9.14.2022

Animal Minds: Being Smart about Animals

AGENDA
  1. Quiz, recap of modules 1 and 2
  2. Why an interlude on animal minds?
  3. DeWaal's chapter

Quiz 

  1. Reminder: no class Friday, but quiz is due. 
  2. Quiz will be submitted online. Available Sept 15 (8 am) and due Sept 16 (1:50 pm)
  3. This is an open quiz. You can use class materials such as your notes, the blog, the readings, and your RRs. However you can't copy or quote from anything. Best practice: close material before writing.
  4. Working together is not permitted. 
  5. Be aware of academic honesty policy for this class. Don't create problems for yourself! 
  6. The questions will be essay format and will deal with modules 1 and 2. You will have to answer 2-3 questions. Answers will be about 250 words long (400 max).

 Arguments.  See Descartes slides.
  1. An argument has a THEREFORE; it runs from premises to a conclusion. 
  2. If you're explaining an argument, make sure you're not just summarizing an author's various views. You're explaining a particular conclusion and how they arrive at that conclusion.
  3. You do not have to explicitly list premises using numbered sentences.
  4. Assessing an argument means assessing specific premises
Sample question
  1. (a) What is Regan's argument for animal rights? (b) What is a weak premise of the argument?
Answer to the sample question (250 words)
  1. (a) Regan's argument for animal rights starts by saying that moral agents have equal basic rights because they have equal inherent value--value just for themselves, and not for others. They have equal inherent value not because they have reason or because they have any other sophisticated abilities, but simply because they're all "subjects of a life."  In other words, they are thinking, feeling beings with goals of their own.  Regan moves from there to asserting that small children and people who are impaired are also subjects of a life and so also have inherent value and equal rights. He then points out that higher animals are subjects of a life as well. After all, they also have thoughts and feelings and goals. Therefore, they also must have inherent value and equal basic rights. He's not saying that animals have all the same rights that we do--they don't have a right to vote, for example. But they have basic rights like a right to life and a right to be respected.  (b) The weakest part of the argument is the premise that says our equal rights are based on our inherent value.  It's not completely clear what inherent value and also not obvious that everyone has it equally. Also, there are other ways to explain equal rights. For example, Carruthers' contractualism gives an alternative explanation for why moral agents have equal rights. Regan makes some objections against contractualism but Carruthers responds effectively to those objections. 
Why it's a good answer
  1. Answer explains Regan's reasoning, not just his various views. 
  2. Answer makes use of the Regan slides, but doesn't overuse them. There's no quoting or copying. This could have been written with the slides closed.
  3. Answer clarifies some of the key terms it uses.
  4. Objection is to a specific part of the argument. It doesn't get into extraneous issues, such as whether Regan's argument is "realistic." 
  5. Objection is targeted at a specific premise of the argument--that equal rights are based on equal inherent value. Answer is about just about that premise not others.
  6. Objection doesn't just express an opinion, but backs it up.
  7. Answer is not too short, not too long.  Short answers usually don't cover all the required material.  Long answers usually bring it extraneous material.


Module 3: Animal Minds



Why an interlude on animal minds? Because our authors in modules 1 and 2 made a lot of claims about animal minds.

  1. Aristotle – no reason, no virtue, but "traces and seeds" of reason and virtue
  2. Indian Thought – no dharma (?)
  3. Descartes – no consciousness
  4. Kant – no self-awareness, no morality
  5. Bentham – have suffering
  6. Singer – have pain, pleasure, interests, but see below
  7. Kagan – same as Singer
  8. Regan – they are "subjects of a life"
  9. Carruthers – assumes they have no reason but they have thoughts, feelings (in another work he agree with Descartes)
Peter Singer, "Equality for Animals" (p. 53)



FRANS DE WAAL

  • Our guide to animal minds.  Who he is. 
  • As a primatologist, he uses a lot of examples involving apes and monkeys 


  

 

DOS AND DONTS

1. DO STUDY THE ANIMAL'S UMWELT
  • Umwelt="point of view" or subjective world (p. 7)
  • "What is it like to be a bat?" (Thomas Nagel) – we can't know exactly what it feels like – YouTube bats
  • DeWaal: "...I will focus on the world that animals live in, and how they navigate its complexity" (p. 9)
2. DON'T BELIEVE IN A SCALA NATURAE (LADDER OF NATURE) (p. 12)

  • On the ladder/staircase model, there are superior and inferior minds
  • This will mislead you and cause you to make mistakes about animals 



3. DO STUDIES THAT ARE SPECIES-APPROPRIATE
  • testing for tool use in chimpanzees  Inside the Animal Mind I, 18.25-21:08
    • vs. elephants (why is it a bad idea to offer a stick?) 
  • testing for facial recognition in humans (show human faces)
    • vs. chimpanzees (show chimp faces)

4. AVOID ANTHROPOMORPHISM
  • Anthropomorphism is...(p. 24 and glossary)
  • It's not bad when animals are our close relatives, but more dubious when animals are very distant from us in evolutionary terms
5. AVOID ANTHROPODENIAL
  • Anthropodenial is ..... (p. 22 and glossary)

6. REJECT MORGAN'S CANON (CANON=RULE)
  • Lloyd Morgan, a British psychologist (1894) – "In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower on the psychological scale." (pg. 42)
    • Trial-and-error (lower) vs. insight (higher)
    • Instinct (lower) vs. intelligence (higher)
  • Example of anthropodenial plus Morgan's Canon? 

7. EXPECT COGNITIVE RIPPLING


  • terminology
    • homology – "shared traits derived from a common ancestor" (p. 75). 
      • human hand and bat's wing

    • analogy – "when distant animals independently evolve in the same direction, known as convergent evolution" (p. 75)
      • echolocation in bats and whales
      • wings in insects and birds
      • opposable thumbs in primates and opossums
      • armored bodies in armadillos and pangolins
      • spines in hedgehogs and porcupines
      • "predatory weaponry" in Tasmanian tiger and coyote
    • cognitive rippling – when same capacity is found across the animal kingdom
      • "common precisely because it isn't bound by the evolutionary tree: the same capacity may pop up almost anywhere it is needed" (p. 75)
      • cognitive ripple rule:"Every cognitive capacity that we discover is going to be older and more widespread than initially thought." (p. 93)
  • cognitive rippling: the case of tool use