The Single Minded Animal

Author : Preston Stovall
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000434001
Total Pages : 398 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Single-Minded Animal written by Preston Stovall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an account of discursive or reason-governed cognition, by synthesizing research in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and evolutionary anthropology. Using the grasp of a natural language as a model for the autonomous or self-governed rationality of discursive cognition, the author uses a semantics for individual intentions, shared intentions, and normative attitudes as a framework for understanding what it is to be a rational animal. This semantics interprets claims about shared intentions and claims about what people ought and may do as the expression of plans of action that involve taking the points of view of other people within a community. This has important consequences for our understanding of both the natural basis and the social relevance of intentional and normative mental states. In order to distinguish the strong and weak modal force, which characterizes normativity but not shared intentionality, the author argues that a notion of single-minded practical cognition is necessary. This account of single-mindedness is then used to shed light on the autonomy or self-government characteristic of discursive cognition, as manifest in a linguistic community whose members are able to adopt the standpoints of others. Drawing together research in philosophy and the related sciences, the formal account of the semantic content of the claims we use to give expression to shared intentional and normative mental states integrates well with research in cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, and social psychology concerning the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of shared intentionality and norm psychology in human beings and other primates. The Single-Minded Animal will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on shared intentionality, normativity, rationality, cognitive science, social and developmental psychology, and evolutionary anthropology.

Author : Frans de Waal
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393246191
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? written by Frans de Waal and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.

Author : Peter Godfrey-Smith
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374720185
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Metazoa written by Peter Godfrey-Smith and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Enthralling . . . breathtaking . . . Metazoa brings an extraordinary and astute look at our own mind’s essential link to the animal world." —The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "A great book . . . [Godfrey-Smith is] brilliant at describing just what he sees, the patterns of behaviour of the animals he observes." —Nigel Warburton, Five Books The scuba-diving philosopher who wrote Other Minds explores the origins of animal consciousness Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom—the Metazoa—they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds. In his acclaimed 2016 book, Other Minds, the philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus—the closest thing to an intelligent alien on Earth. In Metazoa, Godfrey-Smith expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of subjective experience with the assistance of far-flung species. As he delves into what it feels like to perceive and interact with the world as other life-forms do, Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the animal body well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path. In accessible, riveting prose, he charts the ways that subsequent evolutionary developments—eyes that track, for example, and bodies that move through and manipulate the environment—shaped the subjective lives of animals. Following the evolutionary paths of a glass sponge, soft coral, banded shrimp, octopus, and fish, then moving onto land and the world of insects, birds, and primates like ourselves, Metazoa gathers their stories together in a way that bridges the gap between mind and matter, addressing one of the most vexing philosophical problems: that of consciousness. Combining vivid animal encounters with philosophical reflections and the latest news from biology, Metazoa reveals that even in our high-tech, AI-driven times, there is no understanding our minds without understanding nerves, muscles, and active bodies. The story that results is as rich and vibrant as life itself.

Author : Michelle Maiese
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199689237
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Embodied Selves and Divided Minds written by Michelle Maiese and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines how research in embodied cognition and enactivism can contribute to our understanding of the nature of self-consciousness, the metaphysics of personal identity, and the disruptions to self-awareness that occur in cases of psychopathology.

Author : Donald R. Griffin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022622712X
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Animal Minds written by Donald R. Griffin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Animal Minds, Donald R. Griffin takes us on a guided tour of the recent explosion of scientific research on animal mentality. Are animals consciously aware of anything, or are they merely living machines, incapable of conscious thoughts or emotional feelings? How can we tell? Such questions have long fascinated Griffin, who has been a pioneer at the forefront of research in animal cognition for decades, and is recognized as one of the leading behavioral ecologists of the twentieth century. With this new edition of his classic book, which he has completely revised and updated, Griffin moves beyond considerations of animal cognition to argue that scientists can and should investigate questions of animal consciousness. Using examples from studies of species ranging from chimpanzees and dolphins to birds and honeybees, he demonstrates how communication among animals can serve as a "window" into what animals think and feel, just as human speech and nonverbal communication tell us most of what we know about the thoughts and feelings of other people. Even when they don't communicate about it, animals respond with sometimes surprising versatility to new situations for which neither their genes nor their previous experiences have prepared them, and Griffin discusses what these behaviors can tell us about animal minds. He also reviews the latest research in cognitive neuroscience, which has revealed startling similarities in the neural mechanisms underlying brain functioning in both humans and other animals. Finally, in four chapters greatly expanded for this edition, Griffin considers the latest scientific research on animal consciousness, pro and con, and explores its profound philosophical and ethical implications.

Author : Pamela Weintraub
Publisher : Centennial Books
ISBN 13 : 9781951274610
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inside the Animal Mind written by Pamela Weintraub and published by Centennial Books. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elephants can count. Dogs read our expressions. Cows have personality. Fish feel Pain. What do animals know and feel? Are they creative, can they actually make art? Do they grieve or have agency - the ability to make decisions, intentionally manipulate other creatures (even us) or love? Animals have extraordinary abilities. Their feelings are much like ours, and some of their cognitive skills equal our own. Inside the Animal Mind unpacks their inner lives and their relationship to us. Animal consciousness has long been fascinating — but difficult to penetrate. Today, that is changing, and fast. Researchers say that each creature has evolved a suitable intelligence and emotional life for it’s own role in the world: Dogs have minds that race though time on the fast track, in line with their quick metabolisms. Cats have a detailed language of meows to communicate specifically with humans. The octopus, with eight interacting arms, has a wildly complex brain. Readers will learn about how dogs love us, the special skills of horse therapists, and the wisdom of communities of bees. We explore how animals remember, how they love, the nature of their self-awareness and moral codes — and how they have fun.

Author : Peter Carruthers
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198843704
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Human and Animal Minds written by Peter Carruthers and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Jonathan Gottschall
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 0547391404
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Storytelling Animal written by Jonathan Gottschall and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative scholar delivers the first book on the new science of storytelling: the latest thinking on why we tell stories and what stories reveal about human nature.

Author : Emily Gaarder
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 0813550815
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Women and the Animal Rights Movement written by Emily Gaarder and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-19 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animal rights is one of the fastest growing social movements today. Women greatly outnumber men as activists, yet surprisingly, little has been written about the importance and impact of gender on the movement. Women and the Animal Rights Movement combats stereotypes of women activists as mere sentimentalists by exploring the political and moral character of their advocacy on behalf of animals. Emily Gaarder analyzes the politics of gender in the movement, incorporating in-depth interviews with women and participant observation of animal rights organizations, conferences, and protests to describe struggles over divisions of labor and leadership. Controversies over PETA advertising campaigns that rely on women's sexuality to "sell" animal rights illustrate how female crusaders are asked to prioritize the cause of animals above all else. Gaarder underscores the importance of a paradigm shift in the animal liberation movement, one that seeks a more integrated vision of animal rights that connects universally to other issues--gender, race, economics, and the environment--highlighting that many women activists recognize and are motivated by the connection between the oppression of animals and other social injustices.

Author : Rod Preece
Publisher : UBC Press
ISBN 13 : 0774821116
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Animal Sensibility and Inclusive Justice in the Age of Bernard Shaw written by Rod Preece and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In search of insight into late Victorian ideas about animals and the animal rights movement, Rod Preece explores animal sensibility in the work of George Bernard Shaw. Shaw’s reformist thought – particularly what Preece calls inclusive justice, which aimed to eliminate the suffering of both humans and animals – emerges in relation to that of fellow reformers such as Edward Carpenter, Annie Besant, and Henry Salt. This fascinating account of the characters and crusades that shaped Shaw’s philosophy sheds new light not only on modernist thought but also on the relationship between historical socialism and the ethical treatment of animals.