Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds
Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds

Author: Steven Wagschal

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2018-10-16

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 1487503326

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Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds employs current research in cognitive science and the philosophy of animal cognition to explore how humans have understood non-human animals in the Iberian world, from the Middle Ages through the early modern period. Using texts from European and Indigenously-informed sources, Steven Wagschal argues that people tend to conceptualize the minds of animals in ways that reflect their own uses for the animal, the manner in which they interact with the animal, and the place in which the animal lives. Often this has little if anything to do with the actual cognitive abilities of the animal. However, occasionally early authors made surprisingly accurate assumptions about the thoughts and feelings of animals. Wagschal explores a number of ways in which culture and human cognition interact, including: the utility of anthropomorphism; the symbolic use of animals in medieval Christian texts; attempts at understanding the minds of animals in Spain's early modern farming and hunting books; the effect of novelty on animal conceptualizations in "New World" histories, and how Cervantes navigated the forms of anthropomorphism that preceded him to create the first embodied animal minds in fiction.

Minding Animals
Minding Animals

Author: Marc Bekoff

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002-05-02

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 019028787X

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Thinking bees, ice-skating buffaloes, dreaming rats, happy foxes, ecstatic elephants, despondent dolphins--in Minding Animals, Marc Bekoff takes us on an exhilarating tour of the emotional and mental world of animals, where we meet creatures who do amazing things and whose lives are filled with mysteries. Following in the footsteps of Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, Bekoff has spent the last 30 years studying animals of every stripe--from coyotes in Wyoming to penguins in Antarctica. He draws on this vast experience, as well as on the observations of other naturalists, to offer readers fascinating stories of animal behavior, including grooming and gossip, self-medication, feeding patterns, dreaming, dominance, and mating behavior. Many of these stories are truly incredible--chimpanzees medicating themselves with herbal remedies, elephants clearly mourning a dead group member--but this is not simply a catalog of amazing animal tales, for Bekoff also sheds light on many of the more serious issues surrounding animals. He offers a thought-provoking look at animal cognition, intelligence, and consciousness and he presents vivid examples of animal passions, highlighting the deep emotional lives of our animal kin. All this serves as background for his thoughtful conclusions about humility and animal protection and animal well-being, where he urges a new paradigm of respect, grace, compassion, and love for all animals. Marc Bekoff has gone deep into the minds, hearts, spirits, and souls of animals, giving him profound insight into their lives, and no small insight into ours. Minding Animals is an important contribution to our understanding of animal consciousness, a major work that will be a must read for anyone who loves nature.

Experiencing Animal Minds
Experiencing Animal Minds

Author: Julie A. Smith

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2012-11-27

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0231530765

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In these multidisciplinary essays, academic scholars and animal experts explore the nature of animal minds and the methods humans conventionally and unconventionally use to understand them. The collection features chapters by scholars working in psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, literary studies, and art, as well as chapters by and about people who live and work with animals, including the founder of a sanctuary for chickens, a fur trapper, a popular canine psychologist, a horse trainer, and an art photographer who captures everyday contact between humans and their animal companions. Divided into five sections, the collection first considers the ways that humans live with animals and the influence of cohabitation on their perceptions of animals' minds. It follows with an examination of anthropomorphism as both a guide and hindrance to mapping animal consciousness. Chapters next examine the effects of embodiment on animals' minds and the role of animal-human interembodiment on humans' understandings of animals' minds. Final sections identify historical representations of difference between human and animal consciousness and their relevance to pre-established cultural attitudes, as well as the ways that representations of animals' minds target particular audiences and sometimes produce problematic outcomes. The editors conclude with a discussion of the relationship between the book's chapters and two pressing themes: the connection between human beliefs about animals' minds and human ethical behavior, and the challenges and conditions for knowing the minds of animals. By inviting readers to compare and contrast multiple, uncommon points of view, this collection offers a unique encounter with the diverse perspectives and theories now shaping animal studies.

The Emotional Lives of Animals (revised)
The Emotional Lives of Animals (revised)

Author: Marc Bekoff

Publisher: New World Library

Published: 2024-04-09

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1608689204

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A seminal exploration of animal emotion, sentience, and cognition, revised and expanded to incorporate a surge of new science When award-winning scientist Marc Bekoff penned the first edition of this book in 2007, he predicted that over time our understanding of animal cognition and emotion would grow “richer, more accurate, and possibly different.” Since then, not only has the field seen an explosion of new and startling research, but the popular interest in the subject has grown as well, spawning countless podcasts, articles, and bestselling books. Bekoff skillfully blends extraordinary stories of animal joy, empathy, grief, embarrassment, anger, and love with the latest scientific research confirming the existence of emotions that common sense and experience have long implied. Filled with light humor and compassion, The Emotional Lives of Animals is a clarion call for reassessing both how we view and how we treat animals.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Author: Julian Jaynes

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2000-08-15

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13: 0547527543

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National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

The Princess and the Pony
The Princess and the Pony

Author: Kate Beaton

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2015-06-30

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 0545637090

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Introducing Kate Beaton, a major new picture book talent, and author/illustrator of #1 New York Times bestseller Hark! A Vagrant! Princess Pinecone knows exactly what she wants for her birthday this year. A BIG horse. A STRONG horse. A horse fit for a WARRIOR PRINCESS! But when the day arrives, she doesn't quite get the horse of her dreams...From the artist behind the comic phenomenon Hark! A Vagrant, The Princess and the Pony is a laugh-out-loud story of brave warriors, big surprises, and falling in love with one unforgettable little pony.

All My Relations
All My Relations

Author: Susan Chernak McElroy

Publisher: New World Library

Published: 2010-10-14

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1577317076

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In All My Relations, Susan Chernak McElroy offers ten poignant stories examining such concepts as ownership, naming and unnaming things, interpreting signs and language, and animals as mirrors of the soul. In these pages, you’ll meet Fashion, the old, arthritic mare who reminds the author of the joys of giving for its own sake; Kulu, the zoo chimpanzee who adopts the author as a surrogate mother and demonstrates the heartbreaking realities of captivity; and a host of other critters who will capture your heart and stir your soul. The meditations and practices that accompany the stories will guide you toward a deeper connection with both the animal world and your own stories.

Scream
Scream

Author: Lia Purpura

Publisher: Literary House Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780937692240

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"This essay first appeared in The Georgia Review (Fall 2015 issue), copyright 2015 by Lia Purpura, used by permission of author. It was also awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2016."