This essay offers an analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe read in concert with Derrida’s treatment of the novel in the second volume of The Beast and the Sovereign. Drawing from Derrida while developing insights of my own, I assemble the elements of a unique account and critique of the logic of human sovereignty. Focusing on a crucial moment in both the novel and in Derrida’s reading of it, I argue the thesis that human sovereignty rests upon a logically (...) prior mastery of both non-human animals and subordinated human beings—a relation of mastery I call the human/animal logic of sovereignty. (shrink)

It is indeed important to identify the rich variety of systems for the adaptive control of behaviour, rather than squeezing this richness into a few boxes. We need to recognise both the variety of systems for the cognitive control of adaptive behaviour and to chart the relationships between such systems. But I shall argue that these projects are not best pursued by asking about the extent of animal rationality. The argument develops in three stages. The first outlines a picture (...) of the selective regimes that drive the evolution of the sophisticated use of information by animal agents. The second argues that hominid cognition has evolved in response to a somewhat different set of " 3 " challenges and that the transmission of social information and skill has come to be both a critical and an unusual feature of hominid selective and developmental environments. The third draws upon the ideas of Dan Sperber and others in arguing that the social transmission of information introduces a vetting problem. I shall suggest that we see rationality as an evolved response to this vetting problem. (shrink)

I try to identify elements of our mental capacities that separate us from animals. I focus on our command of logical concepts, demonstrable already in children in the second or third year of their life, which to date no animal has been shown to master. I draw various conclusions about the behavioural, intellectual, emotional, and moral capacities that depend on this mastery, and discuss recent empirical research that either supports or apparently disagrees with the claim that animals, even those (...) we consider intelligent, are limited in these respects. My discussion is built around observations extracted from Wittgenstein. (shrink)

We review the literature on various approaches to modeling animal intergroup conflict behavior in theoretical biology, highlight the intricacies emerging in the process of adding due biological realism to such models, and point out recent empirical findings that can inspire future theorizing.

Through the reconstruction of Leibniz's theory of the degrees of knowledge, this e-book investigates and explores the intrinsic relationship of imagination with space and time. The inquiry into this relationship defines the logic of imagination that characterizes both human and non-human animals, albeit differently, making them two different species of imaginative animals. -/- Lucia Oliveri explains how the emergence of language in human animals goes hand in hand with the emergence of thought and a different form of rationality constituted (...) by logical inferences based on identity and contradiction, principles that are out of reach of the imagination. The e-book concludes that the presence of innate principles in human animals transforms the way in which they sense-perceive the world, thereby constantly increasing the distinction between human and non-human animals. -/- Keywords: human and non-human animals, Leibniz and Locke on ideas, Leibniz on bodies, Leibniz on conceivability, Leibniz on degrees of knowledge, Leibniz on degrees of perception, Leibniz on innate ideas, Leibniz on modality, Leibniz on similarity and congruence, Leibniz on space and time, Leibniz’s philosophy of language, theory of types. (shrink)

This paper describes existing and potential short animated presentations that may be helpful in introductory logic courses (particularly in conjunction with Virginia Klenk’s "Understanding Symbolic Logic"), e.g. the progression of a proof, the distinction between inference and replacement rules, propositional variables, the use of truth tables, etc. The author offers reasons why animated presentations of various concepts and derivation rules ought to be short and simple rather than long and complex, provides an overview of some of the technical (...) limitations associated with such presentations, and discusses the prospects for developing future presentations. (shrink)

This article provides the foundation for a new predictive theory of animal learning that is based upon a simple logical model. The knowledge of experimental subjects at a given time is described using logical equations. These logical equations are then used to predict a subject’s response when presented with a known or a previously unknown situation. This new theory suc- cessfully anticipates phenomena that existing theories predict, as well as phenomena that they cannot. It provides a theoretical account for (...) phenomena that are beyond the domain of existing models, such as extinction and the detection of novelty, from which “external inhibition” can be explained. Examples of the methods applied to make predictions are given using previously published results. The present theory proposes a new way to envision the minimal functions of the nervous system, and provides possible new insights into the way that brains ultimately create and use knowledge about the world. (shrink)

In book 3 of On Abstinence from Animal Food, Porphyry is traditionally taken to argue that animals are rational and that it is, therefore, unjust to kill them for food. Since the vast majority of scholars endorse this interpretation, I call it ‘the consensus interpretation’. Yet, strangely enough, elsewhere in his corpus Porphyry claims that the non-human animals are irrational. Jonathan Barnes notices this discrepancy and suggests that an appeal to the distinction between specific and non-specific predication can resolve (...) the problem. This paper explains Barnes’ solution, but argues that it must ultimately be rejected. It concludes with a brief survey of other approaches to the problem, and with an outline of the proposed solution, in which the consensus interpretation of On Abstinence is rejected in favour of a dialectical reading of Book 3. Porphyry, this piece suggests, may not have believed that animals were rational after all. (shrink)

How much do animals matter--morally? Can we keep considering them as second class beings, to be used merely for our benefit? Or, should we offer them some form of moral egalitarianism? Inserting itself into the passionate debate over animal rights, this fascinating, provocative work by renowned scholar Paola Cavalieri advances a radical proposal: that we extend basic human rights to the nonhuman animals we currently treat as "things." Cavalieri first goes back in time, tracing the roots of the debate (...) from the 1970s, then explores not only the ethical but also the scientific viewpoints, examining the debate's precedents in mainstream Western philosophy. She considers the main proposals of reform that recently have been advanced within the framework of today's prevailing ethical perspectives. Are these proposals satisfying? Cavalieri says no, claiming that it is necessary to go beyond the traditional opposition between utilitarianism and Kantianism and focus on the question of fundamental moral protection. In the case of human beings, such protection is granted within the widely shared moral doctrine of universal human rights' theory. Cavalieri argues that if we examine closely this theory, we will discover that its very logic extends to nonhuman animals as beings who are owed basic moral and legal rights and that, as a result, human rights are not human after all. (shrink)

In _What Animals Teach Us about Politics_, Brian Massumi takes up the question of "the animal." By treating the human as animal, he develops a concept of an animal politics. His is not a human politics of the animal, but an integrally animal politics, freed from connotations of the "primitive" state of nature and the accompanying presuppositions about instinct permeating modern thought. Massumi integrates notions marginalized by the dominant currents in evolutionary biology, animal behavior, (...) and philosophy—notions such as play, sympathy, and creativity—into the concept of nature. As he does so, his inquiry necessarily expands, encompassing not only animal behavior but also animal thought and its distance from, or proximity to, those capacities over which human animals claim a monopoly: language and reflexive consciousness. For Massumi, humans and animals exist on a continuum. Understanding that continuum, while accounting for difference, requires a new logic of "mutual inclusion." Massumi finds the conceptual resources for this logic in the work of thinkers including Gregory Bateson, Henri Bergson, Gilbert Simondon, and Raymond Ruyer. This concise book intervenes in Deleuze studies, posthumanism, and animal studies, as well as areas of study as wide-ranging as affect theory, aesthetics, embodied cognition, political theory, process philosophy, the theory of play, and the thought of Alfred North Whitehead. (shrink)

In both the Phaedrus and Statesman dialogues, the dialectician's method of division is likened to the butchery of sacrificial animals. Interpreting the significance of this metaphor by analyzing ancient Greek sacrificial practice, this essay argues that, despite the ubiquity of the method of division in these later dialogues, Plato is there stressing the logical priority of the method of collection, division's dialectical twin. Although Plato prioritizes the method of collection, the author further argues that, through a kind of 'domestication' of (...) natural kinds, collection renders natural kinds knowable only by constructing them as implicitly divisible. As a result, the method of collection reflects not the wholeness of being but a constructed unity, the internal multiplicity of which makes possible each subsequent division. (shrink)

The end of human history is an event that has been foreseen or announced by both messianics and dialecticians. But who is the protagonist of that history that is coming—or has come—to a close? What is man? How did he come on the scene? And how has he maintained his privileged place as the master of, or first among, the animals? In The Open, contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben considers the ways in which the “human” has been thought of as (...) either a distinct and superior type of animal, or a kind of being that is essentially different from animal altogether. In an argument that ranges from ancient Greek, Christian, and Jewish texts to twentieth-century thinkers such as Heidegger, Benjamin, and Kojève, Agamben examines the ways in which the distinction between man and animal has been manufactured by the logical presuppositions of Western thought, and he investigates the profound implications that the man/animal distinction has had for disciplines as seemingly disparate as philosophy, law, anthropology, medicine, and politics. (shrink)

Although 20th-century empiricists were agnostic about animal mind and consciousness, this was not the case for their historical ancestors – John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and, of course, Charles Darwin and George John Romanes. Given the dominance of the Darwinian paradigm of evolutionary continuity, one would not expect belief in animal mind to disappear. That it did demonstrates that standard accounts of how scientific hypotheses are overturned – i.e., by empirical disconfirmation or by exposure (...) of logical flaws – is inadequate. In fact, it can be demonstrated that belief in animal mind disappeared as a result of a change of values, a mechanism also apparent in the Scientific Revolution. The “valuational revolution” responsible for denying animal mind is examined in terms of the rise of Behaviorism and its flawed account of the historical inevitability of denying animal mentation. The effects of the denial of animal consciousness included profound moral implications for the major uses of animals in agriculture and scientific research. The latter is particularly notable for the denial of felt pain in animals. The rise of societal moral concern for animals, however, has driven the “reappropriation of common sense” about animal thought and feeling. (shrink)

This article examines ethnographically the production of anime (Japanese animated films and TV shows) by focusing on how professional animators use characters and dramatic premises to organize their collaborative creativity. In contrast to much of the analysis of anime that focuses on the stories of particular media texts, I argue that a character-based analysis provides a critical perspective on how anime relates to broader transmedia phenomena, from licensed merchandise to fan activities. The ideas of characters, premises, and world-settings also specify (...) in greater detail the logic of anime production, which too often is glossed as emerging from a generalized Japanese culture, as in the ongoing debates about `cool Japan'. I conclude that an ethnographic approach to anime production through a focus on characters can offer new ways of thinking about what moves across media, what distinguishes anime from other media forms, and what gives anime its value. (shrink)

The neuropsychopharmacological methods and theories used to investigate the nature of depression have been viewed as suspect for a variety of philosophical and scientific reasons. Much of this criticism aims to demonstrate that biochemical- and neurological-based theories of this mental illness are defective, due in part because the methods used in their service are consistently invalidated, failing to induce depression in pre-clinical animal models. Neuropsychopharmacologists have been able to stave off such criticism by showing that their methods are context (...) and domain-sensitive, and that the worth of an animal model is relative to its purpose – thereby creating logical space for the question of whether there could ever be a “good” animal model of depression. I contend that this sort of response implicitly leans on Feyerabendian principles in the philosophy of science, and exemplify this connection using a standard taxonomy of behavioral models of depression. I then take one central Feyerabendian principle – methodological and theoretical pluralism – and show how it maps onto the neuropsychopharmacological research tradition as it is currently practiced. (shrink)

A number of claims are closely connected with, though logically distinct from, animalism. One is that organisms cease to exist when they die. Two others concern the relation of the brain, or the brainstem, to animal life. One of these holds that the brainstem is necessary for life—more precisely, that (say) my cat's brainstem is necessary for my cat's life to continue. The other is that it is sufficient for life—more precisely, that so long as (say) my cat's brainstem (...) continues to function, so too does my cat. I argue against these claims. (shrink)

Animalism offers a more attractive account of the human person than the Embodied Mind Account. If people are not animals, but small proper parts of animals, then there is a threat of spatially coincident thinkers. This will likely have to be avoided at the cost of the sparsest of ontologies, one in which there are no larger entities that can become reduced to the size of the brain or cerebrum-size thinker. This will be a rather implausible ontology as such thinkers (...) will not fit well into the natural world, meet traditional independence or unity criteria for being substances, nor provide a compositional principle with causal glue. (shrink)

Consequentialism is thought to be in significant conflict with animal rights theory because it does not regard activities such as confinement, killing, and exploitation as in principle morally wrong. Proponents of the “Logic of the Larder” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly pro-exploitation stance, permitting us to eat farmed animals with positive well- being to ensure future such animals exist. Proponents of the “Logic of the Logger” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly anti-conservationist stance, permitting (...) us to exterminate wild animals with negative well-being to ensure future such animals do not exist. We argue that this conflict is overstated. Once we have properly accounted for indirect effects, such as the role that our policies play in shaping moral attitudes and behavior and the importance of accepting policies that are robust against deviation, we can see that consequentialism may converge with animal rights theory significantly, even if not entirely. (shrink)

This book discusses how we can inspire today's youth to engage in challenging and productive discussions around the past, present and future role of animals in science education. Animals play a large role in the sciences and science education and yet they remain one of the least visible topics in the educational literature. This book is intended to cultivate research topics, conversations, and dispositions for the ethical use of animals in science and education. This book explores the vital role of (...) animals with/in science education, specimens, protected species, and other associated issues with regards to the role of animals in science. Topics explored include ethical, curriculum and pedagogical dimensions, involving invertebrates, engineering solutions that contribute to ecosystems, the experiences of animals under our care, aesthetic and contemplative practices alongside science, school-based ethical dialogue, nature study for promoting inquiry and sustainability, the challenge of whether animals need to be used for science whatsoever, reconceptualizing museum specimens, cultivating socioscientific issues and epistemic practice, cultural integrity and citizen science, the care and nurturance of gender-balanced curriculum choices for science education, and theoretical conversations around cultivating critical thinking skills and ethical dispositions. The diverse authors in this book take on the logic of domination and symbolic violence embodied within the scientific enterprise that has systematically subjugated animals and nature, and emboldened the anthropocentric and exploitative expressions for the future role of animals. At a time when animals are getting excluded from classrooms (too dangerous! too many allergies! too dirty!), this book is an important counterpoint. Interacting with animals helps students develop empathy, learn to care for living things, engage with content. We need more animals in the science curriculum, not less. David Sobel, Senior Faculty, Education Department, Antioch University New England. (shrink)

In the present paper I attempt an interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s analysis of animality, developed in winter semester 1929/1930. My general purpose is to examine Heidegger’s analysis in the wider context of formal-indicative phenomenology as such. Thus I show that in order to develop a phenomenology of animality, Heidegger must tacitly renounce the re-enactment of animal experience in which the formal-indicative concepts of his analysis could gain concreteness, and he resorts instead to scientific concepts and concrete experiments in biology (...) or zoology. This is due to the fact that what I call the a-logical bursts into the field of the phenomenological regard when it is oriented toward animality. I therefore argue that the phenomenology of animality presents us with a paradigmatic case of a tension that is at work in any phenomenon, one between logos and a-logos, between hiddenness and unhiddenness—constituting a basic problem of future research in phenomenology and its approach to intersubjectivity and alterity. (shrink)

Animals have moral standing; that is, they have properties (including the ability to feel pain) that qualify them for the protections of morality. It follows from this that humans have moral obligations toward animals, and because rights are logically correlative to obligations, animals have rights.

Animals in Brazil: Economic, Legal and Ethical Perspectives presents a broad overview of the complicated role of animals in Brazilian society. Its four substantive chapters survey the landscape of animal agriculture, animal protection laws, recent animal jurisprudence, and the underlying cultural factors that have shaped the Brazilian people's relationship with and treatment of animals. Despite the book's title, there is no chapter addressing economics. However, it represents the first book in English addressing the plight of animals in (...) Brazil and makes a marked contribution to animal ethics in Latin America. At its best, it is very good, and overall, the volume is a worthwhile addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in Brazilian animal law.The introduction by the book's editor, Carlos Naconecy, does exactly what an introduction should do: it succinctly describes the content of the chapters to follow. My quibble is that while Naconecy has excellent English and expresses himself well, the essay badly needed the editorial scrutiny of a native English speaker. The succeeding chapters each begin with an abstract, a simple but useful aid to any scholar who might not be interested in all of the issues the book covers.Chapter 1, “Food Animals in Brazil: Five Decades of Transformation,” ably describes Brazil's progression from a primarily subsistence-based agrarian culture to its full-scale embrace of industrial agriculture with all of its incumbent horrors. In just 50 years, Brazil has gone from a net importer to the world's second-largest exporter.The story of the country's transition to confinement, meat-based agriculture is all too familiar. It wrought havoc on community and family ties and overwrote traditional dietary practices, leading to widespread obesity, disease, and nutrient deficiencies. It also made indifference toward agricultural animals a new national norm. The level of cruelty that is both legal and common in Brazilian industrial agriculture would strain credulity if it weren't so similar to those of so many other countries. Indeed, the authors’ discussion of the systemic animal mistreatment, devastating environmental consequences, and accompanying cultural erosion in Brazil could easily have been cut and pasted into a chapter surveying the last 50 years in the United States.The second chapter is the strongest in the collection. “The Legal Protection of Animals in Brazil: An Overview” summarizes the country's animal-legal framework and situates it within the context of Brazil's constitutional prohibition against animal cruelty. The authors explain why the constitution offers little practical protection. Under the prevailing view, only those acts undertaken for the purpose of causing needless suffering constitute cruelty. Since much animal cruelty is ostensibly done for other reasons (food, science, etc.), the cruelty prohibition does not reach the majority of offenses.The authors next construct a syllogistic argument that the current legal classification of animals as “things” rather than beings who are the subjects of rights is logically and ethically flawed. Since cruelty involves suffering, and objects cannot suffer, and since animals suffer (otherwise animal cruelty laws would be pointless), then animals must be subjects of the law. Phrased differently, animals must be rights-holders. This leads into a compelling argument that the constitution not only supports but requires such an interpretation.“Cases and Debates in the Brazilian Animal Rights Arena” does exactly what its title suggests. It looks at recent animal-related judicial developments and situates them within a broader cultural and legal context. For example, the Supreme Court recently held that the Vaquejada, a rodeo-like event involving chasing and tackling terrified cows, was unconstitutional.Immediately following the decision, the legislature amended the constitution to classify the Vaquejada as an important cultural activity and thus protected under a different constitutional provision. The courts are currently considering whether that constitutional amendment is itself unconstitutional. We are further told about movements against foie gras and vivisection and about recent developments regarding custody disputes over domestic animal companions.The final chapter, “Factors That Influence the Brazilian Ethos Regarding Animals” is a broad discussion of the ways Brazilian history and culture have impacted attitudes toward animals. It is argued that because Brazil was the last Western country to eliminate slavery, Brazilians are more prone to treat animals like property and that the Brazilian temperament makes them more likely to be passionate than pragmatic. We also learn that a cultural reluctance to protest against social wrongs enables Brazilians to remain silent in the face of animal injustice and that the country's Catholic tradition instilled the idea that only people were made in the image of God and that animals therefore matter less. These observations strike me as overbroad and problematic. For example, millions of Brazilians have spent much of the past decade protesting government corruption, and the country has an impassioned animal advocacy movement. Furthermore, it is not clear that Brazilians necessarily treat animals differently than people from other countries with very different histories.Overall, Animals in Brazil begins the work of new scholarship in English on animals in the Brazilian context. The fact that some chapters are more informative and useful than others is an inevitable by-product of an edited volume and should not deter those interested in Brazilian animal law from reading it. The excellence of the first two chapters alone makes the book worthwhile. (shrink)

Explaining humans as rational creatures—capable of deductive reasoning—remains challenging for evolutionary naturalism. Schechter 437–464, 2011, 2013) proposes to link the evolution of this kind of reasoning with the ability to plan. His proposal, however, does neither include any elaborated theory on how logical abilities came into being within the hominin lineage nor is it sufficiently supported by empirical evidence. I present such a theory in broad outline and substantiate it with archeological findings. It is argued that the cognitive makeup of (...) any animal is constituted by being embedded in a certain way of life. Changing ways of life thus foster appearances of new cognitive abilities. Finally, a new way of life of coordinated group behavior emerged within the hominins: anticipatory group planning involved in activities like making sophisticated spears for hunting. This gave rise to human logical cognition. It turned hominins into domain-general reasoner and adherents of intersubjective norms for reasoning. However, as I argue, it did not—and most likely could not—give rise to reason by deductive logic. More likely, deductive reasoning entered our world only a few thousand years ago: exclusively as a cultural artifact. (shrink)

This book criticizes the common belief that we are entitled to exploit animals for our benefit because they are not as rational as people. After discussing the moral (in)significance of reason in general, the author proceeds to develop a clear, commonsensical conception of what "animal rights" is about and why everyday morality points toward the liberation of animals as the next logical step in Western moral progress. The book evaluates criticisms of animal rights that have appeared in recent (...) philosophical literature and explains the consequences of animal liberation for our diet, science, and treatment of the environment. The issue of animal rights has become of increasing philosophical and popular importance over the past decade. Morals. Reason, and Animals is the first extensive, second-generation contribution to this debate. Focusing exclusively on the fundamental philosophical issues, Sapontzis both undermines the arguments that have been raised against animal rights and constructs a rebuttal that avoids the pitfalls encountered by earlier defenses. (shrink)

Because we humans speak a public language, there has always been a special reason to suppose that we have a language of thought. For nonhuman animals, this special reason is missing, and the issue is less straightforward. On the one hand, there is evidence of various types of nonlinguistic representations, such as analog magnitude representations, which can explain many types of intelligent behavior. But on the other hand, the mere fact that some aspects of animal cognition can be explained (...) by nonlinguistic representations hardly suffices to show that animal minds are bereft of any sentence-like representations. This paper explores these complexities and argues that empirical research into the logical abilities of nonhuman animals provides a more direct way of evaluating whether they have a language of thought. Along the way, I offer a novel suggestion of how the hypothesis that animals draw disjunctive syllogisms can be empirically distinguished from the hypothesis, defended by Michael Rescorla, that animals reason probabilistically in accordance with Bayes’ Law. (shrink)

Alan Turing devised his famous test (TT) through a slight modificationof the parlor game in which a judge tries to ascertain the gender of twopeople who are only linguistically accessible. Stevan Harnad hasintroduced the Total TT, in which the judge can look at thecontestants in an attempt to determine which is a robot and which aperson. But what if we confront the judge with an animal, and arobot striving to pass for one, and then challenge him to peg which (...) iswhich? Now we can index TTT to a particular animal and its syntheticcorrelate. We might therefore have TTTrat, TTTcat,TTTdog, and so on. These tests, as we explain herein, are abetter barometer of artificial intelligence (AI) than Turing's originalTT, because AI seems to have ammunition sufficient only to reach thelevel of artificial animal, not artificial person. (shrink)

It is a well-known fact that Ernst Cassirer was inspired by his colleague, the biologist Jakob von Uexkiill at the university of Hamburg. This paper claims this inspiration was double—affecting both Cassirer's philosophical anthropology and Cassirer's epistemology of biology, but in two rather different ways. Thus, the paper intends to shed light on a corner of the history of the development of German thought of the interwar period. It may also have an actual interest because both Cassirer and Uexkiill enjoy, (...) for the time being and each in their way, a renaissance, e.g. in the recent field of biosemiotics. (shrink)

In disciplines traditionally studying expertise such as sociology, philosophy, and pedagogy, discussions of demarcation criteria typically centre on how and why human expertise differs from the expertise of artificial expert systems. Therefore, the demarcation criteria has been drawn between robots as formalized logical architectures and humans as creative, social subjects, creating a bipartite division that leaves out animals. However, by downsizing the discussion of animal cognition and implicitly intuiting assimilation of living organisms to robots, key features to explain why (...) human expertise is crucially different from robot expertise are neglected. In the absence of clarification of fundamental cognitive principles of LOs, cognitively robots may appear persuasively closer to humans when they are in fact not. In this paper, I will discuss essential features of organic cognition to emphasise why animals are not like robots at all. The purpose is to add a third category when comparing humans and robots to make a tripartite division that consists of humans LOs, and machines. I will argue that LOs, adapted to ever-changing circumstances, are qualitatively different from robots. Humans, in the sense of belonging to the biological class of LOs, also share this central feature. In addition, however, humans alone possess and use language in a way that turns cognition from a predominantly online to off-line activity, 625–635 2002) that introduces truly abstract thinking. In the end I introduce the concept of ‘Linguification’ to dissect the particular mechanisms sustaining abstract thinking in the explanation of what makes humans distinct from robots and LOs. (shrink)

In this paper, I reject that animal reasoning, negation in particular, necessarily involves the representation of absences, as suggested by Bermúdez (2003, 2006, 2007), since this would still work as a logical negation (unavailable for non-linguistic creatures). False belief, pretense, and communication experiments show that non-human animals (at least some primates) have difficulties representing absent entities or properties. I offer an alternative account resorting to the sub-symbolic similarity judgments proposed by Vigo & Allen (2009) and expectations: animal proto-negation (...) takes place through the incompatibility between an expected and the actual representation. Finally, I propose that the expectation paradigm be extrapolated to other experi-ments in cognitive psychology (both with pre-linguistic children and animals) in order to design fair experiments that test other minds considering their true abilities. (shrink)

This article examines influential recent arguments in science studies which stress the interactive and mutually transformative nature of human-animal relations in scientific research, as part of a broader ontological proposal for science as material engagement with the world, rather than epistemic detachment from it. Such arguments are examined in the light of ethnography and interviews with field biologists who work with meerkats under conditions of habituation. Where philosophers of science stress the mutually modifying aspect of scientific interspecies relationality, these (...) researchers present habituation as a way to study meerkats ‘in the wild’, and to access their putatively natural, undisturbed, behaviour. Building on this contrast, I will argue that the logic of scientific habituation remains difficult to grasp as long as we think of it exclusively in terms of human-animal relations. The seeming ‘paradox’ of habituation – the idea that it transforms precisely that which it aims to hold stable, namely the ‘wildness’ of animals – is an artefact of a frame of analysis which takes animals to be the object of the science of animal behaviour. Habituation ceases to look paradoxical, however, if we remain faithful to these researchers’ own interests, for whom the scientific object does not coincide with the animal as a whole, but is rather only a selected subset of its behaviour. In conclusion I suggest that this account of habituation sheds a new light on the articulations and disjunctions between diverse practices and commitments in social anthropology, philosophy and biological science. (shrink)

Drawing inspiration from Aristotle's biological writings, I attempt to elucidate what it is for something to be alive by providing illuminating logically necessary and sufficient conditions for something's being a living thing in the broadest sense. I then propose a related account of identity conditions for carbon‐based living organisms.

To mitigate animal suffering under industrial farming conditions, biotechnology companies are pursuing the development of genetically disenhanced animals. Recent advances in gene editing biotechnology have brought this to reality. In one of the first discussions of the ethics of disenhancement, Thompson argued that it is hard to find compelling reasons to oppose it. We offer an argument against disenhancement that draws upon parallels with human disenhancement, ecofeminism’s concern with the “logic of domination,” and a relational ethic that seeks (...) to preserve a meaningful relationship between farmers and their animals. In addition, we respond to two arguments in favor of animal disenhancement—one grounded in the non-identity problem and one that argues disenhancement is the best we can do to protect animal well-being right now. We argue that animal disenhancement does not address the fundamental issue of oppression of animals in the context of contemporary animal agriculture. Therefore, we conclude that animal disenhancement is not nearly as valuable as it might appear initially. (shrink)

This essay explores the legacy of the four philosophers now often referred to as ‘The Wartime Quartet’: G.E.M. Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley. The life and work of the four, who studied together in Oxford during the Second World War, is the subject of two recently published books, The Women Are Up to Something, by Benjamin Lipscomb, and Metaphysical Animals, by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman. The two books show us how Anscombe, Murdoch, Foot and Midgley (...) became friends united in their hostility to the logical-positivist orthodoxy of the day and its deleterious influence on Oxford moral philosophy. And we see how their friendship had a formative influence on their subsequent—highly distinguished—careers, so that it is possible to discern, if not exactly a school of thought, then various common themes, ideas and concerns, which are expressed and developed in contrasting ways. While Lipscomb represents the work of the Quartet as of largely historical significance, my paper defends what I take to be Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman's position that their legacy is very much a living one, containing insights that are not just of enduring relevance, but can transform how we see ourselves and how we do philosophy. For Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman, the key idea shared by the members of the Quartet is to place the concept of life at the centre of philosophical attention. This commitment has at least four dimensions: (i) an interest in the ordinary; (ii) a focus on virtue, goodness and human flourishing; (iii) an affirmation of our animal nature; (iv) recognition of the normative landscape that structures our lives. I try to bring out the philosophical significance of these themes in a way relevant to the philosophical elucidation of education. (shrink)

The stakeholder approach has become a popular perspective in mainstream management and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. However, it remains an open question as to how real-life managers actually view stakeholders and what rationales and logics are used for explaining the relationship between the firm and its constituencies. This article examines whom managers in multinational corporations (MNCs) consider to be their important stakeholders, and how they describe the societal responsibilities towards these groups and individuals. It is concluded that managers (...) still tend to hold a rather narrow (managerial) view of the firm and generally give priority to stakeholder groups who are directly involved in the firm's core transformation system. The conclusions are derived from interview and survey data from 647 managers in four MNCs. The paper is based on data collected as part of project RESPONSE: a European Union- and corporate-funded initiative on CSR. (shrink)

The essay "Rational Animals" is translated from the book: Donald Davidson: Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2001, pp. 95-105.

During the past three decades, Aristotle studies have been significantly influenced by a series of ground-breaking investigations of the zoological works, especially the Historia animalium. As a result, contemporary Aristotle scholars have developed a clearer and more consistent interpretation of the zoology and have demonstrated its consonance with Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. This revolution in Aristotle studies was anticipated by the medieval natural philosopher Albertus Magnus. As the first thinker since Theophrastus to pursue an Aristotelian research program in the (...) life sciences, he interpreted Aristotle’s animal histories as a series of pre-demonstrative researches preparatory to causal explanation as prescribed in the Posterior Analytics and the Topics. The medieval anticipation of these recent developments in Aristotle studies provides a compelling comparison of the interpretation of Aristotle now and then. (shrink)

This paper is about sentences of form To be human is to be an animal, To live is to fight, etc. I call them ‘infinitive sentences’. I define an augmented propositional language able to express them and give a matrix-based semantics for it. I also give a tableau proof system, called IL for Infinitive Logic. I prove soundness, completeness and a few basic theorems.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 425-444 [Access article in PDF] The Passions and Animal Language, 1540-1700 R. W. Serjeantson "Do not think, kind and benevolent readers, that I am proposing a useless subject to you by choosing to discuss the language [loquela] of beasts. For this is nothing other than philosophy, which investigates the natures of animals." 1 The Italian medical professor Hieronymus Fabricius ab (...) Aquapendente began his 1603 treatise On the language of beasts with this captatio benevolentiae with good cause. For early modern natural philosophers almost universally insisted that only humans were capable of language and speech. In this they followed, sometimes explicitly, their ancient authorities. "Man," Aristotle had said in the Politics, "is the only animal that has the gift of speech." "Men," wrote Cicero in the De inventione, "most excel the beasts in this, that they can speak." 2 They were sentiments echoed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. "There is no true language among beastes," said Sir Kenelm Digby. "Language" (loquela), concurred G. J. Vossius, "is unique to man." And according to John Ray in The Wisdom of God (1691), speech was "a quality so peculiar to Man, that no Beast could ever attain to it." 3Language was a subject of absorbing interest to numerous early modern philosophers. They investigated its origin, its production, its signification, and its use. But behind almost all of these investigations lay one of the most profound suppositions in early modern anthropology: the uniqueness of the human [End Page 425] capacity for language, and the brutishness of the brute beasts. Harsh judgments were passed on those who thought that animals might be able to speak. Lawyers held that belief in animal language was sufficient evidence of idiocy. According to Kenelm Digby it was only vanity, ignorance, and a specious desire for reputation that had led some authors to argue that animals used "compleate languages as Men haue to discourse with one another in." And the seventeenth-century English writer on the passions, Edward Reynolds, thought that only "melancholy men" believed "that Elephants and Birds, and other Creatures have a language whereby they discourse with one another." 4Yet despite this pervasive assumption that humans spoke and animals did not, the question of animal language kept arising in early modern culture. Readers met speaking animals in beast fablesand on Lucianic voyages. There was a popular belief in early modern England that "in the olde tymes" animals could speak. 5 Theodore Zwinger, Claude Duret, and G. J. Vossius all recorded many accounts of human communication with birds, with the ancient claim that Apollonius of Tyana could understand birdsong being particularly notorious. 6 In the Old Testament Balaam's ass asks his owner what he has done to deserve being beaten. 7 And St. Basil had even suggested that before the Fall Adam and Eve had been able to talk to the animals as well as to name them--a suggestion that both Thomas Browne and Joseph Glanvill gave short shrift. 8 But my purpose in this paper is not to follow speaking animals through early modern fables, popular beliefs, or even Biblical commentary. Instead, I propose to explore the serious investigations of zoosemiotics and animal communication that were undertaken by numerous philosophers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 9For then as now, the question of animal language, broadly interpreted, was a serious one for the sciences. It was a question that was addressed across a wide range of disciplines, from logic to natural history. As such it was an important component of the many discussions of the nature of animal reason--discussions that provided a means for skeptical moral philosophers to humble human pretensions [End Page 426] to rationality and wisdom. 10 Natural philosophers, too, undertook detailed inquiries into the question of animal expression, exploring issues of articulacy, anatomy, and function. Almost all early modern authors agreed that animals could not speak and did not possess language in the same way that humans did. But this still left a great deal of scope for considering the extent... (shrink)

Two of Aristotle’s major legacies, namely, the theory of scientific syllogism and teleology seem to conflict on several planes. Indeed, an array of formal limitations prevents him from formalizing teleological explanations into scientific syllogisms, which are entirely absent from his works. To achieve this, Aristotle resorts to a different tool, the logic of ‘consequence’. This governs both the teleological relation between an end and a means that underlies necessity ‘from a hypothesis’—which is the necessity proper to living things—and a (...) different form of syllogisms, namely, syllogisms ‘from a hypothesis’. His guidelines in the first chapter of his Parts of Animals on the proper form of demonstration to be adopted in biology should be read as laying out the rules of inference for translating teleological explanations into syllogisms ‘from a hypothesis’. (shrink)

Alan Turing devised his famous test through a slight modificationof the parlor game in which a judge tries to ascertain the gender of twopeople who are only linguistically accessible. Stevan Harnad hasintroduced the Total TT, in which the judge can look at thecontestants in an attempt to determine which is a robot and which aperson. But what if we confront the judge with an animal, and arobot striving to pass for one, and then challenge him to peg which iswhich? (...) Now we can index TTT to a particular animal and its syntheticcorrelate. We might therefore have TTTrat, TTTcat,TTTdog, and so on. These tests, as we explain herein, are abetter barometer of artificial intelligence than Turing's originalTT, because AI seems to have ammunition sufficient only to reach thelevel of artificial animal, not artificial person. (shrink)

As an anthropologist, I have long been interested in highly experimental science, with my work engaging the moral underpinnings of xenoscience and, more recently, lab animal research. The possibility of employing animals as human “matches” sparks enthusiastic responses among researchers who imagine various creatures as lucrative “donor species” or “source animals” whose organs might replace the failing parts of humans and render obsolete any future need for brain‐dead donors. When we attend to how xenoscientists imagine the promissory qualities of (...) various species, we encounter a specialized logic of how and why one type of animal is valued over another.Well‐established bioethical principles might assist us in framing our position in reference, say, to the limits of human suffering, or how to weigh the worth assigned to human versus animal lives, or how we conceive “the quality of life.” But sadly, subjective experience can creep in to shape and cloud those very stances we regard as bioethically principled. Rather than pursue such a well‐worn path, I suggest an alternative framework that privileges attentiveness to everyday thought and action over codified bioethics. This framework—described as “everyday” or “ordinary ethics” in anthropology—involves assuming a critical, self‐reflexive stance in reference to quotidian ways of seeing and knowing. Like John Berger, who famously asked, “Why Look at Animals?,” I ask, when we look at the lab‐based baboon, chimp, or pig, what do we see? How do we think of, or presume to know, the animal in question? How do we think about human‐animal relations in science? (shrink)

This volume contains monologues and dialogues in which the most basic questions of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and logic are given clear and cogent answers. Table of Contents: 30 Laws of Logic Different Kinds of Mathematical Functions: A Dialogue Functions, Bijections, and Mapping-relations What is Logic? Outline of a Theory of Knowledge Determinism, Indeterminism, and Personal Freedom A Dialogue Neurosis vs. Psychosis What determines whether one is happy? Compulsive Work Stuttering How men and women are different One learns from (...) adversity, not from failure Does everybody want money? The #1 Rule of Writing Lack of Coordination Mental Illness: The Ultimate Litmus Test The #1 Rule of Business Honesty and Integrity A Dialogue Anger A Dialogue What is Bullshit? A Short Treatise on Causality Part 1: Causality and Continuity Part 2 : Causation and Explanation Part 3: Causation and Counterfactual Truth Part 4: Program-causation Part 5: The four different kinds of causes involved in the development of mental illness Part 6: Singular Causation Obsessions and Compulsions A Dialogue concerning OCD Writing Animated Dialogues as Self-Analysis: A Dialogue Neurotic Anxiety as Rational Fear: A Dialogue Agency Analyticity Anomalous Monism Bullshit Two Kinds of Insanity Ignorance of the Future Justice Proof that Time-Travel is Impossible Rationality vs. Intelligence: A Dialogue. (shrink)

Humans, unlike other animals, are equipped with a powerful brain that permits conscious awareness and reflection. A growing trend in psychological science has questioned the benefits of consciousness, however. Testing a hypothesis advanced by [Lieberman, M. D., Gaunt, R., Gilbert, D. T., & Trope, Y. . Reflection and reflexion: A social cognitive neuroscience approach to attributional inference. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 34, 199–249], four studies suggested that the conscious, reflective processing system is vital for logical reasoning. Substantial decrements in (...) logical reasoning were found when a cognitive load manipulation preoccupied conscious processing, while hampering the nonconscious system with consciously suppressed thoughts failed to impair reasoning . Nonconscious activation of the idea of logical reasoning increased the activation of logic-relevant concepts, but failed to improve logical reasoning performance unless the logical conclusions were largely intuitive and thus not reliant on logical reasoning . Meanwhile, stimulating the conscious goal of reasoning well led to improvements in reasoning performance . These findings offer evidence that logical reasoning is aided by the conscious, reflective processing system. (shrink)

The article attempts to deal with the proposition that human being’s incapacity to imagine its own death, the state of non-being necessitates the thinking of the animal. A critical and close reading of specific Brāhmaṇa and Mahābhārata texts would spotlight that it is man’s rationalizing capacity that disavows and denies the question of intelligibility of the actions of the animal. The animal is the undisclosable which man keeps and brings to light as such. The article would further (...) investigate if the question of our forgetfulness toward the fact that we are born in debt to death has any linkage to the sacrificial logic of killing animals as elaborated in Brāhmaṇical hermeneutics. It examines how the ethical is thoroughly coextensive with the animal’s act of hospitality/hostility as an affective, purposive and reasoned response toward the other. In the course of the analysis of the jantu and pakshî upākhyāns in the Àraṇyak and Śanti Parvas of the Mahābhārata, the article tries to understand and explore if the experience of the animalitas is intrinsic to the structure of human reason, complicating the nature and notion of a priori. (shrink)

Animal research is a challenging issue for the animal advocate because of what, besides animal well-being, is considered to be at stake, namely, human health. This article seeks to vindicate the antivivisectionist position. The standard defense of animal research as promoting the overwhelming good of human health is refuted on both factual and logical, or normative-theoretical, grounds. The author then attempts to clinch the case by arguing that animal research violates a deontic principle. However, this (...) principle falls to counterexample. The author concludes, nevertheless, that the principle retains force as a presumption that the current state of affairs fails to overthrow. This does suggest, though, that the antivivisection movement would be well advised to keep ahead of the curve. The author proposes it do so by emulating the vegan movement against animal agriculture with the active promotion of alternatives to animal research. (shrink)