The article aims to transform narratives surrounding Utah’s Great Salt Lake, often referred to as “America’s Dead Sea,” by reimagining how brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) are perceived in science, culture, and art. It introduces the concept of hydrosexuality to bridge these realms, thereby enriching feminist blue posthumanities and feminist biology through art-based practices and queer advocacy. By navigating the environmental narrative of the GSL, the hydrosexual perspective challenges settler science by exploring the connections between the reproductive system of brine (...) shrimp and the economy, ecology and culture. The article provides a framework for integrative cultural analysis that bolsters arguments about the multilayered exploitation of the lake and amplifies voices that recognize the brine shrimp as vital to the survival of multiple species and to the GSL as a unique ecosystem. Furthermore, this cultural analysis draws inspiration from low trophic theory and Queer Death Studies. This multifaceted approach is exemplified by two case studies in the arts, which gradually alter white humans’ perceptions and understandings of the brine shrimp, helping to reimagine the GSL in the context of rapid climate change. (shrink)

Industrial shrimp farming has been promoted by international development and financial institutions in coastal indebted poor countries as a way to obtain foreign exchange earnings, reimburse external debt, and promote development. The promotion of the shrimp industry is a clear example of a more general trend of support of export-oriented primary products, consisting in monocultures of commodities, as opposed to the promotion of more diverse, traditional production directed to feed the local population. In general, it is assumed that (...) export-oriented aquaculture and agriculture, in a framework of liberalization policies, facilitates economic growth and this is associated with poverty reduction and the improvement of food security. However, it has been shown that the promotion of export-oriented production, mostly in the hands of big corporations, can have detrimental consequences for the livelihoods of local populations and the environment. As a result, international institutions, NGOs, and the industry aim to minimize these impacts by promoting sustainable export-oriented production. But some impacts may remain, since the main issue is the primary focus on international deregulated markets and the search for cheap primary products. To illustrate the relationships between the mainstream concept of development, the environmental and social impact of industrial farming systems, and the promotion of export-oriented production in developing countries, this article analyzes the case of the shrimp aquaculture industry. (shrink)

Crump et al.’s contribution to assessing whether decapods feel pain raises an important question: Is pain distributed unevenly across the order? The case for pain appears stronger in Pleocyemata than in Dendrobranchiata. Some studies report pain avoidance behaviors in Dendrobranchiata (Penaeidae) shrimp, but further studies are needed to determine whether the chemicals used are acting as analgesics to relieve pain, or as soporifics to reduce overall alertness. If the latter, the most farmed shrimp species may not require the (...) same level of protection as crabs, crayfish, and lobsters. (shrink)

Suppose someone is brought up as an orthodox Jew, and so only eats kosher, is very conservative sexually, etc. Suppose they then find out that this Judaism stuff is just all a big mistake. If they then regret all the shrimp they could have eaten, all the sex!, this makes perfect sense. Not so, however, if someone finds out that moral realism is false, and they now regret all the fun they could have had hurting people’s feeling, etc. Even (...) if this does make sense, there’s a strong disanalogy between the moral and the religious case. This asymmetry, on a realist picture of morality, calls for explanation. This chapter tries to explain it. The discussion engages some topics familiar from objections to Robust realism—the why-be-moral challenge, the status of de-dicto moral motivation, and whether and why we should care about the moral properties, robustly realistically understood. (shrink)

Can octopuses feel pain and pleasure? What about crabs, shrimps, insects, or spiders? How do we tell whether a person unresponsive after severe brain injury might be suffering? When does a fetus in the womb start to have conscious experiences? Could there even be rudimentary feelings in miniature models of the human brain, grown from human stem cells? And what about AI? These are questions about the edge of sentience, and they are subject to enormous, disorienting uncertainty. The stakes are (...) immense, and neglecting the risks can have terrible costs. We need to err on the side of caution, yet it’s often far from clear what ‘erring on the side of caution’ should mean in practice. When are we going too far? When are we not doing enough? The Edge of Sentience presents a comprehensive precautionary framework designed to help us reach ethically sound, evidence-based decisions despite our uncertainty. (shrink)

Despite the iconic roles of coelacanths, cycads, tadpole shrimps, and tuataras as taxa that demonstrate a pattern of morphological stability over geological time, their status as living fossils is contested. We responded to these controversies with a recommendation to rethink the function of the living fossil concept. Concepts in science do useful work beyond categorizing particular items and we argued that the diverse and sometimes conflicting criteria associated with categorizing items as living fossils represent a complex problem space associated with (...) answering a range of questions related to prolonged evolutionary stasis. Turner defends the living concept against a variety of recent skeptics, but his criticism of our approach relies on a misreading of our main argument. This misreading is instructive because it brings into view the value of three central themes for rethinking the living fossil concept—the function of concepts in biology outside of categorization, the methodological importance of distinguishing parts and wholes in conceptualizing evolutionary phenomena, and articulating diverse explanatory goals associated with these phenomena. (shrink)

Consider the principle that, given two actions A and B, where A affects some number of (merely) possibly sentient individuals (e.g., shrimp) and B affects some number of clearly sentient individuals (e.g., humans), A and B are morally equivalent if their expected values are equivalent. This recently defended principle can have radical implications. This article considers alternatives to this principle that are based on two kinds of risk aversion—difference-making risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. By rejecting the symmetry between probability (...) and value, it’s possible to reach more intuitive conclusions. (shrink)

Two luminaries of 20th century astrophysics were Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington. Both took seriously the view that there is more to reality than the physical universe and more to consciousness than simply brain activity. In his Science and the Unseen World Eddington speculated about a spiritual world and that "conscious is not wholly, nor even primarily a device for receiving sense impressions." Jeans also speculated on the existence of a universal mind and a non-mechanical reality, writing in (...) his The Mysterious Universe "the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine." In his book QED Feynman discusses the situation of photons being partially transmitted and partially reflected by a sheet of glass: reflection amounting to four percent. In other words one out of every 25 photons will be reflected on average, and this holds true even for a "one at a time" flux. The four percent cannot be explained by statistical differences of the photons nor by random variations in the glass. Something is "telling" every 25th photon on average that it should be reflected back instead of being transmitted. Other quantum experiments lead to similar paradoxes. To explain how a single photon in the two-slit experiment can "know" whether there is one slit or two, Hawking and Mlodonow write: In the double-slit experiment Feynman's ideas mean the particles take paths that thread through the first slit, back out though the second slit, and then through the first again; paths that visit the restaurant that serves that great curried shrimp, and then circle Jupiter a few times before heading home; even paths that go across the universe and back. This, in Feynman's view, explains how the particle acquires the information about which slits are openŠ. It is hard to imagine a more absurd physical explanation. We can think of no way to hardwire the behavior of photons in the glass reflection or the two-slit experiments into a physical law. On the other hand, writing a software algorithm that would yield the desired result is really simple. A digital reality whose laws are software is an idea that has started to gain traction in large part thanks to an influential paper in Philosophical Quarterly by Oxford professor Nick Bostrom. Writing in the New York Times John Tierney had this to say: Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else's hobby. But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom's, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else's computer simulation. An alternate view is that there exists a great consciousness whose mind is the hardware, and whose thoughts are the software creating a virtual universe in which we as beings of consciousness live. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind by Peter Godfrey-SmithMichael BrownMetazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind BY PETER GODFREY-SMITH New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020Carrying forward the project he began in Other Minds (2016), Peter Godfrey-Smith aims in Metazoa (2020) to cast light on the problem of consciousness by inviting meditation on the minds of our distant deep-sea cousins. To elaborate on (...) the Nagelian question of what it’s like to be a bat, he asks what it is like to be a crab, a shrimp, or a cephalopod. One will not find here the dense and fine-grain argumentation that is characteristic of academic monographs, but instead a freer exploration of ideas ranging from marine biology, to philosophy of mind, to animal psychology. Godfrey-Smith’s more modest goal is not to argue definitively for a single viewpoint, but to acclimate the reader to the challenging conceptual-shift he calls gradualism—namely, “the idea that in evolution, minds and experience come slowly into view, rather than appearing in a single move” (262).In the place of a barrage of observational data or dense philosophical argumentation, Godfrey-Smith paints a rich picture of the underwater environment, describes his personal interactions with the creatures that live there, and invites the reader to reflect on their activities and the cognition behind them. In this capacity, he walks a fine line—not anthropomorphizing the creatures, but presenting their actions as mentally agnostic as possible—to let the reader consider how much mental unity there might be, or how much self-or other-awareness may or may [End Page 130] not be present behind the beady mollusk eyes. Nevertheless, he strives to acquaint us with creatures we otherwise might not engage with. The several drawings of the animals and settings Godfrey-Smith discusses throughout the book aid this goal, as well as eight pages of vibrant photographs featuring several of the book’s “characters.”Because minds are things formed over time, Godfrey-Smith takes us through the first fossil evidence of animals in the Ediacaran, the appearance of shrimp-like ancestors in the Cambrian, the vast increase in size of the Ordovician, and the appearance of the octopus and dinosaurs of the Mesozoic. Yet, minds also develop under pressure and conditions of their environment, so Godfrey-Smith takes us on his dives to consider what environmental conditions led to the development of these submarine minds. As such, the text inventively winds its way across dimensions of space, time, and a variety of academic disciplines.In advancing the gradualist thesis, Godfrey-Smith entertains the Aristotelian notion of continuity between life and mind, as opposed to Descartes’ firm dualism. In this way, as noted in chapter 2, when a cell establishes its boundaries and controls the traffic of ions in and out, it becomes a kind of self. This leads him to a discussion of the glass sponge, multicellular but structurally simple, and yet a “collector and curator of biological light,” referring to its ability to channel light like a fiber optic cable (47). Chapter 3 considers the cnidarians—corals, in particular—in which the first signs of animal action appear. This action, like grasping, requires the appearance of a nervous system, and this increased complexity seems to give rise to agency, and more particularly, subjecthood. Chapter 4 invites us to consider the crab to guide reflections on early animal sensation. Of particular interest to this investigation are signs of feeling pain, such as the release of painkillers and the tending of wounds. Surprisingly, scientists find such behavior in shrimp. Chapter 5 returns to more philosophical considerations, attempting to stitch up false dichotomies of self-awareness and other-awareness, and activity and passivity, to name a couple. This sets the stage for chapter 6’s examination of the mysterious mix of mental unity and disunity in the octopus. With a decentralized nervous system, each arm seems to have a mind of its own, yet the creature nevertheless acts to unified purposes. Godfrey-Smith considers the resemblance to split-brain cases in humans, and the copresence of unified and disunified experience in... (shrink)

The coastal zone of Bangladesh is endowed with dynamic ‘Terrestrial’ and ‘Coastal and Marine ecosystem’. The zone confronts with declined environmental quality owing to unethical anthropogenic interventions. Few studies regarding ethical attitudes of local communities to conserve the coast were conducted earlier. Two objectives, such as (i) heavy metal concentration, and (ii) physio-chemical quality of sample soil and water were selected to reveal the environmental state of study area. Five heavy metals like- Cadmium, Copper, Iron, Lead, and Zinc; and four (...) physio-chemical parameters such as, the pH, Electrical Conductivity, Temperature, and Turbidity of sample soil and water were measured. The average concentration of Pb in soil is 10 times higher than world average (0.03 mg/g), while Cd concentration in soil is two times more than world average (0.11 mg/L). The concentration of Fe at Inani beach water is 1.54 mg/g more than world average (3.4 mg/g). The physio-chemical parameters are within standard range. Unethical discharge of toxic effluents from shrimp hatcheries, and municipal garbage are main sources of pollution, which ensue into environmental degradations. Concentration of five heavy metals and Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) in sample mollusk shells exhibit biodiversity deterioration. The mollusk shells from Inani beach contains 0.04 mg/L Cd,0.08 mg/L Cu, 0.42 mg/L Fe, 0.38 mg/L Pb, and 0.07 mg/L Zn. The CaCO3 content in mollusk shells at Inani beach is 49.5%, which indicates the degradation of the mollusks, as shells normally are made with 95% - 97% Calcium Carbonate. Hence, the Department of Environment (DOE), Bangladesh (GoB) declared the area as an ‘Ecologically Critical Area’ (ECA). The concerned stakeholders, like- CPP volunteers and officials, Forest Division, Fisheries Research Institute, Bangladesh Water Development Board, Union Chairman and Journalists of Cox’s Bazar recommended insertion of moral values among local stakeholders through trainings, motivational lectures, demonstrations and dramas, as well as, incorporation of lessons about consequences of unethical activities upon geo-environment into text books. Though least practice has been found regarding moral values during survey, the present research advocates in developing ‘Knowledge pool’ about coastal environment, creating awareness, and developing moral ethics among the local, regional and national stakeholders. (shrink)

Cirebon as we know for its commerce and name of the city of Wali. Commercially Cirebon is also famous called as the city of shrimp and geographically is labeled to as the center of the earth. Culturally Cirebon is recognized as an art city like other regions in Indonesia. This paper aims at analyzing one of the popular Cirebonese arts called Brai art containing Sufism messages. Brai art is the heritage of Cirebon containing messages of education in managing the (...) mind. The message highlighted in the Brai arts was more on exoteric religious worship. Arts express a sense of a esthetics with God by dancing and praising in five rituals. Every single ‘ raka’at ’ designates ‘ suluk ’ to God. This Brai art proves that Cirebon is recognized as the central area for the spread and development of Islam and Sufism because Cirebon has astrategic area both of the Pacific as well as and the maritime area. (shrink)

Decapod crustaceans are faceless animals with five pairs of legs, an external skeleton and multiple nerve centres rather than a single brain. They include common seafood species such as crayfish, crabs, lobsters, prawns and shrimp. These characteristics make them difficult to empathise with and consequently legal protection of decapods ranges from strong, through circumstantial to non-existent. Whether they are capable of experiencing pain depends on definitions and the requirement for absolute proof of an inherently subjective psychological experience. Yet like (...) other animals, decapods fulfil neuroanatomical, pharmacological and behavioural criteria that are consistent with a pain response. Whether they experience stress, harm and distress is less controversial because these conditions are more measurable than the pain response. To balance animal welfare concerns with scientific merit whilst providing confidence for the growing public awareness of crustacean welfare, use of decapod crustaceans in research should require ethical review. (shrink)

Carman argues, in ‘The electrons of the dinosaurs and the center of the Earth’, that we may have more reason to be realists about dinosaurs than about electrons, because there are plenty of observable analogues for dinosaurs but not for electrons. These observable analogues severely restrict the range of plausible ontologies, thus reducing the threat of underdetermination. In response to this argument, I show that the observable analogues for ancient organisms are a mixed epistemic blessing at best, and I discuss (...) some cases from the history of paleontology in which the observable analogues—ducks, shrimp, and lizards—have led scientists into persisting error. I also give reasons for thinking that underdetermination will be just as serious a problem in historical as in experimental science. I conclude that Carman has not succeeded in showing that dinosaurs ‘come off better’ than electrons.Keywords: Paleontology; Pessimistic induction; Realism; Unobservables. (shrink)

To date, insufficient work has been carried out on how children view living organisms in the environment. In this study a large number of conversations were audio-taped and transcribed while primary age pupils observed meal worms or brine shrimps (both of which are invertebrates) during science activities. Analysis revealed the ways in which the pupils interpreted what they saw in terms of their prior experience. We discuss the implications of these and others of our findings for school education and the (...) development of children's ethical constructions of their environments. (shrink)

Businesses increasingly assume political roles, despite issues of legitimacy. The presented two case studies illustrate how businesses harness their political influence in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices through collaboration and dialog with stakeholders and civil society actors. These cases are set around issues arising in global supply chains in sourcing activities where the core problem is associated with businesses managing extended responsibilities under conflicting institutional conditions. The article seeks to provide empirical examples of Political CSR and illustrates the role of (...) deliberative democracy in contemporary business behavior. It adopts a Western business perspective, more specifically from an end-producer and retailer’s standpoint. Findings suggest that civil society is influential in driving these businesses to act responsibly. Joint collaboration is understood as key to strive toward holistic solutions. Political CSR theory remains an ideal, but offers fruitful grounds for speculating on what the political role of business is or could be and how this translates into pragmatic implications for businesses. (shrink)

Understanding stakeholders’ perceptions and motivations is of significant importance in relation to conservation and protected area projects. The importance of stakeholder analysis is widely recognized as a necessary means for gaining insight into the complex systemic interactions between natural processes, management policies, and local people depending on the resource. Today, community and group-based participatory inquiry approaches are widely used for this purpose. Recently, participatory approaches have been critiqued for not considering power relations and conflict internal to the community. In this (...) article, we suggest that the five-step Rapid Stakeholder and Conflict Assessment (RSCA) methodology addresses this critique. The objective of the methodology is to provide a facilitator with a comprehensive foundation on which to plan and conduct subsequent participatory project development. The RSCA integrates elements of soft systems and critical systems thinking. Qualitative research interviews and cognitive mapping of stakeholders’ mental models are used for collection of empirical material and analysis. The RSCA methodology is demonstrated in a case study concerning buffer zone management in the coastal wetlands of southern Vietnam. The case study shows that the RSCA methodology can provide an efficient way of obtaining a holistic and critical understanding of a complex resource management situation, thus potentially enhancing project performance in an instrumental as well as an ethical sense. (shrink)