Self-Awareness in Animals and Humans

Self-Awareness in Animals and Humans

Author: Sue Taylor Parker

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-05-27

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 0521441080

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This is a collection of original articles on self-awareness in monkeys, apes, humans and other species. This book focuses on controversies about how to measure self-awareness, which species are capable of self-awareness and which are not, and why. The focus of the chapters is both comparative and developmental.


The Philosophy of Animal Minds

The Philosophy of Animal Minds

Author: Robert W. Lurz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-09-03

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1139481029

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This volume is a collection of fourteen essays by leading philosophers on issues concerning the nature, existence, and our knowledge of animal minds. The nature of animal minds has been a topic of interest to philosophers since the origins of philosophy, and recent years have seen significant philosophical engagement with the subject. However, there is no volume that represents the current state of play in this important and growing field. The purpose of this volume is to highlight the state of the debate. The issues which are covered include whether and to what degree animals think in a language or in iconic structures, possess concepts, are conscious, self-aware, metacognize, attribute states of mind to others, and have emotions, as well as issues pertaining to our knowledge of and the scientific standards for attributing mental states to animals.


Human and Animal Minds

Human and Animal Minds

Author: Peter Carruthers

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0198843704

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Claims about consciousness in animals are often made in support of their moral standing. Peter Carruthers argues that there is no fact of the matter about animal consciousness and it is of no scientific or ethical significance. Sympathy for an animal can be grounded in its mental states, but should not rely on assumptions about its consciousness.


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.


Why Animals Matter

Why Animals Matter

Author: Marian Stamp Dawkins

Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)

Published: 2012-03-29

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0199587825

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In a world increasingly concerned with the human species and its future, Marian Stamp Dawkins argues that we need to rethink some of the fundamental questions regarding animal welfare. How are we justified in projecting human emotions on to animals? What kind of mental lives do they have? What can science tell us about their quality of life?


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.


Beyond Words

Beyond Words

Author: Carl Safina

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0805098887

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Hailed conservationist Carl Safina examines animal personhood as told through the inspired narrative portraits of elephants, wolves, and dolphins


Understanding Animals

Understanding Animals

Author: Lars Svendsen

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1789141877

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How do animals perceive the world? What does it really feel like to be a cat or a dog? In Understanding Animals, Lars Svendsen investigates how humans can attempt to understand the lives of other animals. The book delves into animal communication, intelligence, self-awareness, loneliness, and grief, but most fundamentally how humans and animals can cohabit and build a form of friendship. Svendsen provides examples from many different animal species—from chimpanzees to octopus—but his main focus is on cats and dogs: the animals that many of us are closest to in our daily lives. Drawing upon both philosophical analysis and the latest scientific discoveries, Svendsen argues that the knowledge we glean from our relationships with our pets is as valid and insightful as any scientific study of human-animal relations. With this entertaining and thought-provoking book, animal lovers and pet owners will gain a deeper understanding of what it is like to be an animal—and in turn, a human.


Minds Of Their Own

Minds Of Their Own

Author: Lesley J Rogers

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-05

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0429978553

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Do Animals have ideas? Do they experience pain like humans? Do they think about objects that they cannot see? About situations that have occurred in the past? Do they consciously make plans for the future or do they simply react unthinkingly to objects as they appear and situations as they arise? All of these questions have bearing on whether or not animals have consciousness. The advent of computers that ?think? has lead us to consider ?intelligence? in a way we never thought possible a decade ago. But when and how does information processing in the brain become automatic?In Minds of Their Own, Lesley J. Rogers examines the issue of animal thought both sympathetically and critically by looking at the different behavior characteristics of a variety of animals, the evolution of the brain and when consciousness might have evolved. To most people, to be conscious means to be aware of oneself as well as to be aware of others. But does this hold true for animals? The answer may have implications which transcend mere scientific inquiry: if animals are cognizant creatures, what, if any, moral responsibility do humans have to assure their rights? This timely book examines this issue and others by emphasizing comparisons between humans and animals: how we evolved; how we remember; how we learn.


Science and the Akashic Field

Science and the Akashic Field

Author: Ervin Laszlo

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-05-03

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1594779902

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Presents the unifying world-concept long sought by scientists, mystics, and sages: an Integral Theory of Everything • Explains how modern science has rediscovered the Akashic Field of perennial philosophy • New edition updates ongoing scientific studies, presents new research inspired by the first edition, and includes new case studies and a section on animal telepathy Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in vacuum physics show that this Akashic Field is real and has its equivalent in science’s zero-point field that underlies space itself. This field consists of a subtle sea of fluctuating energies from which all things arise: atoms and galaxies, stars and planets, living beings, and even consciousness. This zero-point Akashic Field is the constant and enduring memory of the universe. It holds the record of all that has happened on Earth and in the cosmos and relates it to all that is yet to happen. In Science and the Akashic Field, philosopher and scientist Ervin Laszlo conveys the essential element of this information field in language that is accessible and clear. From the world of science he confirms our deepest intuitions of the oneness of creation in the Integral Theory of Everything. We discover that, as philosopher William James stated, “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”