Animal minds

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
The Face ◽  
Physical Functions ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Communicative Signals

By examining the mind across species, we can make better progress on questions about the nature of the mind generally. While this has been acknowledged since ancient times, only recently has the philosophy of animal minds developed into a robust area of philosophical research. One wave of recent discussion focused on the nature and possibility of animal belief. Another wave of discussion focused on and the question of chimpanzee mindreading/theory of mind, or whether chimpanzees understand that other animals have mental states. A more comprehensive investigation into the philosophy of animal minds came with the publication of the book Species of Mind (1997), written by philosopher Colin Allen and biologist Marc Bekoff. Given a commitment to the evolutionary continuity of mentality, just as we study other animals to better understand physical functions like disease or digestion, we can look at other animals to better understand consciousness, communication, memory, perception, and other aspects of mind. This approach raised methodological questions about how best to study animal minds. Anthropomorphism (the attribution of perhaps uniquely human traits to animals) and the use of anecdotes as data in animal cognition research were hotly debated. In the face of evidence suggesting that vervet monkeys have different alarm calls for different predators, philosophers investigated how best to interpret animal behaviour and communicative signals. With advances in neurological and biological techniques, scientists started investigating animal consciousness, and philosophers often appealed to empirical research as part of their arguments about whether animals are conscious. Animals also started to gain more attention from ethicists, who often appealed to mental properties in their arguments for granting moral status to animals. At the same time that the philosophical interest in animal minds has grown, many more findings in animal cognition have come from research in psychology, biology, and anthropology. In many cases, the philosophical and scientific discussions are tightly intertwined. This is apparent in the numerous philosophical articles that take empirical research into account as well as in the rich discussions about animal cognitive capacities that often arise from particular empirical findings.

scholarly journals Sentience and the Origins of Consciousness: From Cartesian Duality to Markovian Monism

Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl J. Friston ◽  
Wanja Wiese ◽  
J. Allan Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Probability Distributions ◽  
Information Geometry ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Extrinsic Information ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Markov Blanket ◽  
Internal States ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Intentional Systems ◽  
The Mind

This essay addresses Cartesian duality and how its implicit dialectic might be repaired using physics and information theory. Our agenda is to describe a key distinction in the physical sciences that may provide a foundation for the distinction between mind and matter, and between sentient and intentional systems. From this perspective, it becomes tenable to talk about the physics of sentience and ‘forces’ that underwrite our beliefs (in the sense of probability distributions represented by our internal states), which may ground our mental states and consciousness. We will refer to this view as Markovian monism, which entails two claims: (1) fundamentally, there is only one type of thing and only one type of irreducible property (hence monism). (2) All systems possessing a Markov blanket have properties that are relevant for understanding the mind and consciousness: if such systems have mental properties, then they have them partly by virtue of possessing a Markov blanket (hence Markovian). Markovian monism rests upon the information geometry of random dynamic systems. In brief, the information geometry induced in any system—whose internal states can be distinguished from external states—must acquire a dual aspect. This dual aspect concerns the (intrinsic) information geometry of the probabilistic evolution of internal states and a separate (extrinsic) information geometry of probabilistic beliefs about external states that are parameterised by internal states. We call these intrinsic (i.e., mechanical, or state-based) and extrinsic (i.e., Markovian, or belief-based) information geometries, respectively. Although these mathematical notions may sound complicated, they are fairly straightforward to handle, and may offer a means through which to frame the origins of consciousness.

Dualism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Property Dualism ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events

Dualism is the view that mental phenomena are, in some respect, nonphysical. The best-known version is due to Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a nonphysical substance. Descartes argued that, because minds have no spatial properties and physical reality is essentially extended in space, minds are wholly nonphysical. Every human being is accordingly a composite of two objects: a physical body, and a nonphysical object that is that human being’s mind. On a weaker version of dualism, which contemporary thinkers find more acceptable, human beings are physical substances but have mental properties, and those properties are not physical. This view is known as property dualism, or the dual-aspect theory. Several considerations appear to support dualism. Mental phenomena are strikingly different from all others, and the idea that they are nonphysical may explain just how they are distinctive. Moreover, physical reality conforms to laws formulated in strictly mathematical terms. But, because mental phenomena such as thinking, desiring and sensing seem intractable to being described in mathematical terms, it is tempting to conclude that these phenomena are not physical. In addition, many mental states are conscious states – states that we are aware of in a way that seems to be wholly unmediated. And many would argue that, whatever the nature of mental phenomena that are not conscious, consciousness cannot be physical. There are also, however, reasons to resist dualism. People, and other creatures with mental endowments, presumably exist wholly within the natural order, and it is generally held that all natural phenomena are built up from basic physical constituents. Dualism, however, represents the mind as uniquely standing outside this unified physical picture. There is also a difficulty about causal relations between mind and body. Mental events often cause bodily events, as when a desire causes an action, and bodily events often cause mental events, for example in perceiving. But the causal interactions into which physical events enter are governed by laws that connect physical events. So if the mental is not physical, it would be hard to understand how mental events can interact causally with bodily events. For these reasons and others, dualism is, despite various reasons advanced in its support, a theoretically uncomfortable position.

Mental Substances

2003 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Tim Crane
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Semantic Externalism ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Independent Entity ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events

Philosophers of mind typically conduct their discussions in terms of mental events, mental processes, mental properties, mental states—but rarely in terms of minds themselves. Sometimes this neglect is explicity acknowledged. Donald Davidson, for example, writes that ‘there are no such things as minds, but people have mental properties, which is to say that certain psychological predicates are true of them. These properties are constantly changing, and such changes are mental events’. Hilary Putnam agrees, though for somewhat different reasons:The view I have long defended is that the mind is not a thing, talk of our minds is talk of World-involving capabilities that we have and activities that we engage in. As Dewey succinctly put it, ‘Mind is primarily a verb. It denotes all the ways in which we deal consciously and expressly with the situation in which we find ourseleves. Unfortunately, an influential manner of thinking has changed modes of action into an underlying substance that performs the activities in question. It has treated mind as an independent entity which attends, purposes, cares and remembers’. But the traditional view, by treating mental states as states of the ‘underlying substance’, makes them properties of something ‘inside’, and, if one is a materialist philosopher, that means properties of our brains. So the next problem naturally seems to be: ‘Which neurological properties of our brains do these mental properties “reduce” to?’ For how could our brains have properties that aren't neurological? And this is how materialist philosphers saw the problem until the advent of such new alternatives in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language as Functionalism and Semantic Externalism.

scholarly journals Unsupervised data-driven stratification of mentalizing heterogeneity in autism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael V. Lombardo ◽  
Meng-Chuan Lai ◽  
Bonnie Auyeung ◽  
Rosemary J. Holt ◽  
Carrie Allison ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Item Level ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
The Face ◽  
Clustering Approach ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Face Reading ◽  
Level Performance

AbstractIndividuals affected by autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are considerably heterogeneous. Novel approaches are needed to parse this heterogeneity to enhance precision in clinical and translational research. Applying a clustering approach taken from genomics and systems biology on two large independent cognitive datasets of adults with and without ASC (n=715; n=251), we find replicable evidence for 5 discrete ASC subgroups that are highly differentiated in item-level performance on an explicit mentalizing task tapping ability to read complex emotion and mental states from the eye region of the face (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test; RMET). Three subgroups comprising 42-65% of ASC adults show evidence for large impairments (Cohen’s d = −1.03 to −11.21), while other subgroups are effectively unimpaired. These findings delineate robust natural subdivisions within the ASC population that may allow for more individualized inferences and accelerate research towards precision medicine goals.

The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Hoinski ◽  
Ronald Polansky
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Michael Polanyi ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Theoretical Science

David Hoinski and Ronald Polansky’s “The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism” shows how the general tendencies of contemporary philosophy of science disclose a return to the Aristotelian emphasis on both the formation of dispositions to know and the role of the mind in theoretical science. Focusing on a comparison of Michael Polanyi and Aristotle, Hoinski and Polansky investigate to what degree Aristotelian thought retains its purchase on reality in the face of the changes wrought by modern science. Polanyi’s approach relies on several Aristotelian assumptions, including the naturalness of the human desire to know, the institutional and personal basis for the accumulation of knowledge, and the endorsement of realism against objectivism. Hoinski and Polansky emphasize the promise of Polanyi’s neo-Aristotelian framework, which argues that science is won through reflection on reality.

scholarly journals Reframing ‘integration’: acknowledging and addressing five core critiques

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Spencer ◽  
Katharine Charsley
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Heuristic Model ◽  
Migration Studies ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Narrow Focus ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractEmpirical and theoretical insights from the rich body of research on ‘integration’ in migration studies have led to increasing recognition of its complexity. Among European scholars, however, there remains no consensus on how integration should be defined nor what the processes entail. Integration has, moreover, been the subject of powerful academic critiques, some decrying any further use of the concept. In this paper we argue that it is both necessary and possible to address each of the five core critiques on which recent criticism has focused: normativity; negative objectification of migrants as ‘other’; outdated imaginary of society; methodological nationalism; and a narrow focus on migrants in the factors shaping integration processes. We provide a definition of integration, and a revised heuristic model of integration processes and the ‘effectors’ that have been shown to shape them, as a contribution to a constructive debate on the ways in which these challenges for empirical research can be overcome.

scholarly journals Conceptual Analysis and Empirical Observations of Animal Minds

Philosophia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Parellada
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Alarm Calls ◽  
Vervet Monkeys ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
First Order

AbstractThe relation between conceptual analysis and empirical observations when ascribing or denying concepts and beliefs to non-human animals is not straightforward. In order to reflect on this relation, I focus on two theoretical proposals (Davidson’s and Allen’s) and one empirical case (vervet monkeys’ alarm calls), the three of which are permanently discussed and considered in the literature on animal cognition. First, I review briefly Davidson’s arguments for denying thought to non-linguistic animals. Second, I review Allen’s criteria for ascribing concepts to creatures capable of correcting their discriminatory powers by taking into account their previous errors. Allen affirms that this is an empirical proposal which offers good reasons, but not necessary or sufficient conditions, for concept attribution. Against Allen, I argue that his important proposal is not an empirical, but a conceptual one. Third, I resort to vervet monkeys to show that Allen’s criteria, and not Davidson’s, are very relevant for ascribing first-order and denying second-order beliefs to this species and thus make sense of the idea of animal cognition.

scholarly journals Activity in the brain’s valuation and mentalizing networks is associated with propagation of online recommendations

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa C. Baek ◽  
Matthew Brook O’Donnell ◽  
Christin Scholz ◽  
Rui Pei ◽  
Javier O. Garcia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Opinion Change ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mentalizing System

AbstractWord of mouth recommendations influence a wide range of choices and behaviors. What takes place in the mind of recommendation receivers that determines whether they will be successfully influenced? Prior work suggests that brain systems implicated in assessing the value of stimuli (i.e., subjective valuation) and understanding others’ mental states (i.e., mentalizing) play key roles. The current study used neuroimaging and natural language classifiers to extend these findings in a naturalistic context and tested the extent to which the two systems work together or independently in responding to social influence. First, we show that in response to text-based social media recommendations, activity in both the brain’s valuation system and mentalizing system was associated with greater likelihood of opinion change. Second, participants were more likely to update their opinions in response to negative, compared to positive, recommendations, with activity in the mentalizing system scaling with the negativity of the recommendations. Third, decreased functional connectivity between valuation and mentalizing systems was associated with opinion change. Results highlight the role of brain regions involved in mentalizing and positive valuation in recommendation propagation, and further show that mentalizing may be particularly key in processing negative recommendations, whereas the valuation system is relevant in evaluating both positive and negative recommendations.

Une attitude libertine: badiner avec la mort. Boureau- Deslandes et ses Réflexions sur les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant

2012 ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Francine Markovits
Keyword(s):  
The Face ◽  
The Mind

Don't philosophers die just like all other men? In order to speak of the death of philosophers, why choose an author like Boureau-Deslandes, who collected anecdotes of insolence in the face of death? Undoubtedly, free minds could only disarm theology by joking about it. The mental, moral and playful mechanisms of the mind can be taken apart to reveal the bans inscribed in the conscience through the workings of institutions. Against the philosophies of melancholy, fear, death and power, a philosophy of banter is a cheerful philosophy, an ethics of taste that destabilises the rules. It is this practice of bantering insolence that turns temperament into virtue and a man into a philosopher.

scholarly journals The hidden side of animal cognition research: Scientists’ attitudes toward bias, replicability and scientific practice

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0256607
Author(s):  
Benjamin G. Farrar ◽  
Ljerka Ostojić ◽  
Nicola S. Clayton
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Free Text ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Questionable Research Practices ◽  
Replication Studies

Animal cognition research aims to understand animal minds by using a diverse range of methods across an equally diverse range of species. Throughout its history, the field has sought to mitigate various biases that occur when studying animal minds, from experimenter effects to anthropomorphism. Recently, there has also been a focus on how common scientific practices might affect the reliability and validity of published research. Usually, these issues are discussed in the literature by a small group of scholars with a specific interest in the topics. This study aimed to survey a wider range of animal cognition researchers to ask about their attitudes towards classic and contemporary issues facing the field. Two-hundred and ten active animal cognition researchers completed our survey, and provided answers on questions relating to bias, replicability, statistics, publication, and belief in animal cognition. Collectively, researchers were wary of bias in the research field, but less so in their own work. Over 70% of researchers endorsed Morgan’s canon as a useful principle but many caveated this in their free-text responses. Researchers self-reported that most of their studies had been published, however they often reported that studies went unpublished because they had negative or inconclusive results, or results that questioned “preferred” theories. Researchers rarely reported having performed questionable research practices themselves—however they thought that other researchers sometimes (52.7% of responses) or often (27.9% of responses) perform them. Researchers near unanimously agreed that replication studies are important but too infrequently performed in animal cognition research, 73.0% of respondents suggested areas of animal cognition research could experience a ‘replication crisis’ if replication studies were performed. Consistently, participants’ free-text responses provided a nuanced picture of the challenges animal cognition research faces, which are available as part of an open dataset. However, many researchers appeared concerned with how to interpret negative results, publication bias, theoretical bias and reliability in areas of animal cognition research. Collectively, these data provide a candid overview of barriers to progress in animal cognition and can inform debates on how individual researchers, as well as organizations and journals, can facilitate robust scientific research in animal cognition.

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