Educated Folly About Animal Minds and Animal Suffering

Educated Folly About Animal Minds and Animal Suffering

Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering? Voltaire (1694-1778)

Animal communication, animal minds, and animal language

The communication systems of nonhuman animals are reviewed, together with a discussion of their relevance for the evolution of human language. The teaching of language to nonhumans, as well as signs of mind and consciousness outside our species, are considered as possible bridges between us and the rest of the animal kingdom.

Animal rights, animal minds, and human mindreading.

Do non-human animals have rights? The answer to this question depends on whether animals have morally relevant mental properties. Mindreading is the human activity of ascribing mental states to other organisms. Current knowledge about the evolution and cognitive structure of mindreading indicates that human ascriptions of mental states to non-human animals are very inaccurate. The accuracy of h...

Running Head: Ethics, Science, Animal Minds Title: Ethics and the Science of Animal Minds

Ethicists have commonly appealed to science to bolster their arguments for elevating the moral status of nonhuman animals. I describe a framework within which I take many ethicists to be making such appeals. I focus on an apparent gap in this framework between those properties of animals that are part of the scientific consensus, and those to which ethicists typically appeal in their arguments....

Animal Minds and Their Moral Significance