Animal minds, cognitive ethology, and ethics

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 11, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 299-317

  Allen, Colin ^a   Bekoff, Marc ^b  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

Author keywords

Animal cognition; Consciousness; Ethics; Science

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248337968     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-007-9016-5     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Donald R. Griffin, "Prospects for a Cognitive Ethology," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (1978), pp. 527-538.
2. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd Edition (New York: Avon Books, 1990), pp. 11-13.
3. See, for example, David DeGrazia, Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
4. and G. Varner, In Nature's Interests? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
5. A. Kacelnik, J. Chappell, A. A. S. Weir and B. Kenward, "Cognitive Adaptations for Tool-Related Behaviour in New Caledonian Crows," in E. A. Wasserman and T. R. Zentall (eds.), Comparative Cognition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 515-528.
6. S. F. Brosnan and F. B. M. de Waal, "Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay," Nature 425 (2003), pp. 297-299.
7. Colin Allen and Marc Bekoff, "Animal Play and the Evolution of Morality: An Ethological Approach," Topoi 24 (2005), pp. 125-135.
8. L. Sneddon, V. Braithwaite, and M. Gentle, "Do Fish have Nociceptors: Evidence for the Evolution of a Vertebrate Sensory System," Proceedings of the Royal Society London B, 270 (2003), pp. 1115-1121.
9. J. Panksepp & J. Burgdorf, "'Laughing' Rats and the Evolutionary Antecedents of Human Joy?" Physiology and Behavior 79 (2003), pp. 533-547.
10. See, e.g., D. Adam, "Scientists Say Lobsters Feel No Pain," Guardian Unlimited, February 8, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ animalrights/story/0,11917,1408050,00.html (accessed on February 6, 2007).
11. See Marc Bekoff, "Animal Emotions and Animal Sentience and Why They Matter: Blending 'Science Sense' with Common Sense, Compassion, and Heart," in J. Turner and J. D'Silva (eds.) Animals, Ethics and Trade (London: Earthscan Publishing, 2006), p. 27-40;
12. and Marc Bekoff, Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues (Philadephia: Temple University Press, 2006).
13. See Colin Allen, "Animal Pain," Noûs 38 (2004), pp. 617-643.
14. M. Blumberg and E. A. Wasserman, "Animal Mind and the Argument from Design," American Psychologist 50 (1995), p. 133.
15. John Searle, "Animal Minds," Etica & Animali 9 (1998), p. 50.
16. Peter M. Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 199.
17. Bekoff, "Animal Emotions and Animal Sentience and Why They Matter," p. 33.
18. Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring (New York: Crowell, 1952).
19. Niko Tinbergen, "On the Aims and Methods of Ethology," Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 20 (1963), pp. 410-433.
20. See D. S. Lehrman, "A Critique of Konrad Lorenz's Theory of Instinctive Behavior," The Quarterly Review of Biology 28 (1953), pp. 337-363;
21. and P. E. Griffiths, "Instinct in the '50s: The British Reception of Konrad Lorenz's Theory of Instinctive Behavior," Biology and Philosophy 19 (2004), pp. 609-631.
22. D. Jamieson and Marc Bekoff, "On Aims and Methods of Cognitive Ethology," Philosophy of Science Association 2 (1993), pp. 110-124.
23. Marc Bekoff, "Social Communication in Canids: Evidence for the Evolution of a Stereotyped Mammalian Display," Science 197 (1977), pp. 1097-1099.
24. Marc Bekoff, "Play Signals as Punctuation: The Structure of Social Play in Canids," Behaviour 132 (1995), pp. 419-429.
25. Colin Allen, "Is Anyone a Cognitive Ethologist?" Biology and Philosophy 19 (2004), pp. 589-607.
26. For critical discussion of Griffin's agenda see Jamieson and Bekoff, "On Aims and Methods of Cognitive Ethology;" and S. J. Crowley and Colin Allen, "Animal Behavior: E. Pluribus Unum?" in M. Ruse (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
27. Jamieson and Bekoff, "On Aims and Methods of Cognitive Ethology."
28. G. M. Burghardt, "Cognitive Ethology and Critical Anthropomorphism: A Snake with Two Heads and Hognose Snakes that Play Dead," in C. A. Ristau (ed.), Cognitive Ethology (San Francisco: Erlbaum, 1991), pp. 53-90;
29. Bekoff, "Animal Emotions and Animal Sentience and Why They Matter;" and Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues;
30. A. Horowitz and Marc Bekoflf, "Naturalizing Anthropomorphism: Behavioral Prompts to our Humanizing of Animals," in Anthrozoö s, forthcoming.
31. See Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1871);
32. George Romanes, Animal Intelligence (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1882).
33. But see E. Crist's discussion of Darwin's work in the present context [E. Crist, "The Inner Life of Earthworms: Darwin's Argument and its Implications," in Marc Bekoff, Colin Allen, and G. M. Burghardt (eds.), The Cognitive Animal (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002), pp. 3-8].
34. C. Lloyd Morgan, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (London; Walter Scott, 1894), p. 53.
35. See Blumberg and Wasserman, "Animal Mind and the Argument from Design," and T. R. Zentall, "The Case for a Cognitive Approach to Animal Learning and Behavior," Behavioural Processes 54 (2001), pp. 65-78.
36. For a discussion of the ways in which psychologists' mazes are tuned to rats, see W. Timberlake, "Niche-Related Learning in Laboratory Paradigms: The Case of Maze Behavior in Norway Rats," Behavioural Brain Research 134 (2002), pp. 355-374.
37. For a review, see N. J. Emery and N. S. Clayton, "The Mentality of Crows: Convergent Evolution of Intelligence in Corvids and Apes," Science 306 (2004), pp. 1903-1907.
38. D. L. Cheney and R. M. Seyfarth, How Monkeys See the World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990).
39. Cheney and Sefarth, How Monkeys See the World, p. 230.
40. See, e.g., Peter M. Carruthers, "Brute Experience," The Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989), pp. 258-269;
41. and Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness.
42. Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness.
43. See Allen, "Animal Pain" for a more detailed discussion of analogy arguments.
44. T. E. King, R. L. Joynes, M. W. Meagher, and J. W. Grau, "The Impact of Shock on Pain Reactivity II: Evidence for Enhanced Pain," Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 22 (1996), pp. 265-278;
45. and L. Gruen, "The Morals of Animal Minds," in Marc Bekoff, Colin Allen and G.M. Burhgardt (eds.) The Cognitive Animal (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002) pp. 437-442.
46. Colin Allen, P. N. Fuchs, A. Shriver, and H. Wilson, "Deciphering Animal Pain," in M. Aydede (ed.) Pain (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005), pp. 352-366.
47. B. Puppe, P. C. Schön, A. Tuchscherer and G. Manteuffel, "Castration-Induced Vocalisation in Domestic Piglets, Sus scrofa: Complex and Specific Alterations of the Vocal Quality," Applied Animal Behavior Science 95 (2005), pp. 67-78.
48. It is not possible to turn to science for resolution because such terms, if they are defined at all, are done so only controversially.
49. See, e.g., James Rachels, Created from Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); DeGrazia, Taking Animals Seriously, Varner, In Nature's Interests?
50. Brosnan and de Waal, "Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay."
51. Allen and Bekoff, "Animal Play and the Evolution of Morality."
52. See also Gruen, "The Morals of Animal Minds."
53. Colin Allen, "Ethics and the Science of Animal Minds," Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 27(2006), pp. 375-394.
54. Bekoff, "Animal Emotions and Animal Sentience and Why They Matter."
55. Bernard Rollin, The Unheeded Cry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
56. D. Jamieson, Morality's Progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 68.
57. We would like to thank Robert Francescotti and Gary Steiner for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay.