Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Fish Sentience Denial: Muddying The Waters, Lynne U. Sneddon, Javier Lopez-Luna, David C.C. Wolfenden, Matthew C. Leach, Ana M. Valentim, Peter J. Steenbergen, Nabila Bardine, Amanda D. Currie, Donald M. Broom, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

Recent empirical studies have reported evidence that many aquatic species, including fish, cephalopods and crustaceans, have the capacity for nociception and pain, and that their welfare should be taken into consideration. Some sceptics, rejecting the precautionary principle, have denied that any study demonstrates pain or other aspects of sentience in fish. This target article discusses some of the scientific shortcomings of these critiques through a detailed analysis of a study exploring nociception and analgesia in larval zebrafish.

Fish Sentience Denial: Muddy Moral Water, Robert C. Jones

Animal Sentience

Sneddon et al. (2018) authoritatively summarize the compelling and overwhelming evidence for fish sentience, while methodically dismantling one rather emblematic research paper (Diggles et al. 2017) intended to discount solid evidence of fish sentience (Lopez-Luna et al. 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, & 2017d). I explore the larger practical moral contexts within which these debates take place and argue that denials of animal sentience are really moral canards.

Fish And Plant Sentience: Anesthetized Plants And Fishes Cannot Respond To Stimuli, Ken Yokawa, František Baluška

Animal Sentience

Recent denial of fish sentience is at variance with the fact that all living organisms need environmental awareness in order to survive in a continuously fluctuating environment. Moreover, fish sentience – like plant sentience – is also strongly supported by the sensitivity of fishes and plants to diverse anesthetics.

If It Looks Like A Duck: Fish Fit The Criteria For Pain Perception, Julia E. Meyers-Manor

Animal Sentience

Whereas we have denied the experience of pain to animals, including human babies, the evidence is becoming clearer that animals across a variety of species have the capacity to feel pain (Bellieni, 2012). As converging findings are collected from pain studies and the study of cognition, it is becoming harder to deny that fish are among the species that do feel pain.

Defining Denial And Sentient Seafood, Jennifer Jacquet

Animal Sentience

Sneddon et al. address the scientists who reject the empirical evidence on fish sentience, calling them “sceptics” and their work “denial”. This is the first article to frame the question of fish sentience in these terms, and it provides an obvious opening for social science and humanities research in the science of fish sentience. It is also worth asking what practical changes in the lives of fish might arise from the mounting evidence of their sentience. I suggest that the relationship between sentience and our sense of moral obligation is not as clear as we often assume.

Sentience: All Or None Or Matter Of Degree?, Loren Martin, Robert Gerlai

Animal Sentience

The question of whether fish feel pain is muddied by anthropomorphic thinking. Comparing biological phenomena in two species should be informed by the criteria for good animal models: face validity, construct validity and predictive validity. Viewed through this lens, we argue that fish do feel pain and may possess some level of sentience. Evolutionary relatedness, hence similarities and differences between species (fish and humans in this case), are not about black vs. white but about shades of grey.

Denialism And Muddying The Water Or Organized Skepticism And Clarity? That Is The Question, Ben Diggles, Howard I. Browman

Animal Sentience

The research being commented on here has been criticized and defended in journals. Sneddon et al. (2018) add nothing substantive. We have nothing further to add. Readers are referred to Diggles (2018) and to Browman et al. (2018) for a detailed assessment.

Degrees Of Sentience?, Jonathan Birch

Animal Sentience

I focus on the possibility of sentience in zebrafish larvae. The evidence here prompts two intuitive reactions that are difficult to reconcile: the reaction that larvae, if sentient, should be protected in some way, and the reaction that larvae, if capable of nociception, should be used as replacements for adults. Both reactions are reasonable, but they can be reconciled only by constructing a framework for assigning degrees of protection in proportion to degrees of sentience.

The Human Nervous System Is Not The Gold Standard For Pain, Riccardo Manzotti

Animal Sentience

The basis of pain could be the causal nexus between one’s phylogenetic/ontogenetic history and one’s behavior. It might turn out that the neural implementation is immaterial to the instantiation of pain. Widely different neural structures may token the same pain-type, and nearly identical neural structures may token different types.

Defining Pain And Painful Sentience In Animals, Edgar T. Walters

Animal Sentience

Sentience is essential to most definitions of pain, including a detailed definition invoked by Sneddon et al. to argue that adult and perhaps larval fish feel pain. Because proving painful sentience in non-human animals is not feasible, multiple lines of indirect evidence are needed to implicate pain. This commentary examines the list of 17 criteria used by Sneddon et al. to conclude that fish have conscious pain. The criteria include tests of nociceptive, motivational, and cognitive properties useful for revealing pain-like states that can be understood biologically and be related evolutionarily to human pain. However, additional research is needed to …

Fish Are Smart And Feel Pain: What About Joy?, Becca Franks, Jeff Sebo, Alexandra Horowitz

Animal Sentience

Sneddon et al. rightly point out that the evidence of fish pain is now so strong and comprehensive that arguments against it have become increasingly difficult to defend in balanced academic discourse. But sentience involves more than just pain. Recent research indicates that fish have an impressive range of cognitive capacities, including the capacity for pleasure, in the form of play and other behaviors likely to involve positively valenced experience. Having made the case for pain, research can now focus on other aspects of fish sentience. Doing so will not only provide a more complete picture of the mental lives …

Ample Evidence For Fish Sentience And Pain, Lynne U. Sneddon, David C.C. Wolfenden, Matthew C. Leach, Ana M. Valentim, Peter J. Steenbergen, Nabila Bardine, Donald M. Broom, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

The majority of commentaries are supportive of our position on the scepticism that muddies the waters surrounding fish pain and sentience. There is substantial empirical evidence for pain in fish. Animals’ experience of pain cannot be compared to artificial intelligence (AI) because AI can only mimic responses to nociceptive input on the basis of human observations and programming. Accepting that fish are sentient would not be detrimental to the industries reliant on fish. A more proactive discussion between scientists and stakeholders is needed to improve fish welfare for the benefit of all.

Exploring Illusions Of Height In Suit Design, Michael P. Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Objective: The goal of this research was to explore how the design of clothing, specifically the design of the suit, can create height illusions.

Background: Taller people enjoy many advantages, such as increased income and perceived attractiveness. These advantages motivate people to try to appear taller than they actually are, and clothing experts provide advice on how to accomplish this. However, there is little empirical evidence to validate the illusory effects clothing might have on overall height perception. The few studies that have explored illusions of body size created by clothing design have been limited in two important ways – …

Caterpillar/Basil-Plant Tandems, Paco Calvo

Animal Sentience

According to Reber (2016), subjectivity springs from primitive life itself. Granting his non-neurocentric stance, I shall try to show that his framework falls prey to zoocentric preconceptions that divest certain non-animal life-forms of mentality. There is no reason to exclude the possibility that plants have evolved different structures that underlie their own subjective experiences, all according to Reber’s model. It is the degree of phenotypic flexibility and integration that we observe in the behavioral repertoire of plants that may end up supporting their capacity for subjective experience. This remains an open empirical question.

The Effect Of Religious Dress On Perceived Attractiveness And Trustworthiness, Courtney Swank

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The hijab, a symbol of modesty and privacy in the Islamic faith, negatively affects ratings of perceived attractiveness. Although postcolonial feminism strives to portray women as not one universal group, but as an incorporation of different races, ethnicities, social classes, and other cultures, the Western world may not be where it endeavors to be. In this study the impact of the hijab on people’s perceptions of attractiveness was examined. Participants rated four target photos of the same woman with and without a hijab, and with or without cosmetics. Attractiveness and trustworthiness was then assessed in each condition, between genders, in …

Preschoolers And Pandas Making Friends: A Journey About Healing From Brain Injury, Barbara Anne Doucette

Museum Studies Projects

Preschoolers that have obtained Non-Accidental Injury (NAI) from familial child abuse are in need of having a unique place for neurorehabilitation in correlation with traditional therapies. My thesis project suggests adding an exhibit annex to an existing giant panda exhibit that will give preschoolers an opportunity to help develop new neuropathways when exposed to mediation and creative activities. Meditation and creative activities are being examined by neuroscientists as an aid in neuroplasticity after brain injury. This thesis reviews the neurotypical preschooler’s milestones and the playful means by which they are achieved. Conjoining the contemporary museums’ and zoological gardens’ outreach to …

Housing Diversity In Children’S Literature, Carla Earhart

Charleston Library Conference

Previous studies have examined diversity in children’s literature: Gender diversity, racial diversity, religious diversity, and diversity in family composition. This project examines an often overlooked diversity issue in children’s literature: Housing diversity. In the stories they read and the accompanying images, children need to see a variety of housing environments and need to see the settings and the people portrayed in a positive manner.

Renting an apartment is an increasingly popular housing option for many families. However, many children’s books glamorize living in a traditional house. Using a rubric designed by the course instructor, students in a university immersive learning …

Beliefs In Advance Care Planning Among Chinese Americans: Similarities And Differences Between The Younger And Older Generations, Mei Ching Lee, Ha Do Byon, Katherine Hinderer, Carla Alexander

Asian/Pacific Island Nursing Journal

The purpose of this research is to explore behavioral, normative, and control beliefs in the discussion of advance care planning (ACP) among older and younger Chinese Americans. Ethnic minority groups have been identified as less engaged in ACP and this represents an ethnic and cultural gap. Older Chinese American adults often have different beliefs and values compared to the younger generation who are more acculturated to American mainstream culture. These differences may hinder the discussion of ACP with Chinese older adults.

A qualitative design was used. The Theory of Planned Behavior guided the development of the interview guide. We recruited …

Syntax And Semantics Of Perceptual Representation, James K. Quilty-Dunn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a defense of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perceptual systems deliver multiple types of representations including those used in thought. In particular, it argues that perceptual systems output iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) states. A central thesis is that perceptual representations of objects are propositional and composed of concepts. It also develops a compositional syntax of iconic representation called the coordination model, according to which icons are sets of primitive parts, each of which determines values along multiple analog feature dimensions simultaneously. The dissertation supports the conclusion that perceptual …

The Inconvenient Truth About Thinking Chickens, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

Original Abstract: Domestic chickens are members of an order, Aves, which has been the focus of a revolution in our understanding of neuroanatomical, cognitive, and social complexity. Some birds are now known to be on a par with many mammals in their intelligence, emotional sophistication, and social interaction. Yet views of chickens have largely remained unrevised in light of this new evidence. In this paper, I examine the data on cognition, emotions, personality, and sociality in chickens, exploring such areas as self-awareness, cognitive bias, social learning and self-control, and comparing their abilities with other birds and other vertebrates, particularly …

The Golden Age Of Phenomenology At The New School For Social Research, 1954–1973, Lester Embree, Michael D. Barber

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

This collection focuses on the introduction of phenomenology to the United States by the community of scholars who taught and studied at the New School for Social Research from 1954 through 1973. During those years, Dorion Cairns, Alfred Schutz, and Aron Gurwitsch—all former students of Edmund Husserl—came together in the department of philosophy to establish the first locus of phenomenology scholarship in the country. This founding trio was soon joined by three other prominent scholars in the field: Werner Marx, Thomas M. Seebohm, and J. N. Mohanty. The Husserlian phenomenology that they brought to the New School has subsequently spread …

Walking As Ontological Shifter: Thoughts In The Key Of Life, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With walking as ontological shifter I pursue an alternative to the dominant modernist episteme that offers either/or onto-epistemologies of opposition and their reifying engagements. I propose this type of walking is an intentional turning towards a set of radical positions that, as integrative aesthetic and therapeutic practice, brings multiplicity and synchronicity to experience and being in an expanded sociality. This practice facilitates the conditions of possibility for recurring points of contact between the interiority perceived as ‘body’ and the exteriority perceived as ‘world.’ While making evident the self’s at once incoherence with it-self, it opens to a space beyond the …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Ethnic Identity Development, Cognitive Complexity, Differentiation Of Self, And Reports Of Racial And Ethnic Microaggressions, Deshae C. Gatti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although individuals may not engage in racism consciously due to social undesirability, they may have biases that manifest in more subtle and unconscious ways. Research has found that people of color experiencing different racial and ethnic microaggressions in their everyday lives are subject to pervasive and negative impacts on their mental health, though little is known about the influence of one’s ethnic identity formation, affective processes, and cognitive processes. A multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the degree to which ethnic identity development, cognitive complexity, and differentiation of self were associated reported experiences of microaggressions. The analysis indicated that …

Literacy Revolution: How The New Tools Of Communication Change The Stories We Tell, Molly Gamble

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

The transmission of culture depends upon every generation reconsidering what it means to be literate. The way we consider ourselves to be a literate species is changing, which puts us at a unique turning point in human history. Verbal literacy, or the ability to read and write, is slowly being replaced by visual literacy as a primary tool for human communication. As a culture, we tend to underestimate the creative ferment of our increasingly visual world. The linear, structured pathways of traditional literacy are shifting towards a creative and participatory pursuit of unstructured information that emphasize dimensional thinking. The acceleration …

Video Game Engagement, Gender, And Age: Examining Similarities And Differences In Motivation Between Those Who May Or May Not Play Video Games, Joseph Camarata

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research aims to fill a research gap by examining video games to explore whether gender, age, or hours played per week would exert any influence on the information of those who may or may not play video games. Mood Management Theory and Uses and Gratification Theory were used as the theoretical foundation for this study. Four-hundred-three East Tennessee State University students who received the survey via email were asked to voluntarily participate in a survey about their motivations behind playing video games. Results from MANOVA showed that the motivations of male participants on video games were significantly higher than …

Connecting The Unconnected: Understanding Creativity At Work, Kate Rogers

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

To explore the diversity of creativity in the minds of individuals from a spectrum of occupations.

To understand the value of creativity in society and in education.

Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches

Communication Studies

This feminist critique looks into the way that gender, specifically females, are portrayed in some of Hollywood's top films involving Artificial Intelligence: Blade Runner, Her, and Ex Machina. These movies work as a perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies while maintaining the objectification and hypersexuality of women as normalized behaviors. Additionally, while some forms of empowerment are conveyed, the features illustrate women merely on a spectrum of extreme behavior; due to Heuristics and Cultivation Theory, these misrepresentations can be associated with women outside the surrealist realm of the depicted artificially intelligent worlds.

The Porn Myth: Exposing The Myth Behind The Fantasy Of Pornography By Matt Fradd, Donald L. Hilton Jr.

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Raising Consciousness About Chicken Consciousness, Bernard Rollin

Animal Sentience

The topics explored by Marino are definitive, and should work well to lay to rest forever the widespread belief that chickens have no personality, are unintelligent, or in any other way lack a mental life.

Chickens’ Brains, Like Ours, Are Lateralized, Lesley J. Rogers

Animal Sentience

This commentary draws attention to yet another attribute that has been instrumental in demonstrating the cognitive abilities of domestic chicks: lateralization of brain function. The discovery of lateralization in domestic chicks was part of the first evidence showing that humans are not unique in this respect. The effects on cognitive ability of sensory stimulation in critical stages of development have implications for the welfare of chicks, as well as other species.