Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals PDF full book. Access full book title Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals by Robert W. Mitchell. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Robert W. Mitchell
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791431252
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 552
Get Book
Book Description
People commonly think that animals are psychologically like themselves (anthropomorphism), and describe what animals do in narratives (anecdotes) that support these psychological interpretations. This is the first book to evaluate the significance and usefulness of the practices of anthropomorphism and anecdotalism for understanding animals. Diverse perspectives are presented in thoughtful, critical essays by historians, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, behaviorists, biologists, primatologists, and ethologists. The nature of anthropomorphism and anecdotal analysis is examined; social, cultural, and historical attitudes toward them are presented; and scientific attitudes are appraised. Authors provide fascinating in-depth descriptions and analyses of diverse species of animals, including octopi, great apes, monkeys, dogs, sea lions, and, of course, human beings. Concerns about, and proposals for, evaluations of a variety of psychological aspects of animals are discussed, including mental state attribution, intentionality, cognition, consciousness, self-consciousness, and language.
Author: Robert W. Mitchell
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791431252
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 552
Get Book
Book Description
People commonly think that animals are psychologically like themselves (anthropomorphism), and describe what animals do in narratives (anecdotes) that support these psychological interpretations. This is the first book to evaluate the significance and usefulness of the practices of anthropomorphism and anecdotalism for understanding animals. Diverse perspectives are presented in thoughtful, critical essays by historians, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, behaviorists, biologists, primatologists, and ethologists. The nature of anthropomorphism and anecdotal analysis is examined; social, cultural, and historical attitudes toward them are presented; and scientific attitudes are appraised. Authors provide fascinating in-depth descriptions and analyses of diverse species of animals, including octopi, great apes, monkeys, dogs, sea lions, and, of course, human beings. Concerns about, and proposals for, evaluations of a variety of psychological aspects of animals are discussed, including mental state attribution, intentionality, cognition, consciousness, self-consciousness, and language.
Author: Marian Stamp Dawkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
ISBN: 0199587825
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Get Book
Book Description
In a world increasingly concerned with the human species and its future, Marian Stamp Dawkins argues that we need to rethink some of the fundamental questions regarding animal welfare. How are we justified in projecting human emotions on to animals? What kind of mental lives do they have? What can science tell us about their quality of life?
Author: Marc Bekoff
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262523226
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 508
Get Book
Book Description
The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. The contributors include cognitive ethologists, behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation, recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution, reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, and neuroethology.
Author: Lorraine Daston
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231503776
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Get Book
Book Description
Is anthropomorphism a scientific sin? Scientists and animal researchers routinely warn against "animal stories," and contrast rigorous explanations and observation to facile and even fanciful projections about animals. Yet many of us, scientists and researchers included, continue to see animals as humans and humans as animals. As this innovative new collection demonstrates, humans use animals to transcend the confines of self and species; they also enlist them to symbolize, dramatize, and illuminate aspects of humans' experience and fantasy. Humans merge with animals in stories, films, philosophical speculations, and scientific treatises. In their performance with humans on many stages and in different ways, animals move us to think. From Victorian vivisectionists to elephant conservation, from ancient Indian mythology to pet ownership in the contemporary United States, our understanding of both animals and what it means to be human has been shaped by anthropomorphic thinking. The contributors to Thinking with Animals explore the how and why of anthropomorphism, drawing attention to its rich and varied uses. Prominent scholars in the fields of anthropology, ethology, history, and philosophy, as well as filmmakers and photographers, take a closer look at how deeply and broadly ways of imagining animals have transformed humans and animals alike. Essays in the book investigate the changing patterns of anthropomorphism across different time periods and settings, as well as their transformative effects, both figuratively and literally, upon animals, humans, and their interactions. Examining how anthropomorphic thinking "works" in a range of different contexts, contributors reveal the ways in which anthropomorphism turns out to be remarkably useful: it can promote good health and spirits, enlist support in political causes, sell products across boundaries of culture of and nationality, crystallize and strengthen social values, and hold up a philosophical mirror to the human predicament.
Author: Julie A. Smith
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231530765
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 391
Get Book
Book Description
In these multidisciplinary essays, academic scholars and animal experts explore the nature of animal minds and the methods humans conventionally and unconventionally use to understand them. The collection features chapters by scholars working in psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, literary studies, and art, as well as chapters by and about people who live and work with animals, including the founder of a sanctuary for chickens, a fur trapper, a popular canine psychologist, a horse trainer, and an art photographer who captures everyday contact between humans and their animal companions. Divided into five sections, the collection first considers the ways that humans live with animals and the influence of cohabitation on their perceptions of animals' minds. It follows with an examination of anthropomorphism as both a guide and hindrance to mapping animal consciousness. Chapters next examine the effects of embodiment on animals' minds and the role of animal-human interembodiment on humans' understandings of animals' minds. Final sections identify historical representations of difference between human and animal consciousness and their relevance to pre-established cultural attitudes, as well as the ways that representations of animals' minds target particular audiences and sometimes produce problematic outcomes. The editors conclude with a discussion of the relationship between the book's chapters and two pressing themes: the connection between human beliefs about animals' minds and human ethical behavior, and the challenges and conditions for knowing the minds of animals. By inviting readers to compare and contrast multiple, uncommon points of view, this collection offers a unique encounter with the diverse perspectives and theories now shaping animal studies.
Author: Barbara Noske
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Animal welfare
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Get Book
Book Description
Author: Gabriella Airenti
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889630382
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Get Book
Book Description
The attribution of human traits to non-humans - animals, artifacts or even natural events - is an attitude, deeply grounded in human mind. It is frequent to see children addressing dolls and figures as if they were alive. Adults often attribute mental states and emotions to animals. In everyday life humans speak of events such as fires as if they possessed some form of intentionality, a behavior sometimes shared also by scientists. Furthermore, a systematized form of anthropomorphism underlies most religions. The pervasiveness of this phenomenon makes it a particularly interesting object of psychological enquiry. Psychologists have set out to understand which aspects of human mind are involved in this behavior, its motivations and the circumstances favoring its enactment. Moreover, there is an ongoing debate among scientists about the merits or harm of anthropomorphism in the scientific study of animal behavior and in scientific discourse. Despite the interest and the specificity of the topic most of the relevant studies are scattered across disciplines and have not built a systematic research framework. This observation has motivated the collection of articles presented here, under the unifying perspective of the cognitive underpinnings of anthropomorphism. Within this general umbrella, the authors included in this e-book have explored the issues mentioned above from different points of view. From their work it emerges that far from being the result of naive beliefs, the exercise of anthropomorphism involves a multiplicity of mental abilities including perception and imagination. They also show that the context and the interactive situation are crucial to understanding this phenomenon. Some authors analyze the relationship between anthropomorphization and theory of mind abilities both in typical and atypical populations. Finally, others contributions have identified possible benefits deriving from the natural attitude to anthropomorphize, as a design philosophy for robots and artifacts in general, or as a useful heuristic in the scientific study of animal behavior.
Author: Clive D. L. Wynne
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691126364
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book
Book Description
Does your dog really know when you've had a bad day? Noted animal expert Wynne takes aim at the work of such renowned animal rights advocates as Peter Singer and Jane Goodall for falsely humanizing animals.
Author: Marc Hauser
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805056709
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Get Book
Book Description
" ... an essential examination of how animals assemble the basic tool kit that we call the mind: the ability to count, to navigate, to recognize individuals, to communicate, and to socialize."--Jacket.
Author: Dawne McCance
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438445342
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Get Book
Book Description
Comprehensive overview of key theoretical approaches and issues in the field.
