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This collection of essays was written by former students, associates, admirers, critics and friends of Donald R. Griffin -- the creator of cognitive ethology. Stimulated by his work, this volume presents ideas and experiments in the field of cognitive ethology -- the exploration of the mental experiences of animals as they behave in their natural environment during the course of their normal lives. Cognitive Ethology discusses the possibility that animals may have abilities to experience, communicate, reason, and plan beyond those usually ascribed to them in a "black box" or "stimulus-response" interpretation of their behavior. Contributions from scientists who have been associated with or influenced by Griffin offer a lively array of views, some disparate from one another and some especially selected to present approaches contrary to his.
When you give a zoning employee an application?.it's hard to tell who will be more relieved to reach the point of zoning approval. Carolyn Ristau draws on her extensive experience as a zoning consultant to bring humor to the often-frustrating experience of zoning review. With tips for first-time applicants and seasoned professionals alike, Zoning Adventures: A Home Addition Paper Chase pulls back the curtain to reveal what goes on behind the zoning counter in the fictional, hilly city of Yinzburgh.
Many people who have thought about God have not thought about animals, or about the relationship between the two. But among those who have are some of the most celebrated religious thinkers, including Michel de Montaigne, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and Paul Tillich. This volume comprises 24 scholarly studies that detail challenges to the dominant anthropocentrism of most religious traditions. The editors have brought together Jewish, Unitarian, Christian, transcendentalist, Muslim, Hindu, Dissenting, deist, and Quaker voices, each offering a unique theological perspective that counters the neglect of the nonhuman. Animal Theolo...
James Fetzer explores the nature of consciousness and cognition in human beings and other animals. He addresses the inadequacies of the computational conception and expounds on an alternative theory based on the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior. Fetzer offers a new theory of intelligence by which machines can be intelligent without possessing minds.
Drawing on our growing knowledge of animal cognition, this book provides a critical analysis of the use of animals in the legal regime and the practice of toxicity testing. Although animal abuse has become a major issue, animal testing remains largely in the shadows, even though it involves substantial cruelty. Toxicity testing, in particular, imposes considerable pain, suffering and ultimately death on those laboratory animals – often mice – chosen to demonstrate the characteristics of chemicals and their commercial potential. This book documents and critically analyzes the animal protection laws of the European Union, the United States and Canada. It not only examines the tests themsel...
Providing a new conceptual scaffold for further research in biology and cognition, this book introduces the new field of Cognitive Biology: a systems biology approach showing that further progress in this field will depend on a deep recognition of developmental processes, as well as on the consideration of the developed organism as an agent able to modify and control its surrounding environment. The role of cognition, the means through which the organism is able to cope with its environment, cannot be underestimated. In particular, it is shown that this activity is grounded on a theory of information based on Bayesian probabilities. The organism is considered as a cybernetic system able to i...
This volume collects thirteen papers by Hilary Kornblith on the theme of naturalistic epistemology. These papers present Kornblith's own version of a naturalistic epistemology, together with critical discussion of alternative approaches, including work on foundationalism, the coherence theory of justification, internalism and externalism, social epistemology, the role of intuitions in philosophical theorizing, epistemic normativity, and the ways in whichphilosophical theories may be informed by empirical considerations.
This volume provides a broad overview of issues in the philosophy of behavioral biology, covering four main themes: genetic, developmental, evolutionary, and neurobiological explanations of behavior. It is both interdisciplinary and empirically informed in its approach, addressing philosophical issues that arise from recent scientific findings in biological research on human and non-human animal behavior. Accordingly, it includes papers by professional philosophers and philosophers of science, as well as practicing scientists. Much of the work in this volume builds on presentations given at the international conference, “Biological Explanations of Behavior: Philosophical Perspectives”, held in 2008 at the Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany. The volume is intended to be of interest to a broad range of audiences, which includes philosophers (e.g., philosophers of mind, philosophers of biology, and metaethicists), as well as practicing scientists, such as biologists or psychologists whose interests relate to biological explanations of behavior.
Science aims at the discovery of general principles of special kinds that are applicable for the explanation and prediction of the phenomena of the world in the form of theories and laws. When the phenomena themselves happen to be general, the principlesinvolved assume the form of theories; and when they are p- ticular, they assume the form of general laws. Theories themselves are sets of laws and de nitions that apply to a common domain, which makes laws indispensable to science. Understanding science thus depends upon understanding the nature of theories and laws, the logical structure of explanations and predictions based upon them, and the principles of inference and decision that apply ...
This book analyses animal creativity in order to unsettle the dominant assumptions that underpin current ideas of authorship and ownership in intellectual property. Drawing upon theories of animal behaviour and cognitive ethology, the book exposes and disrupts the anthropocentrism that informs prevailing assumptions about creativity, intentionality, and authorship within the field of intellectual property, towards a new theory of authorship and personhood through play and the playful. Moving on to challenge the invocation of a more general human-nonhuman distinction in this context, the book also engages the challenge to this distinction posed by artificial intelligence. Incorporating critic...