Psychology Commons^™

Why Animals Are Persons, Tony Cheng

Animal Sentience

Rowlands’s case for attributing personhood to lower animals is ultimately convincing, but along the way he fails to highlight several distinctions that are crucial for his argument: Personhood vs. personal identity; the first person vs. its mental episodes; and pre-reflective awareness in general vs. one specific case of it.

"Beyond Words," Yes, But Also Beyond Numbers, Fred L. Bookstein

Animal Sentience

Safina’s fascinating series of fifty separate feuilletons tries to bridge a painful Methodenstreit in contemporary ethology mainly by an accumulation of anecdotes. Some deal with his own dogs, but most derive from reading or conversing with observers of a wider range of social mammals including elephants, wolves, apes, and whales. In spite of the many interruptions by travesties of the academic lifestyle and its literature, there is a point to be made, concerning the centrality of evidence about cooperative behavior styles, especially aspects of child-rearing, for the understanding of “what animals think and feel.” But Safina’s argument would be a …

Animals Are Agents, Linda A.W. Brakel

Animal Sentience

Mark Rowlands’s (2016) target article invites us to consider individuals in a broad subset of the non-human animal world as genuine persons. His account features animals reacting to salient environmental stimuli as Gibsonian affordances, which is indicative of “pre-reflective self-awareness.” He holds that such pre-reflective self-awareness is both “immune to error through misidentification” (Shoemaker, 1968) and a necessary precursor to reflective consciousness and personhood. I agree. In this commentary I hope to extend Rowlands’s work with a view in which agency is an even more fundamental precursor and one can (and should) consider individuals throughout the entire animal kingdom as …

Are Animals Persons?, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

It is orthodox to suppose that very few, if any, nonhuman animals are persons. The category “person” is restricted to self-aware creatures: humans (above a certain age) and possibly some of the great apes and cetaceans. I argue that this orthodoxy should be rejected, because it rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. Replacing this with a sense of self-awareness that is relevant requires us to accept that personhood is much more widely distributed through the animal kingdom.

Insects Have The Capacity For Subjective Experience, Colin Klein, Andrew B. Barron

Animal Sentience

To what degree are non-human animals conscious? We propose that the most meaningful way to approach this question is from the perspective of functional neurobiology. Here we focus on subjective experience, which is a basic awareness of the world without further reflection on that awareness. This is considered the most basic form of consciousness. Tellingly, this capacity is supported by the integrated midbrain and basal ganglia structures, which are among the oldest and most highly conserved brain systems in vertebrates. A reasonable inference is that the capacity for subjective experience is both widespread and evolutionarily old within the vertebrate lineage. …

Cross-Species Mind-Reading, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

We can never be sure anyone else is sentient. But we can be sure enough in the case of other people, nonhuman primates, mammals, birds, fish, lower vertebrates and invertebrates as to make scepticism academic and otiose (not to mention monumentally cruel). The only genuinely uncertain kinds of cases are jellyfish, microbes and plants. The rest is not about whether but what they are feeling.

My Orgasms Cannot Be Traded Off Against Others’ Agony, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

Only I can calculate my own welfare as net pleasure minus pain. No one else can do that calculation for me – nor for a population, and especially not averaging across some individuals’ pleasure and other individuals’ pain. Pain and pleasure are incommensurable and only pain matters morally. To maximize welfare is to minimize pain.

In Praise Of Fishes: Précis Of What A Fish Knows (Balcombe 2016), Jonathan Balcombe

Animal Sentience

Our relationship to fishes in the modern era is deeply problematic. We kill and consume more of them than any other group of vertebrates. At the same time, advances in our knowledge of fishes and their capabilities are gaining speed. Fish species diversity exceeds that of all other vertebrates combined, with a wide range of sensory adaptations, some of them (e.g., geomagnetism, water pressure and movement detection, and communication via electricity) alien to our own sensory experience. The evidence for pain in fishes (despite persistent detractors) is strongly supported by anatomical, physiological and behavioral studies. It is likely that fishes …

Sentience As Moral Consideration And Disvalue In Nature, Daniel Dorado

Animal Sentience

In recent work Ng assumes that it is good to engage in activities aimed at promoting ecosystem conservation. The only way Ng can derive this from the axiology he assumes (the view that wellbeing is the only intrinsically valuable or disvaluable thing) would be to assume that ecosystem conservation would benefit the individuals involved. This can be so as long as value prevails over disvalue in the target environments. Ng seems to assume this is indeed the case, but he does not explain why, and it is a claim that goes against the conclusions he has argued for previously (Ng …

Changing Attitudes Towards Animals In The Wild And Speciesism, Oscar Horta

Animal Sentience

I argue that despite Ng’s claim that we should postpone the defense of those animals that live in the wild, we do have reasons to start spreading concern for them now. We can do it by (i) changing public attitude by heightening awareness of speciesism, by which we will also challenge animal exploitation; and (ii) by disseminating information about the situation of animals in the wild.

Darkness In The Contemporary Scientific Imagination And Its Implications, Joe Cambray

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

In recent years there has been a growing interest and reporting in the popular press and scientific literature on the topics of dark energy and dark matter. The mysterious, unknown nature of these entities has captured the cultural imagination. However, very little psychological reflection has been offered on the attention given to these phenomena. A brief overview of the human fascination with (and fear of) the dark is presented as a backdrop to the current interest being given to realms of darkness in modern cosmology. Beginning with the hypothesis of dark matter in the 1930s based on astronomical observations …

Meaningful Mutations: Reflections On The Synchronicity Of Evolution, Ritske Rensma

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Although Jung made a connection between his concept of the archetype and mankind’s evolutionary history throughout his career, he remained notoriously tight-lipped about his own specific views on evolutionary theory. In the final years of his life, however, he finally went more into detail about this important topic, putting forward a most thought-provoking idea: the notion that synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences, had a role to play in the way evolution took shape. As I will argue in this paper, Jung’s comments on this topic present clear evidence that he did not think primarily along Darwinian lines, as has recently …

Taylor's Soft Perennialism: A Primer Of Perennial Flaws In Transpersonal Scholarship, Glenn Hartelius, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This response to Taylor's essay in this issue concludes that his notion of soft perennialism is unworkable and shows no promise as a theory to explain spiritual diversity. Numerous specific shortcomings of the paper are described, then it is used as basis for identifying three broad categories of error that occur in some transpersonal scholarship. Examples from Taylor's paper are supplemented with similar errors in papers by other transpersonal scholars.

Dreaming In Two Worlds And Two Languages: Bilingual Dreams And Acculturation Challenges, Winifred K. Lum, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This study investigated the significance of first and second languages in the bilingual dreams of immigrant participants. A purposive sample of nine women and six men aged 20 to 71 whose first languages were Spanish, Thai, Italian, Tagalog, and French, and later acquired English, participated in semi-structured, open-ended interviews recalling a dream featuring both languages. Transcripts were thematically analyzed individually and across cases. The most important theme was the ambicultural self in the dream, referring to a culturally flexible dream figure able to speak the dreamer’s first and second languages to bridge between the protagonist’s two cultures to accomplish the …

Table Of Contents / Masthead

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Transpersonal Is A Whole Person Psychology (Editor's Introduction), Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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From Philosophy To Phenomenology: The Argument For A “Soft” Perennialism, Steve Taylor

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper argues for a soft perennialism, distinct from the hard perennialism which suggests that spiritual and religious traditions are expressions of the same underlying spiritual realities. There are two reasons why it is necessary to think in terms of a soft perennial model: firstly, because of a number of important common themes or trends across spiritual traditions; and secondly (and most importantly) because when the process of expansion of being or awakening occurs outside the context of spiritual traditions, broadly the same themes and tendencies appear, suggesting that there is a common landscape of experience which precedes interpretation and …

Introduction To The Special Topic Section: Jung And Transpersonal Psychology, Jacob Kaminker

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Gnawing At The Roots: Toward A Transpersonal Poetics Of Guilt And Death, Jason Butler

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

As an imaginal approach, archetypal psychology focuses its attention on the diverse and polysemous expressions of imagination as the ground from which all psychological expressions emerge, replacing the dried up concept of a singular ego with the notion that consciousness takes up a multitude of styles concordant with the mercurial flow of images that concentrically influence, grip down, and take over consciousness like a band of pirates commandeering a ship. Archetypal psychology situates itself as a transpersonal psychology by qualifying the image as inextricably archetypal, denoting a valence of meaning that extends beyond the merely personal, beyond the particular cultural-historical …

Nature, Human Ecopsychological Consciousness And The Evolution Of Paradigm Change In The Face Of Current Ecological Crisis, Karen Palamos

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper explores factors that contribute to the ecological crisis of the contemporary time, including philosophical, psychological, and spiritual beliefs that have contributed to the current situation. Recognition is paid to the role of reductionist Cartesian thought and centuries of attempted separation from nature. Contributions of Jungian, post-Jungian, depth, and transpersonal scholars fortify an understanding of the subtle perceptual shifts for change to become possible. Recognition of humanity’s interconnectivity with all life is proposed as a key factor in building motivation toward becoming agents of change, concluding with a call for co-created praxis toward regeneration of connection to life in …

Images, Figures And Qualities: Clarifying The Relationship Between Individual And Archetype, Jacob Kaminker

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

C. G. Jung (1937/1958) described archetypes as collective patterns of consciousness that are catalyzed into the individual human experience. This paper will examine the role of culture and history in the relationship between the timeless and imageless archetypal qualities such as self sacrifice, presence, love; the culturally agreed upon archetypal figures, which may include mythological characters and deities that have some shared cultural meaning; and individual instances of archetypal images, which might show up in a dream, or in a particular religious icon. The examples in this paper will demonstrate how, out of a collective cultural need for representation, a …

Ongoing Dialogue In Response To Editor’S Introduction, “Nonduality: Not One, Not Two, But Many”, Judith Blackstone

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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(Book Review) Walking Shadows: Archetype And Psyche In Crisis And Growth, By Tim Read, Jay Dufrechou

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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(Book Review) The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook Of Transpersonal Psychology, By Harris L. Friedman And Glenn Hartelius (Eds.), Nick Atlas

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Volume 08, Meghan Enzinna, Casey Dawn Gailey, Raven Collins, Chiara Enriquez, Amelia Mcconnell, Alexander Morton, Emma Beckett, Leah G. Parr, Briana Adhikusuma, Taylor Embrey, Rowan Davis, Danielle Sisson, Bianca Cherry, Melissa Cacho, Chloe Woodward, Catherine Rollins, Carson Reeher, Landon Cooper, Haley Vasquez, Marlisha Stewart, Eric Whitehead, Sabrina Walker, James Bates

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction from Interim Dean Dr. Jennifer Apperson

Indigenous Peoples and the Modern Era by Meghan Enzinna

"Who Says": How Selena Gomez and the Scene Attempt to Subvert the Popular Standards of Beauty by Casey Dawn Gailey

Art by Raven Collins

Meltdown on Social Media: Amy's Baking Company Meets Kitchen Nightmares by Nathena Haddrill

Art by Chiara Enriquez

Design by Amelia Mcconnell

Worth More Than a Thousand Words: A Visual Rhetorical Discussion of Virtual Reality by Examining "Clouds Over Sidra" by Alexander Morton

Design by Emma Beckett

The Sonata: An Analysis of Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Minor, K. …

The Line Drawn On Pain Still Holds, Bjorn H. Merker

Animal Sentience

The many substantive criticisms raised against Key by me and by many of the other commentators will not disappear by ignoring or waving them aside with meta-discourse about anthropomorphism, just-so stories, or celestial teapots. The conceptual edifice Key inhabits and defends with such gusto may look like an impregnable fortress from the inside – and Key behaves as if it were. From the outside, however, it looks more like a ramshackle structure gaping with holes and pieced together from imperfectly understood neuroscience and often faulty literature citations.

Slavery, Welfare And The Sixth Extinction, Stephen R. Clark

Animal Sentience

Ng’s laudable concern for animal welfare would be welcome to any sensible slave-owner wishing to preserve his investment. What welfarism – for slave-owners and animal husbandmen – fails to call into question is whether we have the right to breed, hold captive and kill animals at all: If it matters, as the widely recognized slogan of ‘Five Freedoms’ suggests, that animals have the chance to live a ‘normal’ life, then more matters than keeping them ‘happy’ in subjection. Their lives – and also the lives of wild things – also deserve respect.

Wild Animal Suffering And Vegan Outreach, Eze Paez

Animal Sentience

Ng’s strategic proposal seems to downplay the potential benefits of advocacy for wild animals and omit what may be the most effective strategy to reduce the harms farmed animals suffer: vegan outreach.

To Minimize Animal Suffering, Broaden The Definition Of Animal Cruelty, Eleonora Gullone

Animal Sentience

Mandatory veterinary reporting of suspected abuse might discourage caregivers from seeking treatment for their injured animals. Animal abusers are more likely to be brought to justice by raising community awareness about the link between animal cruelty and human violence and its implications for the wellbeing of both humans and animals. Commonly accepted definitions of animal cruelty focus only on cruelty that is socially unacceptable, excluding an enormous amount of unnecessary animal suffering caused by humans. Only by broadening the definition of animal cruelty can we bring about the cultural change necessary to minimize this animal suffering.

The Pribram – Bohm Hypothesis, Shelli R. Joye

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

A holoflux theory of consciousness as modulated energy is hypothesized and shown to support both local and non-local properties. This thesis emerges from an integral evaluation of evidence drawn from: (1) the holonomic mind/brain theories of Karl Pribram, (2) the ontological interpretation of quantum theory by David Bohm. Applying an integral methodology to superimpose and correlate seemingly disparate concepts from among these sources and others, a composite-theory emerges, a “holoflux” theory of consciousness, after the term favored by Karl Pribram to describe David Bohm’s “holomovement” between an explicate order andan implicate order. This Pribram–Bohm composite holoflux theory is shown to …