cognition and affect and to develop cognitive measures of positive affect. Human quality-of-life assessment focuses on positive affect, which is difficult to measure objectively in dogs. Expanding on Kujala’s (2017) discussion of positive emotions and cognitive measures of affect, I suggest how these are relevant to assessing canine quality of life.

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To Identify All The Relevant Factors Is To Explain Feeling, Arthur S. Reber Jan 2017

To Identify All The Relevant Factors Is To Explain Feeling, Arthur S. Reber

Animal Sentience

Several additional comments on Reber (2016a) have appeared. Like those addressed in Reber (2016b), they reflect points of agreement and disagreement on various elements of my Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model. Some, however, seem to have missed key points. I'm willing to take some responsibility for this. Perhaps I was not clear about some of the more radical points of the model. Hopefully the case-by-case review here will help.

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What Harmful Practices? The Material Scope Of Animal Protection Legislation, Eze Paez Jan 2017

What Harmful Practices? The Material Scope Of Animal Protection Legislation, Eze Paez

Animal Sentience

Jonathan Birch proposes a criterion for the subjective scope of animal protection legislation. He says nothing about its material scope: which harmful practices it should regulate. I argue, first, that most moral views would agree that the worst forms of animal exploitation should be legally forbidden, even if there will inevitably be disagreement about some cases of animal experimentation. I also argue that, when feasible, there should be legal provisions to help wild animals.

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The Value Of Bayesian Statistics For Assessing Credible Evidence Of Animal Sentience, Anil K. Seth, Zoltan Dienes Jan 2017

The Value Of Bayesian Statistics For Assessing Credible Evidence Of Animal Sentience, Anil K. Seth, Zoltan Dienes

Animal Sentience

Determining what constitutes practically relevant, statistically significant evidence for animal sentience, under the precautionary principle, could be enhanced through Bayesian statistics. A Bayesian approach allows the incorporation of multiple evidence sources through prior probabilities, the tracking of changing evidence across time, and a principled means of adjusting evidentiary bars via Bayes factors.

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Chicken Of The Sea, Jonathan Balcombe Jan 2017

Chicken Of The Sea, Jonathan Balcombe

Animal Sentience

Marino summarizes research showing that chickens perform cognitively and emotionally at a higher level than previously assumed. Here, I describe capacities of teleost fishes that parallel those of chickens, including the ability to recognize human faces, perspective-taking, and referential communication. Research on chickens and on fishes reveals an emerging trend in cognitive ethology: abilities once thought limited to a scant few highly intelligent non-humans may actually occur broadly across taxa.

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Consciousness In Teleosts: There Is Something It Feels Like To Be A Fish, Michael L. Woodruff Jan 2017

Consciousness In Teleosts: There Is Something It Feels Like To Be A Fish, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

Ray-finned fish are often excluded from the group of non-human animals considered to have phenomenal consciousness. This is generally done on the grounds that the fish pallium lacks a sufficiently expansive gross parcellation, as well as even minimally sufficient neuronal organization, intrinsic connectivity, and reciprocal extrinsic connections with the thalamus to support the subjective experience of qualia. It is also argued that fish do not exhibit the level of behavioral flexibility indicative of consciousness. A review of neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and behavioral studies is presented which leads to the conclusion that fish do have neurobiological correlates and behavioral flexibility of sufficient …

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Consciousness, Evidence, And Moral Standing, Irina Mikhalevich Jan 2017

Consciousness, Evidence, And Moral Standing, Irina Mikhalevich

Animal Sentience

Woodruff (2017) claims to have identified the neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness (“p-consciousness”) in fishes, and argues that these neurological data, along with behavioral evidence, suggest that teleost fishes are in all probability sentient organisms. Woodruff’s case may be strengthened by challenging key assumptions behind a common criticism of accounts such as his: that fishes cannot be p-conscious because they lack the cortical structures necessary for p-consciousness. A more serious objection to Woodruff’s proposal would be that his evidence for p-consciousness establishes only that fishes are “access-conscious” (“a-conscious”), where a-conscious states are cognitive representations that are made available to cognitive …

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Battlefish Contention, Sean Allen-Hermanson Jan 2017

Battlefish Contention, Sean Allen-Hermanson

Animal Sentience

Contrary to Woodruff’s suggestion, investigations into possible reasoning capacities of cichlid fighting fish and trace memory in goldfish do not support claims about sentience. This is disputed by research results about learning and implicit processing, sleep, vegetative states, amnesia, semantic priming, artificial network modeling, and even insects. A novel, deflationary, interpretation of Grosenick et al.'s experiments on A. burtoni is also offered.

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Sentience In Living Tissue, Alfredo Pereira Jr. Jan 2017

Sentience In Living Tissue, Alfredo Pereira Jr.

Animal Sentience

I agree with Woodruff’s concept of sentience but must disagree about what he proposes as the biological correlates of feeling. Based on the interpretation of brain function originally presented by Camilo Golgi, I assume that feelings are instantiated by hydro-ionic waves in living tissue. From this viewpoint, the anatomical, physiological and behavioural criteria of Woodruff would not be necessary to argue for sentience in fish.

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Nagel-Ing Worries About Fish Sentience, Hugh Lafollette Jan 2017

Nagel-Ing Worries About Fish Sentience, Hugh Lafollette

Animal Sentience

Woodruff (2017) argues that teleosts’ more sophisticated behaviors make sense only if they are sentient. Moreover, their neuroanatomy, although different from mammalian, is sufficiently complex to support sentience. I answer some potential objections to Woodruff’s argument, and try to trace its moral significance. In so doing, I briefly address Birch’s (2017) target article as well.

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Mental Representations Are Not Necessary For Fish Consciousness, Luis H. Favela Jan 2017

Mental Representations Are Not Necessary For Fish Consciousness, Luis H. Favela

Animal Sentience

Woodruff (2017) argues that teleost fishes are capable of phenomenal consciousness. Central to his argument is the assumption that phenomenal consciousness is representational in nature. I think the commitment to a representational theory of consciousness undermines Woodruff’s case for teleost phenomenal consciousness. The reason is that organisms do not need to perceive the world indirectly via mental images/representations in order to have phenomenological experiences. My argument is based on considerations of ecological psychology and comparative ethology.

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Animal Models, Agendas And Sentience, Thomas Creson Jan 2017

Animal Models, Agendas And Sentience, Thomas Creson

Animal Sentience

Woodruff’s target article on teleost consciousness is a well-organized logical argument for considering the fish as a sentient being. This becomes more important for animal ethical discussion as the fish becomes a more important and legitimate animal model for investigating animal states and traits associated with higher levels of behavior such as learning and memory.

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We Still Need A Theory, Paula Droege Jan 2017

We Still Need A Theory, Paula Droege

Animal Sentience

Woodruff (2017) has compiled a convincing array of data to support his contention that teleost fish feel pain. However, in the absence of an explanatory theory about the nature and function of consciousness, a checklist of criteria is insufficient to allay skeptical concerns. I offer a theory that can explain why features like selective attention and behavioral flexibility indicate consciousness. Consciousness represents the present moment in order to allow dynamic changes in actions or goals in response to situational demands.

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The Effect Of Chronic Nutrient Addition From Wastewater On Forest Ecosystems At The Rice Rivers Center, Michael Beck Jan 2017

The Effect Of Chronic Nutrient Addition From Wastewater On Forest Ecosystems At The Rice Rivers Center, Michael Beck

Theses and Dissertations

Wastewater application to land can be a useful tool for mitigating impacts of nutrient enrichment on aquatic systems. A land application treatment system at VCU’s Rice Rivers Center in Charles City County, VA provided an opportunity to study the impact of wastewater addition on the biogeochemistry of forests representative of the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain. Nutrient concentrations in throughfall and leachate were measured at Treatment and Control sites to assess differences in nutrient deposition and retention. Wastewater amended plots from the Walter L. Rice education building received 20-fold (N) and 6-fold (P) higher inputs relative to Control plots and plots located …

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Anecdotes Can Be Evidence Too, Heather Browning Jan 2017

Anecdotes Can Be Evidence Too, Heather Browning

Animal Sentience

Birch’s criterion for the precautionary principle imposes a high evidential standard that many cases will fail to meet. Reliable, relevant anecdotal evidence suggestive of animal sentience should also to fall within the scope of the precautionary principle. This would minimize potential suffering (as happened in the case cephalopods) while further evidence is gathered.

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