https://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Joanna&feedformat=atomLiving Books About Life - User contributions [en-gb]2024-03-28T10:09:35ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.41.0https://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5728Animal Experience2014-06-29T11:33:17Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[[Image:Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg|right|318x450px|Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg]]<br />
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[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-331-2] <br />
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''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
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== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
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This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures that are capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common "brain-mind." This locus of cognitive activity in centralized nervous systems reveals to us that changes in affect accompany and enable communication and expression, facial and voice recognition of other individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and upon our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
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== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell&nbsp; <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
;Michael Tobias&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
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== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian Elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
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== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal Correlates of Sender-identity and Arousal in the Isolation Calls of Domestic Kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for Face Identity and Face Emotion Processing in Animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
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== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves’ Vocalizations at 1 Day after Separation from Dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding Animal Welfare]<br />
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== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An Analysis of Ethics and Emotion in Written Texts about the Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in Behavioural Husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats]<br />
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== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
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'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
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;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
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'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;René Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
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'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
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'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
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<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
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== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==<br />
<br />
== A 'Frozen' PDF Version of this Living Book ==<br />
;[http://livingbooksaboutlife.org/pdfs/bookarchive/Animal_Experience Download a 'frozen' PDF version of this book as it appeared on 27th June 2014]</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5727Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-29T11:32:52Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures that are capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common "brain-mind." This locus of cognitive activity in centralized nervous systems reveals to us that changes in affect accompany and enable communication and expression, facial and voice recognition of other individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and upon our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision ''Cognition and Decision''] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals'''<br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So-called targets of attention in brain regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus are associated and selectively ranked according to the recognition of a) facial emotion in other individuals and b) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal mechanisms that are associated with affective states, notably those related to the "subjective experience" of others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br>'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br><br>subjective experience. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br>'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication'''<br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br>''<br> '' ''et al''., and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br>'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare'''''<br><br> ''Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab ('Carcinus maenas') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br>'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?'''<br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. In this section the authors urge us to examine more closely our own emotional and ethical responses. Their work grounds the notion that we can move beyond the minimal level of welfare because we are compelled to do so through our own direct reactions, in real time, to animal emotion and sentience. As more humans witness animal suffering and experience companionship, the resulting emotional involvement points to replacing utilitarian and other ethical theories with a more appropriate ethics of emotion or care. Thus, the authors would like to think that the generally positive (or at least ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian et al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al.'s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bioethics%E2%84%A2&diff=5726Bioethics™2014-06-27T21:48:51Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[[Image:BioethicsCover1.jpg|right|318x450px|BioethicsCover1.jpg]]<br />
Life, Politics, Economics<br />
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[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-256-8]<br />
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''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Bioethics/bio Joanna Zylinska]<br />
__TOC__ <br />
== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Bioethics/Introduction '''Introduction: Bioethical Mutations in the Age of Capital'''] ==<br />
Bioethics is a serious business, in every sense of the word. A sub-domain of philosophy which deals with issues concerning life and health, it has to arbitrate not only over practical matters regarding patient care and medical experiments, but also over the very ontology of ‘life’: its manufacturing, patenting and redefinition in and by the biotech industry. Since bioethics functions as a node in the complex nexus of social, political and economic forces, it is perhaps not surprising that technocapitalism does not want to leave it just to philosophers. Instead, it mobilises a whole army of experts: morality salespeople, ethics technicians, value mathematicians, to help us decide on the price of life. Consequently, bioethics increasingly abandons its more daring ambitions and responsibilities -- such as exploring the metaphysics of life or the politics of everyday survival -- to serve instead as just a ‘technical discourse about values clarification and choice’ (Haraway, 2007: 109). Its methods of working are thus principally procedural, akin to ‘facts and hypothesis testing’ in science (Haraway, 2007: 109). Feminist thinker Donna Haraway points out that medical ethics ‘is now a literal industry, funded directly by the new developments in technoscience. Ethics experts have become an indispensable part of the apparatus of technoscience-production’ (2007: 109). To put it crudely, bioethics’ role is often to get biotech corporations off the hook -- although, of course, it has the potential to be much more than that. Indeed, in its engagement with life in both a metaphysical and material sense, bioethics is conceivably one of the most exciting areas of philosophical interrogation and artistic experimentation today. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Bioethics/Introduction more])<br />
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== '''The Business of Bioethics''' ==<br />
; Carl Elliott : [http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=american_bioscience_meets_the_american_dream American Bioscience Meets the American Dream]<br />
; Jocelyn E. Mackie, Andrew D. Taylor, David L. Finegold, Abdallah S. Daar, Peter A. Singer : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030129 Lessons on Ethical Decision Making from the Bioscience Industry] <br />
; Carlos Novas : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030142 What Is the Bioscience Industry Doing to Address the Ethical Issues It Faces?]<br />
; Ezekiel J Emanuel, Trudo Lemmens, Carl Elliott : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030309 Should Society Allow Research Ethics Boards to Be Run As For-Profit Enterprises?]<br />
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== '''The Commercialization of Medical Research and Patient Care''' ==<br />
; T Lemmens, PB Miller : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030330 Regulating the Market in Human Research Participants] <br />
; Aaron S. Kesselheim, Michelle M. Mello, David M. Studdert : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000431 Strategies and Practices in Off-Label Marketing of Pharmaceuticals: A Retrospective Analysis of Whistleblower Complaints]<br />
; Adriane J. Fugh-Berman : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000335 The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT”]<br />
;Ben Goldacre : [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/01/bad-science-drug-trials-seeding-trials The True Purpose of a Drug Trial Is Not Always Obvious]<br />
; Marcia Angell : [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/epidemic-mental-illness-why The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?] and [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul/14/illusions-of-psychiatry The Illusions of Psychiatry]<br />
; David Henry : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000359 Doctors and Drug Companies: Still Cozy after All These Years] <br />
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== '''Biomanufacturing and Biopatenting''' ==<br />
; Antony Taubman : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2628210/?tool=pmcentrez The International Patent System and Biomedical Research: Reconciling Aspiration, Policy and Practice]<br />
; Arti Rai, James Boyle : [http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050058 Synthetic Biology: Caught between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons]<br />
; Paul Rabinow, Gaymon Bennett : [http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/articlerender.cgi?accid=PMC2759434&tool=pmcentrez Synthetic Biology: Ethical Ramifications 2009]<br />
; D G Gill : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2065932/?tool=pmcentrez “Anything you can do, I can do bigger?”: The Ethics and Equity of Growth Hormone for Small Normal Children]<br />
; Joanna Zylinska : [http://joannazylinska.squarespace.com/storage/external-stuff/zylinska_enhancement_author_ms.pdf Playing God, Playing Adam: The Politics and Ethics of Enhancement]<br />
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== '''The Body as Property, Commodity and Gift''' ==<br />
; Tarif Bakdash, Nancy Scheper-Hughes: [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030349 Is It Ethical for Patients with Renal Disease to Purchase Kidneys from the World's Poor?]<br />
; Mark Schweda, Silke Schicktanz : [http://www.peh-med.com/content/4/1/4 The "spare parts person"? Conceptions of the Human Body and Their Implications for Public Attitudes towards Organ Donation and Organ Sale]<br />
; Antonia J Cronin, David Price : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2948558/?tool=pmcentrez Directed Organ Donation: Is the Donor the Owner?]<br />
; Howard Wolinsky : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2002559/?tool=pmcentrez The Thousand-Dollar Genome. Genetic Brinkmanship or Personalized Medicine?]<br />
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== Global Health Inc. ==<br />
; Robert Mitchell, Catherine Waldby : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2879701/?tool=pmcentrez National Biobanks: Clinical Labor, Risk Production, and the Creation of Biovalue] <br />
; Kammerle Schneider, Laurie Garrett : [http://www.peh-med.com/content/4/1/1 The End of the Era of Generosity? Global Health amid Economic Crisis]<br />
; Jacquineau Azétsop, Stuart Rennie : [http://www.peh-med.com/content/5/1/1 Principlism, Medical Individualism, and Health Promotion in Resource-poor Countries: Can Autonomy-based Bioethics Promote Social Justice and Population Health?]<br />
; Stuart Rennie, Bavon Mupenda : [http://www.peh-med.com/content/3/1/25 Living Apart Together: Reflections on Bioethics, Global Inequality and Social Justice] <br />
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== '''The Art of Life Between Speculation and Appreciation''' ==<br />
; Ionat Zurr, Oron Catts : [http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/30/37 Big Pigs, Small Wings: On Genohype and Artistic Autonomy] <br />
; Adam Zaretsky : [http://emutagen.com/wrkhzoo.html The Workhorse Zoo Art and Bioethics Quiz]<br />
; Critical Art Ensemble : [http://www.critical-art.net/books/flesh/ The Flesh Machine]<br />
; Joanna Zylinska – [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMUoQtmeSo8 If It Reads, It Bleeds; 3' video, 2010] : <youtube>PMUoQtmeSo8</youtube> <br />
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== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Bioethics/Attributions Attributions]''' ==<br />
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== A 'Frozen' PDF Version of this Living Book ==<br />
;[http://livingbooksaboutlife.org/pdfs/bookarchive/Bioethics.pdf Download a 'frozen' PDF version of this book as it appeared on 10th October 2011]<br />
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== The Ultimate PDF version == <br />
To download a PDF version of this living book (in a slightly different incarnation than the 'living' version available online, and containing actual texts rather than links), '''[http://joannazylinska.squarespace.com/storage/external-stuff/Zylinska-bioethics_book3.pdf '''right-click here''']''', click on 'Save Link As' ('Download Linked File' on a Mac) and save it on your computer.''' You will then be able to read it offline or transfer it to your ebook reader. However, if you prefer to just read it online, [http://joannazylinska.squarespace.com/storage/external-stuff/Zylinska-bioethics_book3.pdf click here].</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5725Animal Experience2014-06-27T21:48:08Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[[Image:Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg|right|318x450px|Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg]]<br />
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[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-331-2] <br />
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''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
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== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
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This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures that are capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
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== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell&nbsp; <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
;Michael Tobias&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
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== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian Elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
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<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
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== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal Correlates of Sender-identity and Arousal in the Isolation Calls of Domestic Kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for Face Identity and Face Emotion Processing in Animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
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== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves’ Vocalizations at 1 Day after Separation from Dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding Animal Welfare]<br />
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== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An Analysis of Ethics and Emotion in Written Texts about the Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in Behavioural Husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats]<br />
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== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;René Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
<br />
<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==<br />
<br />
== A 'Frozen' PDF Version of this Living Book ==<br />
;[http://livingbooksaboutlife.org/pdfs/bookarchive/Animal_Experience Download a 'frozen' PDF version of this book as it appeared on 27th June 2014]</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5724Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-27T21:20:32Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures that are capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common "brain-mind." This locus of cognitive activity in centralized nervous systems reveals to us that changes in affect accompany and enable communication and expression, facial and voice recognition of other individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision ''Cognition and Decision''] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals'''<br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So-called targets of attention in brain regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus are associated and selectively ranked according to the recognition of a) facial emotion in other individuals and b) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal mechanisms that are associated with affective states, notably those related to the "subjective experience" of others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br>'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br><br>subjective experience. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br>'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication'''<br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br>''<br> '' ''et al''., and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br>'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare'''''<br><br> ''Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab ('Carcinus maenas') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br>'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?'''<br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. In this section the authors urge us to examine more closely our own emotional and ethical responses. Their work grounds the notion that we can move beyond the minimal level of welfare because we are compelled to do so through our own direct reactions, in real time, to animal emotion and sentience. As more humans witness animal suffering and experience companionship, the resulting emotional involvement points to replacing utilitarian and other ethical theories with a more appropriate ethics of emotion or care. Thus, the authors would like to think that the generally positive (or at least ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian et al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al.'s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5723Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-27T21:19:21Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures that are capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common the "brain-mind." This locus of cognitive activity in centralized nervous systems reveals to us that changes in affect accompany and enable communication and expression, facial and voice recognition of other individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision ''Cognition and Decision''] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals'''<br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So-called targets of attention in brain regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus are associated and selectively ranked according to the recognition of a) facial emotion in other individuals and b) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal mechanisms that are associated with affective states, notably those related to the "subjective experience" of others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br>'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br><br>subjective experience. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br>'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication'''<br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br>''<br> '' ''et al''., and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br>'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare'''''<br><br> ''Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab ('Carcinus maenas') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br>'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?'''<br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. In this section the authors urge us to examine more closely our own emotional and ethical responses. Their work grounds the notion that we can move beyond the minimal level of welfare because we are compelled to do so through our own direct reactions, in real time, to animal emotion and sentience. As more humans witness animal suffering and experience companionship, the resulting emotional involvement points to replacing utilitarian and other ethical theories with a more appropriate ethics of emotion or care. Thus, the authors would like to think that the generally positive (or at least ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian et al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al.'s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5722Animal Experience2014-06-27T21:19:16Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[[Image:Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg|right|318x450px|Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg]]<br />
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[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-331-2] <br />
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''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
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== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
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This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures that are capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
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== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell&nbsp; <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
;Michael Tobias&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
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== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian Elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
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<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
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== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal Correlates of Sender-identity and Arousal in the Isolation Calls of Domestic Kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for Face Identity and Face Emotion Processing in Animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
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== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves’ Vocalizations at 1 Day after Separation from Dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding Animal Welfare]<br />
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== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An Analysis of Ethics and Emotion in Written Texts about the Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in Behavioural Husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats]<br />
<br />
== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;René Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
<br />
<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5721Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-27T21:18:14Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common the "brain-mind." This locus of cognitive activity in centralized nervous systems reveals to us that changes in affect accompany and enable communication and expression, facial and voice recognition of other individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision ''Cognition and Decision''] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals'''<br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So-called targets of attention in brain regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus are associated and selectively ranked according to the recognition of a) facial emotion in other individuals and b) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal mechanisms that are associated with affective states, notably those related to the "subjective experience" of others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br>'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br><br>subjective experience. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br>'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication'''<br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br>''<br> '' ''et al''., and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br>'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare'''''<br><br> ''Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab ('Carcinus maenas') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br>'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?'''<br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. In this section the authors urge us to examine more closely our own emotional and ethical responses. Their work grounds the notion that we can move beyond the minimal level of welfare because we are compelled to do so through our own direct reactions, in real time, to animal emotion and sentience. As more humans witness animal suffering and experience companionship, the resulting emotional involvement points to replacing utilitarian and other ethical theories with a more appropriate ethics of emotion or care. Thus, the authors would like to think that the generally positive (or at least ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian et al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al.'s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5720Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-27T21:17:33Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common the "brain-mind." This locus of cognitive activity in centralized nervous systems reveals to us that changes in affect accompany and enable communication and expression, facial and voice recognition of other individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision ''Cognition and Decision''] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals'''<br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t''say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So-called targets of attention in brain regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus are associated and selectively ranked according to the recognition of a) facial emotion in other individuals and b) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal mechanisms that are associated with affective states, notably those related to the "subjective experience" of others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br>'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br><br>subjective experience. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br>'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication'''<br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br>''<br> '' ''et al''., and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br>'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare'''''<br><br> ''Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab ('Carcinus maenas') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br>'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?'''<br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. In this section the authors urge us to examine more closely our own emotional and ethical responses. Their work grounds the notion that we can move beyond the minimal level of welfare because we are compelled to do so through our own direct reactions, in real time, to animal emotion and sentience. As more humans witness animal suffering and experience companionship, the resulting emotional involvement points to replacing utilitarian and other ethical theories with a more appropriate ethics of emotion or care. Thus, the authors would like to think that the generally positive (or at least ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian et al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al.'s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5719Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-27T21:16:09Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common the "brain-mind." This locus of cognitive activity in centralized nervous systems reveals to us that changes in affect accompany and enable communication and expression, facial and voice recognition of other individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision ''Cognition and Decision''] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals'''<br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t''say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So-called targets of attention in brain regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus are associated and selectively ranked according to the recognition of a) facial emotion in other individuals and b) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal mechanisms that are associated with affective states, notably those related to the "subjective experience" of others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br>'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br><br>subjective experience. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br>'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication'''<br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br>''<br> '' ''et al''., and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br>'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare'''''<br><br> ''Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab ('Carcinus maenas') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br>'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?'''<br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. In this section the authors urge us to examine more closely our own emotional and ethical responses. Their work grounds the notion that we can move beyond the minimal level of welfare because we are compelled to do so through our own direct reactions, in real time, to animal emotion and sentience. As more humans witness animal suffering and experience companionship, the resulting emotional involvement points to replacing utilitarian and other ethical theories with a more appropriate ethics of emotion or care. Thus, the authors would like to think that the generally positive (or at least ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian,et al.identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al.'s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5718Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-27T21:14:25Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common the "brain-mind." This locus of cognitive activity in centralized nervous systems reveals to us that changes in affect accompany and enable communication and expression, facial and voice recognition of other individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals'''<br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t''say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So-called targets of attention in brain regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus are associated and selectively ranked according to the recognition of a) facial emotion in other individuals and b) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal mechanisms that are associated with affective states, notably those related to the "subjective experience" of others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br>'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br><br>subjective experience. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br>'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication'''<br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br>''<br> '' ''et al''., and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br>'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare'''''<br><br> ''Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab ('Carcinus maenas') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br>'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?'''<br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. In this section the authors urge us to examine more closely our own emotional and ethical responses. Their work grounds the notion that we can move beyond the minimal level of welfare because we are compelled to do so through our own direct reactions, in real time, to animal emotion and sentience. As more humans witness animal suffering and experience companionship, the resulting emotional involvement points to replacing utilitarian and other ethical theories with a more appropriate ethics of emotion or care. Thus, the authors would like to think that the generally positive (or at least ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian,et al.identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al.'s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Unborn_Human&diff=5717The Unborn Human2014-06-27T21:03:40Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[[Image:Unborn_human_3.jpg|right|318x450px|Unborn_human_3.jpg]]<br />
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[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-330-5] <br />
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''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/The_Unborn_Human/bio Deborah Lupton]<br />
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== '''Introduction:&nbsp;Conceptualising&nbsp;and Configuring the Unborn Human'''&nbsp; ==<br />
Unborn human organisms – embryos and foetuses – experience an unprecedented level of discursive prominence in the contemporary era. Debates about the moral status of the unborn, about their claims to personhood and whether they should be treated as full human subjects, have been ongoing for a long time, particularly in areas related to religious philosophy, bioethics and abortion politics. Over the past half-century, however, these debates have become more diversified, intense and complex in response to a number of social, technological and economic changes. More so than at any other time in human history, embryos and foetuses are represented in public forums as beautiful, precious, vulnerable creatures that require the utmost levels of protection. They are commonly positioned as already fully human, indeed as already infants, and hence as deserving of the rights and privileges accorded the infant. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/The_Unborn_Human/Introduction more]) <br><br />
<br />
== Debates Over Unborn Personhood ==<br />
; P Kreeft : [http://catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0004.html Human personhood begins at conception]<br />
; R George and P Lee : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672893 Embryonic human persons. Talking Point on morality and human embryo research]<br />
; J Barry : [http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/muradora/objectView.action?pid=nlm:nlmuid-101161766-bk Medico-Christian Embryology, or the Unborn Child (From the Earliest Period of its Existence)]<br />
<br />
== Mourning and Remembering the Lost Unborn ==<br />
; M Kelley and S Trinidad : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/12/137 Silent loss and the clinical encounter: parents’ and physicians’ experiences of stillbirth – a qualitative analysis]<br />
; D Davidson : [http://www.socresonline.org.uk/16/1/6.html Reflections on doing research grounded in my experience of perinatal loss: from auto/biography to autoethnography]<br />
; S Murphy and H Thomas : [http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/1/16.html Stillbirth and loss: family practices and display]<br />
; [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGndijGHg4&feature=related Memorial video for pregnancy loss]<br />
<br />
== Struggles Over Dealing with the Unwanted Unborn ==<br />
; A Moscrop : [http://mh.bmj.com/content/early/2013/02/20/medhum-2012-010284.full ‘Miscarriage or abortion?’ Understanding the medical language of pregnancy loss in Britain; a historical perspective] <br />
; W Tong, W Low, Y Wong, S Choong and R Jegasothy : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/743 Exploring pregnancy termination experiences and needs among Malaysian women: a qualitative study]<br />
; [http://worldabortionlaws.com/map/ The World’s Abortion Laws 2013 website]<br />
; N Zamberlin, M Romero and S Ramos : [http://www.reproductive-health-journal.com/content/9/1/34 Latin American women’s experiences with medical abortion in settings where abortion is legally restricted]<br />
; S Barot : [http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/15/4/gpr150407.html Governmental coercion in reproductive decision making: see it both ways]<br />
; S Childs and E Evans : [http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/27716 The revived debate on abortion is not simply dog whistle politics, but a threat to women’s rights]<br />
; A Peck : [http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/02/12/1576881/personhood-map/?mobile=nc Personhood advocates continue war on women’s rights despite growing list of defeats]<br />
; [http://www.personhoodusa.com/ Personhood USA website]<br />
; [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJIKe9eJLh4&feature=related ‘The Miracle of Life’ (excerpt from an anti-abortion film)] <br />
; N Stotland : [http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=172914 Abortion: social context, psychodynamic implications]<br />
; D Murphy : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC404517 My foetus (review of documentary of this name)]<br />
<br />
== Assessing the Quality of the Unborn ==<br />
; S Wang : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3238312 The past, present, and future of embryo selection in in vitro fertilization]<br />
; A Theodosiou and M Johnson: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3101706/ The politics of human embryo research and the motivation to achieve PGD]<br />
; [http://www.rcog.org.uk/termination-pregnancy-fetal-abnormality-england-scotland-and-wales Termination of Pregnancy for Fetal Abnormality in England, Scotland and Wales]<br />
; S Aksoy : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6939/2/3 Antenatal screening and its possible meaning from the unborn baby's perspective]<br />
; F Place : [http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/53 Amniocentesis and motherhood: how prenatal testing shapes our cultural understandings of pregnancy and disability]<br />
; [http://www.abortionanddisability.org/index.html Parliamentary Inquiry into Abortion on the Grounds of Disability]<br />
<br />
== The Surplus Unborn Entity ==<br />
; J Conde : [http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol13/iss1/7 Embryo donation: the government adopts a cause]<br />
; P Andrews, H Moore and A Smith : [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1469-7580.2002.00027.x/full Human embryonic stem cells: prospects for human health – a 1 day international symposium held at the University of Sheffield]<br />
; H Greely : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030143 Moving human embryonic stem cells from legislature to lab: remaining legal and ethical questions]<br />
; R Blackford : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564478/ Stem cell research on other worlds, or why embryos do not have a right to life]<br />
; T Douglas and J Savulescu : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672894/ Destroying unwanted embryos in research. Talking Point on morality and human embryo research]<br />
; B Manninen : [http://www.peh-med.com/content/2/1/7 Revisiting the argument from fetal potential]<br />
; B Manninen: [http://www.peh-med.com/content/3/1/4 Are human embryos Kantian persons? Kantian considerations in favor of embryonic stem cell research]<br />
; E Sills and S Murphy : [http://www.peh-med.com/content/4/1/8 Determining the status of non-transferred embryos in Ireland: a conspectus of case law and implications for clinical IVF practice]<br />
; A Sagan and P Singer: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2799205/ Embryos, stem cells and moral status: a response to George and Lee]<br />
; E Haimes and K Taylor : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3130929 The contributions of empirical evidence to socio-ethical debates on fresh embryo donation for human embryonic stem cell research]<br />
; S Takahashi, M Fujita, A Fujimoto, T Fujiwara, T Yano, O Tsutsumi, Y Taketani and A Akabayashi : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6939/13/9 The decision-making process for the fate of frozen embryos by Japanese infertile women: a qualitative study]<br />
<br />
== Unborn Entities as Moral Work Objects ==<br />
; W Saletan:[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2012/10/shinya_yamanaka_s_nobel_prize_he_saved_embryos_not_just_stem_cell_research_.html The healer: how Shinya Yamanaka transformed the stem-cell war and made everyone a winner]<br />
; K Ehrich, C Williams and B Farsides : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2592482 The embryo as moral work object: PGD/IVF staff views and experiences] <br />
; K Ehrich, C Williams and B Farsides : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3003156/ Fresh or frozen? Classifying ‘spare’ embryos for donation to human embryonic stem cell research]<br />
; K Ehrich, C Williams, B Farsides, J Sandall and R Scott: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440558/ Choosing embryos: ethical complexity and relational autonomy in staff accounts of PGD]<br />
; K Ehrich, C Williams, B Farsides and R Scott: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3378712/ Embryo futures and stem cell research: the management of informed uncertainty]<br />
<br />
== Visualising the Unborn ==<br />
; H Barniville : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288991/ The morphology and histology of a human embryo of 8.5 mm]<br />
; [http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/visibleembryos ‘Making Visible Embryos’ website]<br />
; [http://www.lennartnilsson.com/child_is_born.html ‘Lennart Nilsson Photography’ website] <br />
; [http://www.anatomicaltravel.com/ ‘The Visual MD’ (Alexander Tsiaras’s company) website]<br />
; [http://www.visembryo.com&nbsp ‘The Visible Embryo’ website]<br />
; [http://embryo.soad.umich.edu/ ‘The Multi Dimensional Human Embryo’ website]<br />
; [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi-TLTQemNU&feature=related ‘In the Womb’ (excerpt from a National Geographic documentary)] <br />
; [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR75Y3G8PHA&playnext=1&list=PLC2A3CE4928E3617F&feature=results_main ‘The Miracle of Life Part 1’ (excerpt from Lennart Nilsson's documentary)]<br />
; [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKyljukBE70 Alexander Tsiaras's TED talk about his visualisations of the unborn] <br />
; [http://pinterest.com/dalupton/sociology-of-the-unborn ‘The Sociology of the Unborn’ Pinterest board] <br />
; E Tansey and D Christie (eds) : [http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/2075 Looking At the Unborn: Historical Aspects of Obstetric Ultrasound]<br />
; N Reissland, B Francis, J Mason and K Lincoln : [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024081 Do facial expressions develop before birth?]<br />
; [http://pinterest.com/dalupton/the-ultrasound-as-cultural-artefact ‘The Ultrasound as Cultural Artefact’ Pinterest board]<br />
<br />
== Risk and Maternal Responsibility ==<br />
; T A Helme : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2358178 An address on the unborn child: its care and rights]<br />
; B Rhetta : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622137 A plea for the lives of the unborn]<br />
; I Monie : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1515272/ Influence of the environment on the unborn]<br />
; J Machado, P Filho, G Petersen and J Chatkin : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/11/24 Quantitative effects of tobacco smoking exposure on the maternal-fetal circulation] <br />
; C Spong : [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030196 Protection against prenatal alcohol-induced damage]<br />
; S Yazdani, Y Yosofniyapasha, B Nasab, M Mojaveri and Z Bouzari : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/5/34 Effect of maternal body mass index on pregnancy outcome and newborn weight]<br />
; E Saastad, B Winje, B Pedersen, B. Stray and Froen, J. Frederick : [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0028482 Fetal movement counting improved identification of fetal growth restriction and perinatal outcomes – a multi-centre, randomized, control trial] <br />
; P Lowe, E Lee and L Yardley : [http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/4/2.html Under the influence? The construction of foetal alcohol syndrome in UK newspapers]<br />
; K McDonald, L Amir and M-A Davey : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/11/S5/S5 Maternal bodies and medicines: a commentary on risk and decision-making of pregnant and breastfeeding women and health professionals] <br />
; A Maas, C Vreeswijk, E de Cock, C Rijk and H van Bakel : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/12/46 'Expectant parents': study protocol of a longitudinal study concerning prenatal (risk) factors and postnatal infant development, parenting, and parent-infant relationships]<br />
; E Beveridge, H Anath and H Scurlock: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539404 What protection for the unborn child of a psychologically vulnerable adult?]<br />
; J Dayan, C Creveuil, M Dreyfus, M Herlicoviez, J-M Baleyte and V O’Keane : [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0012942 Developmental model of depression applied to prenatal depression: role of past and present life events, post emotional disorders and pregnancy stress]<br />
; S Ratnapalan, Y Bentur and G Koren : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2585137 Doctor, will that x-ray harm my unborn child?]<br />
; H Bayrampour, M Heaman, K Duncan and S Tough : [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/12/100 Advanced maternal age and risk perception: a qualitative study] <br />
; R Westfall and C Benoit : [http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/3/4.html Interpreting compliance and resistance to medical dominance in women’s accounts of their pregnancies]<br />
; S Viaux-Savalon, M Dommergues, O Rosenblum, M Bodeau, E Aidane, O Philippon, P Mazet, C Vibert-Guigue, D Vauthier-Brouzes, R Feldman and D Cohen : [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0030935 Prenatal ultrasound screening: false positive soft markers may alter maternal representations and mother-infant interaction]<br />
<br />
== Bringing the Maternal Body Back In ==<br />
; J Souza, A Oliveira-Neto, F Surita, J Cecatti, E Amaral and J Pinto e Silva: [http://www.reproductive-health-journal.com/content/3/1/3 The prolongation of somatic support in a pregnant woman with brain-death: a case report]<br />
; D Riggs and C Due : [http://www.outskirts.arts.uwa.edu.au/volumes/volume-22/ Gay men, race and surrogacy in India]<br />
; A Bosanquet : [http://www.outskirts.arts.uwa.edu.au/volumes/volume-22/bosanquet An image carnal and divine: angels playing with placenta]<br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/The_Unborn_Human/Attributions Attributions]''' ==<br />
<br />
== A 'Frozen' PDF Version of this Living Book ==<br />
; [http://livingbooksaboutlife.org/pdfs/bookarchive/The_Unborn_Human.pdf Download a 'frozen' PDF version of this book as it appeared on 13th June 2013]</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5716Animal Experience2014-06-27T21:03:10Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg|right|318x450px|Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg]]<br />
<br />
[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-331-2] <br />
<br />
''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
<br />
__TOC__ <br />
<br />
== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
<br />
== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell&nbsp; <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
;Michael Tobias&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
<br />
== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian Elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
<br />
== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal Correlates of Sender-identity and Arousal in the Isolation Calls of Domestic Kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for Face Identity and Face Emotion Processing in Animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
<br />
== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves’ Vocalizations at 1 Day after Separation from Dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding Animal Welfare]<br />
<br />
== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An Analysis of Ethics and Emotion in Written Texts about the Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in Behavioural Husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats]<br />
<br />
== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;René Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
<br />
<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=File:Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg&diff=5715File:Animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg2014-06-27T21:02:44Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5714Animal Experience2014-06-27T20:57:17Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg|right|318x450px|animalexperience-book-cover2.jpg]]<br />
<br />
[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-331-2] <br />
<br />
''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
<br />
__TOC__ <br />
<br />
== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
<br />
== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell&nbsp; <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
;Michael Tobias&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
<br />
== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian Elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
<br />
== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal Correlates of Sender-identity and Arousal in the Isolation Calls of Domestic Kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for Face Identity and Face Emotion Processing in Animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
<br />
== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves’ Vocalizations at 1 Day after Separation from Dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding Animal Welfare]<br />
<br />
== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An Analysis of Ethics and Emotion in Written Texts about the Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in Behavioural Husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats]<br />
<br />
== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;René Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
<br />
<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bioethics/bio&diff=5709Bioethics/bio2014-06-10T17:18:53Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Bioethics™ Back to the book]<br />
<br><br><br />
[http://www.joannazylinska.net Joanna Zylinska] is a cultural theorist writing on new technologies and new media, ethics and art. She is Professor of New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of three books - ''Bioethics in the Age of New Media'' (MIT Press, 2009), ''The Ethics of Cultural Studies'' (Continuum, 2005) and ''On Spiders, Cyborgs and Being Scared: the Feminine and the Sublime'' (Manchester University Press, 2001) - she is also the editor of ''The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media Age'', a collection of essays on the work of performance artists Stelarc and Orlan (Continuum, 2002) and co-editor of ''Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust'' (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). Zylinska has just completed a new book on the idea of mediation, ''Life after New Media'' (with Sarah Kember) for the MIT Press, and is currently working on a translation of Stanislaw Lem's major philosophical treatise, ''Summa Technologiae'', for the University of Minnesota's Electronic Mediations series. She is one of the Editors of [http://www.culturemachine.net Culture Machine], an international open-access journal of culture and theory. She combines her philosophical writings with photographic art practice.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5708Animal Experience2014-06-10T17:08:47Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-xxx-x] <br />
<br />
''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
<br />
__TOC__ <br />
<br />
== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
<br />
== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell&nbsp; <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
;Michael Tobias&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
<br />
== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian Elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
<br />
== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal Correlates of Sender-identity and Arousal in the Isolation Calls of Domestic Kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for Face Identity and Face Emotion Processing in Animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
<br />
== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves’ Vocalizations at 1 Day after Separation from Dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding Animal Welfare]<br />
<br />
== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An Analysis of Ethics and Emotion in Written Texts about the Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in Behavioural Husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats]<br />
<br />
== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;René Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
<br />
<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5707Animal Experience2014-06-10T17:05:40Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-xxx-x] <br />
<br />
''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
<br />
__TOC__ <br />
<br />
== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
<br />
== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell&nbsp; <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
;Michael Tobias&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
<br />
== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
<br />
== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal Correlates of Sender-identity and Arousal in the Isolation Calls of Domestic Kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for Face Identity and Face Emotion Processing in Animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
<br />
== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves’ Vocalizations at 1 Day after Separation from Dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding animal welfare]<br />
<br />
== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An analysis of ethics and emotion in written texts about the use of animals for scientific purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats]<br />
<br />
== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Renes Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
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<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
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== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5706Animal Experience2014-06-10T16:59:56Z<p>Joanna: Undo revision 5704 by Joanna (talk)</p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-xxx-x] <br />
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''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
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__TOC__ <br />
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== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
<br />
== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell&nbsp; <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
;Michael Tobias&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
<br />
== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
<br />
== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal correlates of sender-identity and arousal in the isolation calls of domestic kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
<br />
== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves’ vocalizations at 1 day after separation from dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding animal welfare]<br />
<br />
== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An analysis of ethics and emotion in written texts about the use of animals for scientific purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats]<br />
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== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Renes Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
<br />
<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5705Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:58:31Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals'''<br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t''say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br>'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br><br>subjective experience. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br>'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication'''<br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br>''<br> '' ''et al''., and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.''reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br>'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare'''''<br><br> ''Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab ('Carcinus maenas') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br>'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?'''<br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian,et al.identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al.s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5704Animal Experience2014-06-10T16:55:39Z<p>Joanna: Reverted edits by Joanna (talk) to last revision by Niemoczynski</p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-xxx-x] <br />
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''edited by [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou]'' <br />
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''Department of Philosophy'' <br />
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''Immaculata University'' <br />
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''Malvern, Pennsylvania'' <br />
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''United States'' <br />
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== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
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== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All ] <br />
;Michael Tobias <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff ] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective consciousness in animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An integrative and functional framework for the study of animal emotion and mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
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== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
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== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal correlates of sender-identity and arousal in the isolation calls of domestic kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
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== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves’ vocalizations at 1 day after separation from dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding animal welfare]<br />
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== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An analysis of ethics and emotion in written texts about the use of animals for scientific purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats]<br />
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== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
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'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
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;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
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'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
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'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Renes Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
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'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
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'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
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<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
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== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5703Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:55:20Z<p>Joanna: Undo revision 5702 by Joanna (talk)</p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br> '''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br><br> In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br> '''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br><br> Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br><br> Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br> '''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian, ''et al.'' identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi ''et al.'''s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5702Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:54:49Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br />
<br> This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br><br> The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br><br> A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br><br> Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb. <br><br> The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision|''Cognition and Decision'']] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br><br> By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment. <br><br> In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br><br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br><br> Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t." <br><br> In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study. <br><br> Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br><br> In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions. <br><br> The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research. <br> <br> '''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br><br> In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br><br> Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience? <br><br> The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.” <br><br> Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br><br> Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br><br> '''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br><br> Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals. <br><br> Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience. <br><br> Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br><br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br><br> Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br><br> It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br><br> In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm. <br><br> '''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br><br> Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good." <br><br> This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br><br> Mikaela Ciprian, ''et al.'' identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br><br> The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi ''et al.'''s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br><br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br><br> In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br><br> Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br><br> What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br><br> In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br><br> The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br><br> Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5701Animal Experience2014-06-10T16:51:00Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-xxx-x] <br />
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''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
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== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
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The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
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== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
; Duncan Campbell : [http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All] <br />
; Michael Tobias : [http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff] <br />
; Jaak Panksepp : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective Consciousness in Animals] <br />
; Ram Vimal : [http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
; Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood] <br />
; Manisha Rai : [http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
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== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
; Jaak Panksepp : [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
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<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
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== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal correlates of sender-identity and arousal in the isolation calls of domestic kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
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== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves’ vocalizations at 1 day after separation from dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding animal welfare]<br />
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== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
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;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An analysis of ethics and emotion in written texts about the use of animals for scientific purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats]<br />
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== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
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'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
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;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
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'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
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;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
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'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
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;Renes Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
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'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
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;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
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'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
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;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
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<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
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== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou&diff=5700Animal Experience/bio Theodorou2014-06-10T16:45:01Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book]<br />
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Stephanie Theodorou teaches in the Philosophy Department at Immaculata University. She received her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and her doctoral degree from Temple University. Her areas of specialty include 19th and 20th century Continental philosophy, Asian philosophy, and, of late, philosophy of mind. She has published articles and presented papers at a number of conferences on topics including Hegelian philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics, and cross-disciplinary studies on the nature of mind and language. She is presently working on a larger project which studies mental plasticity and its role in the production of symbols and theories of interpretation.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/bio&diff=5699Animal Experience/bio2014-06-10T16:44:19Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book]<br />
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Leon Niemoczynski teaches in the Philosophy Department at Immaculata University. His research focuses on the philosophy of nature, where he is especially interested in issues pertaining to philosophical naturalism, logic and metaphysics, aesthetics, German idealism, philosophical ecology, animal ethics, environmental philosophy, and environmental philosophy's relationship to the philosophy of religion. He is a specialist in both the American and contemporary continental philosophical traditions. Niemoczynski is the author of ''Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature'' (Lexington Books, 2011) and co-editor of the forthcoming ''A Philosophy of Sacred Nature: Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism''.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5698Animal Experience2014-06-10T16:32:14Z<p>Joanna: </p>
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<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-xxx-x] <br />
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''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou] <br />
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== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
<br />
== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All ] <br />
;Michael Tobias <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff ] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective consciousness in animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An integrative and functional framework for the study of animal emotion and mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
<br />
== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
<br />
== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal correlates of sender-identity and arousal in the isolation calls of domestic kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
<br />
== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves’ vocalizations at 1 day after separation from dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding animal welfare]<br />
<br />
== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An analysis of ethics and emotion in written texts about the use of animals for scientific purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats]<br />
<br />
== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Renes Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
<br />
<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience&diff=5697Animal Experience2014-06-10T16:31:52Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-xxx-x] <br />
<br />
''edited by" [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio Leon Niemoczynski] and [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/bio_Theodorou Stephanie Theodorou]' <br />
<br />
__TOC__ <br />
<br />
== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction '''Introduction: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World'''] ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. ([http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Introduction more...]) <br />
<br />
== 1. The Emotional Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Duncan Campbell <br />
:[http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/212-living-dialogues/episodes/3304-marc-bekoff-jane-goodall-ten-trusts/play Podcast Interview with Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall – The Ten Trusts: Celebrating the Anima in All ] <br />
;Michael Tobias <br />
:[http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p323.pdf A Review of ''Animal Minds: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'' by Marc Bekoff ] <br />
;Jaak Panksepp&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982033/ Affective consciousness in animals] <br />
;Ram Vimal&nbsp; <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10p84/98 Attention and Emotion] <br />
;Michael Mendl, Oliver H. P. Burman, and Elizabeth S. Paul&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982018/ An integrative and functional framework for the study of animal emotion and mood] <br />
;Manisha Rai&nbsp; <br />
:[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/12f6x031#page-1 Monkey Business: Emotion and Consciousness in Primates]<br />
<br />
== 2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals ==<br />
<br />
;Jaak Panksepp <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181986/ Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression] <br />
;Alexandra G. Rosati and Brian Hare&nbsp; <br />
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063058 Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes] <br />
;Thierry Steimer <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263396/ Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues ] <br />
;Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1636577/ Self-recognition in an Asian elephant] <br />
;Barbara King - How Animals Grieve<br />
<br />
<youtube>HCePpwJ4GU0</youtube> <br />
<br />
== 3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication ==<br />
<br />
;Marian Stamp Dawkins <br />
:[http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full Animal Minds and Animal Emotion] <br />
;Marina Scheumann, Anna-Elisa Roser, Wiebke Konerding, Eva Bleich, Hans-Jürgen Hedrich and Elke Zimmermann <br />
:[http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/9/1/36 Vocal correlates of sender-identity and arousal in the isolation calls of domestic kitten (''Felis silvestris catus'')] <br />
;Andrew J Tate, Hanno Fischer, Andrea E Leigh, and Keith M Kendrick <br />
:[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764842/ Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals] <br />
;Public Radio International with Carol Hills <br />
:[http://cdn.pri.org/sites/default/files/migration/PriMigrationsDamanticMediaAudioMigration/media.blubrry.com/world/www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/0723201310.mp3 Bottlenose Dolphins Whistling On A First Name Basis]<br />
<br />
== 4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on our Understanding of Animal Welfare ==<br />
<br />
;Leonor Galhardo and Rui F Oliveira <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2009v11p1/113 Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish] <br />
;Nichola M Brydges and Victoria A Braithwaite <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT91/112 Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?] <br />
;Jung Hwan Jeon, Jun Ik Song, Doo Hwan Kim <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/33 A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves’ vocalizations at 1 day after separation from dam] <br />
;David Fraser <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S1 Understanding animal welfare]<br />
<br />
== 5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals? ==<br />
<br />
;Marc Bekoff <br />
:[http://arbs.biblioteca.unesp.br/index.php/arbs/article/view/1806-8774.2008.v10pT1/99 ’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough] <br />
;Mikaela Ciprian, Laura D'Olimpio, Ram Pandit, Dominique Blache <br />
:[http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/phil_conference/23/ An analysis of ethics and emotion in written texts about the use of animals for scientific purposes] <br />
;Thomas G. Kelch <br />
:[http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol27/iss1/2/ The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights] <br />
;Kendal Shepherd <br />
:[http://www.actavetscand.com/content/50/S1/S12 The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry] <br />
;Agostino Sevi, Donato Casamassima, Giuseppe Pulina, Antonio Pazzona <br />
:[http://www.aspajournal.it/index.php/ijas/article/view/56 Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats]<br />
<br />
== 6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ==<br />
<br />
'''Ancient Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Pythagoras <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=bts Mary Ann Violin, “The First Animal Rights Philosopher”] <br />
;Plato <br />
:[http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/#SH2a “Creation of the World Animal” in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html ''Timaeus''] <br />
;Aristotle <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.html ''The History of Animals''] <br />
:[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html ''On the Soul'']<br />
<br />
'''Medieval Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Saint Thomas Aquinas <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=bts Judith Barad, “Aquinas’ Inconsistency on the Nature and the Treatment of Animals”]<br />
<br />
'''Modern Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Renes Descartes <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/discourseonmet00desc ''Discourse on Method'' (Part V)] <br />
:[http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Descartes.pdf J. Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?': Descartes' Treatment of Animals] <br />
;John Locke <br />
:[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (Book II. 27, Identity, Matter, and Bodies)] <br />
:[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/99_00/Empiricism/Readings/05_McCann/Locke_on_Identity.html Edwin McCann, "Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness"]<br />
<br />
'''19th Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Arthur Schopenhauer <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Comparative_anatomy “Comparative Anatomy” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic “Animal Magnetism and Magic” from ''On the Will in Nature''] <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/basisofmorality00schoiala ''On the Basis of Morality''] <br />
;G.W.F. Hegel <br />
:[http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/Hegel-Enc2-philnature.pdf ''The Philosophy of Nature''] <br />
;Charles Darwin <br />
:[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1227/1227-h/1227-h.htm ''On the Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals''] <br />
;Charles Sanders Peirce <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/jstor-27897003 “The Law of Mind”] <br />
:[http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/MSU/P23.html Robert Lane, “Peirce-onhood: Persons as Semiotic Animals”] <br />
;William James <br />
:[http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”] <br />
;John Dewey <br />
:[https://archive.org/details/experienceandnat029343mbp ''Experience and Nature'']<br />
<br />
'''20th and Early 21st Century Approaches''' <br />
<br />
;Alfred North Whitehead <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2767 Susan Armstrong-Buck, “Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis”] <br />
:[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm Amos Yong, “Personal Selfhood and Human Experience in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism”] <br />
:[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf Steven Shaviro, “Pulses of Emotion”] <br />
;Charles Hartshorne <br />
:[http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=bts Judith Barad, “Review of The Metaphysics of Animal Rights”] <br />
:[http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2355 L. Keeling, “Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View”] <br />
;Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum <br />
:[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Central2014/2701.Colloquium.pdf "Rights and Capabilities: Tom Regan and Martha Nussbaum on Animals"] <br />
;Bruno Latour <br />
:[http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf#page=4&zoom=auto,0,768 "What is Given in Experience?"] <br />
;Isabelle Stengers <br />
:[http://www.e-flux.com/journal/reclaiming-animism/ "Reclaiming Animism"] <br />
;Philippe Descola - All Kinds of Animals<br />
<br />
<youtube>GS3nbq80UP0</youtube> <br> <br />
<br />
== '''[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience/Attributions Attributions]''' ==</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5696Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:30:56Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience Back to the book]<br />
<br><br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br><br />
This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."<br />
<br><br> <br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study.<br />
<br><br><br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically.<br />
<br><br><br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br />
<br><br><br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br />
<br> <br> <br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?<br />
<br><br><br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”<br />
<br><br><br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br />
<br><br><br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br />
<br><br><br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br />
<br><br><br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br />
<br><br><br />
'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br><br><br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br><br><br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br />
<br><br><br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br />
<br><br><br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br />
<br><br><br />
Mikaela Ciprian, ''et al.'' identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br><br><br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi ''et al.'''s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br><br><br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br />
<br><br><br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br><br><br />
The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br><br><br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5695Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:30:01Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_experience Back to the book]<br />
<br><br />
== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br><br />
This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."<br />
<br><br> <br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study.<br />
<br><br><br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically.<br />
<br><br><br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br />
<br><br><br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br />
<br> <br> <br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?<br />
<br><br><br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”<br />
<br><br><br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br />
<br><br><br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br />
<br><br><br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br />
<br><br><br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br />
<br><br><br />
'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br><br><br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br><br><br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br />
<br><br><br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br />
<br><br><br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br />
<br><br><br />
Mikaela Ciprian, ''et al.'' identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br><br><br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi ''et al.'''s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br><br><br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br />
<br><br><br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br><br><br />
The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br><br><br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5694Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:25:15Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br><br />
This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."<br />
<br><br> <br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study.<br />
<br><br><br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically.<br />
<br><br><br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br />
<br><br><br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br />
<br> <br> <br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?<br />
<br><br><br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”<br />
<br><br><br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br />
<br><br><br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br />
<br><br><br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br />
<br><br><br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br />
<br><br><br />
'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br><br><br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br><br><br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br />
<br><br><br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br />
<br><br><br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br />
<br><br><br />
Mikaela Ciprian, ''et al.'' identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br><br><br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi ''et al.'''s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br><br><br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br />
<br><br><br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br><br><br />
The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br><br><br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5693Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:24:31Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br><br />
This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of Western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."<br />
<br><br> <br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study.<br />
<br><br><br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically.<br />
<br><br><br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br />
<br><br><br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br />
<br> <br> <br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?<br />
<br><br><br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”<br />
<br><br><br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br />
<br><br><br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br />
<br><br><br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br />
<br><br><br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br />
<br><br><br />
'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br><br><br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br><br><br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br><br><br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br />
<br><br><br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br />
<br><br><br />
Mikaela Ciprian, ''et al.'' identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br><br><br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi ''et al.'''s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br><br><br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br />
<br><br><br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br><br><br />
The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br><br><br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5692Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:24:04Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction''' ==<br />
<br><br><br />
This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."<br />
<br><br> <br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study.<br />
<br><br><br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically.<br />
<br><br><br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br />
<br><br><br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br />
<br> <br> <br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?<br />
<br><br><br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”<br />
<br><br><br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br />
<br><br><br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br />
<br><br><br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br />
<br><br><br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br />
<br><br><br />
'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br><br><br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br><br><br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br><br><br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Considering the emotional lives of animals certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and the lives animals had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br />
<br><br><br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough", where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotional responses to the current treatment of animals in a constructive enough way . <br />
<br><br><br />
Mikaela Ciprian, ''et al.'' identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared with utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzes which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way in which we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders,” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br><br><br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The Role of the Companion Animal Veterinary Surgeon in behavioural Husbandry" and Agostino Sevi ''et al.'''s "Factors of Welfare Reduction in Dairy Sheep and Goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Shepherd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery, where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a veterinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the wellbeing of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we have presented research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering psychological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. We have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br><br><br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration to animals. <br />
<br><br><br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes presents his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br><br><br />
The selected texts by Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br><br><br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5691Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T16:04:21Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br><br><br />
This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."<br />
<br><br> <br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study.<br />
<br><br><br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically.<br />
<br><br><br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br />
<br><br><br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br />
<br> <br> <br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?<br />
<br><br><br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”<br />
<br><br><br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br />
<br><br><br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br />
<br><br><br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br />
<br><br><br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br />
<br><br><br />
'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br><br><br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well as through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal wellbeing cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim's “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves at 1 Day of Separation”, where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br><br><br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, such as pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br />
Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
<br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
<br />
Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br />
<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
<br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
<br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br />
The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
<br />
<br></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5690Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T15:59:46Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br><br><br />
This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."<br />
<br><br> <br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study.<br />
<br><br><br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically.<br />
<br><br><br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br />
<br><br><br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br />
<br> <br> <br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br><br><br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?<br />
<br><br><br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”<br />
<br><br><br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br />
<br><br><br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br />
<br><br><br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. The articles included in the section discussing these issues draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness - the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but also contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br />
<br><br><br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br />
<br><br><br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, ''et al.'', and Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.). Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation. More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occurring within nonhuman species. Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, ''et al.'' reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species." <br />
<br><br><br />
'''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br><br><br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals; however, the psychological component of fish experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed. (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock Avoidance by Discrimination Learning in the Shore Crab (''Carcinus maenas'') Is Consistent with a Key Criterion for Pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology'' Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br><br><br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal well being cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim “A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves at 1 day of separation” where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, states like pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br />
Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
<br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
<br />
Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br />
<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
<br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
<br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br />
The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
<br />
<br></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5689Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T15:53:09Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br />
This "living" book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
<br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening podcast interview which sets the stage of this living book about life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books, including ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say 'Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours.' Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."<br />
<br><br> <br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggests that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals. He postulates that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to the beings they study.<br />
<br><br><br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically.<br />
<br><br><br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed”. His research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br />
<br><br><br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example, as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br />
<br> <br> <br />
<br> '''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness lies its “phenomenality,” that is in the various dimensions of ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind, agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement. <br />
<br><br><br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions for philosophy of mind: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or the physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?<br />
<br><br><br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, include complex emotional states. Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals. And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival. How could this be so? Jaak Panskepp in "Affective Neuroscience of the Emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary Perspectives and Implications for Understanding Depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”<br />
<br><br><br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value. Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans. <br />
<br><br><br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal Models of Anxiety Disorders in Rats and Mice: Some Conceptual Issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival. The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?" Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones? Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety. Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share. <br />
<br><br><br />
<br> '''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. These articles draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness- the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br> <br />
<br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br> <br />
<br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, et al, and Tate and Fischer, et. al respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.)&nbsp; Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation.&nbsp; More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occuring within nonhuman species.&nbsp; Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, et. al reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species."<br> <br />
<br />
<br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals, however the psychological component of fish-experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed.&nbsp; (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock avoidance by discrimination learning in the shore crab (''Carcinus maenas'') is consistent with a key criterion for pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology ''Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal well being cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim “A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves at 1 day of separation” where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, states like pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br />
Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
<br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
<br />
Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br />
<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
<br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
<br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br />
The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
<br />
<br></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5688Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T15:16:15Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. In our book we are presenting research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also from human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts by Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas, etc.) have been placed at the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials, ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in the earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin theorized animal emotion and expression in his ''The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals'' (1852) a long time ago. That particular entry may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications could be noticed. Various permutations of this thesis are therefore subsequently taken up in critical examination – denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and, currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (presented through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants a more ethical, or even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know whether animals can “think” (an issue covered in the [[''Cognition and Decision'']][http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Cognition_and_Decision] volume of this series) but also whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to benefit more than one species only. <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but also for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows we would like to look briefly at the research presented in this volume and consider some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
<br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening Podcast interview which sets the stage of this Living Book About Life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books including''Minding Animals, Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum, rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say "Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours." Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."&nbsp; <br />
<br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggest that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals warning that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to those beings whom they study.<br> <br />
<br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br> <br />
<br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed” and his research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br> <br />
<br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br> <br />
<br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness is its “phenomenality:” that is in the various dimensions ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement.<br> <br />
<br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions: for philosophy of mind are manifold: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice-versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?&nbsp; <br> <br />
<br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, includes complex emotional states.&nbsp; Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals.&nbsp; And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival.&nbsp; How could this be so?&nbsp; Jaak Panskepp in "Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value.&nbsp; Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans.<br> <br />
<br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival.&nbsp; The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?"&nbsp; Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones?&nbsp; Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety.&nbsp; Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. These articles draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness- the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br> <br />
<br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br> <br />
<br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, et al, and Tate and Fischer, et. al respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.)&nbsp; Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation.&nbsp; More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occuring within nonhuman species.&nbsp; Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, et. al reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species."<br> <br />
<br />
<br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals, however the psychological component of fish-experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed.&nbsp; (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock avoidance by discrimination learning in the shore crab (''Carcinus maenas'') is consistent with a key criterion for pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology ''Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal well being cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim “A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves at 1 day of separation” where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, states like pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br />
Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
<br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
<br />
Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br />
<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
<br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
<br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br />
The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
<br />
<br></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5687Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T11:30:27Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominant component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness, that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in the Living Books about Life series in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. We have presented research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts, e.g. Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas) were reserved for the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin long ago theorized animal emotion and expression in his The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1852), and that selection may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, we see a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications, and so various permutations of this thesis are subsequently taken up in critical examination --denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br> <br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (established through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants more ethical, and even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know if animals can “think” (covered in the ''Cognition and Decision'' volume of this series) but whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to the benefit of more than one species only. <br> <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br> <br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows the editors would like to briefly look at the research presented in this volume and trace some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
<br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening Podcast interview which sets the stage of this Living Book About Life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books including''Minding Animals, Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum, rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say "Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours." Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."&nbsp; <br />
<br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggest that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals warning that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to those beings whom they study.<br> <br />
<br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br> <br />
<br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed” and his research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br> <br />
<br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br> <br />
<br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness is its “phenomenality:” that is in the various dimensions ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement.<br> <br />
<br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions: for philosophy of mind are manifold: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice-versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?&nbsp; <br> <br />
<br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, includes complex emotional states.&nbsp; Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals.&nbsp; And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival.&nbsp; How could this be so?&nbsp; Jaak Panskepp in "Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value.&nbsp; Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans.<br> <br />
<br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival.&nbsp; The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?"&nbsp; Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones?&nbsp; Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety.&nbsp; Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. These articles draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness- the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br> <br />
<br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br> <br />
<br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, et al, and Tate and Fischer, et. al respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.)&nbsp; Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation.&nbsp; More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occuring within nonhuman species.&nbsp; Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, et. al reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species."<br> <br />
<br />
<br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals, however the psychological component of fish-experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed.&nbsp; (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock avoidance by discrimination learning in the shore crab (''Carcinus maenas'') is consistent with a key criterion for pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology ''Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal well being cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim “A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves at 1 day of separation” where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, states like pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br />
Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
<br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
<br />
Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br />
<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
<br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
<br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br />
The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
<br />
<br></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5686Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T11:25:06Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals by focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br><br><br />
A dominating component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness; that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats. <br />
<br><br><br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. We have presented research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts, e.g. Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas) were reserved for the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin long ago theorized animal emotion and expression in his The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1852), and that selection may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, we see a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications, and so various permutations of this thesis are subsequently taken up in critical examination --denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br> <br />
<br><br><br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (established through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants more ethical, and even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know if animals can “think” (covered in the ''Cognition and Decision'' volume of this series) but whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to the benefit of more than one species only. <br> <br />
<br><br><br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br> <br />
<br><br><br />
In what follows the editors would like to briefly look at the research presented in this volume and trace some of its implications. <br />
<br><br><br />
<br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening Podcast interview which sets the stage of this Living Book About Life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books including''Minding Animals, Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum, rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say "Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours." Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."&nbsp; <br />
<br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggest that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals warning that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to those beings whom they study.<br> <br />
<br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br> <br />
<br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed” and his research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br> <br />
<br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br> <br />
<br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness is its “phenomenality:” that is in the various dimensions ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement.<br> <br />
<br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions: for philosophy of mind are manifold: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice-versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?&nbsp; <br> <br />
<br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, includes complex emotional states.&nbsp; Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals.&nbsp; And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival.&nbsp; How could this be so?&nbsp; Jaak Panskepp in "Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value.&nbsp; Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans.<br> <br />
<br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival.&nbsp; The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?"&nbsp; Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones?&nbsp; Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety.&nbsp; Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. These articles draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness- the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br> <br />
<br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br> <br />
<br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, et al, and Tate and Fischer, et. al respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.)&nbsp; Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation.&nbsp; More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occuring within nonhuman species.&nbsp; Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, et. al reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species."<br> <br />
<br />
<br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals, however the psychological component of fish-experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed.&nbsp; (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock avoidance by discrimination learning in the shore crab (''Carcinus maenas'') is consistent with a key criterion for pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology ''Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal well being cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim “A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves at 1 day of separation” where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, states like pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br />
Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
<br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
<br />
Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br />
<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
<br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
<br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br />
The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
<br />
<br></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5685Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T11:23:47Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br />
A dominating component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness; that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats.<br> <br />
<br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. We have presented research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts, e.g. Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas) were reserved for the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin long ago theorized animal emotion and expression in his The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1852), and that selection may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, we see a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications, and so various permutations of this thesis are subsequently taken up in critical examination --denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br> <br />
<br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (established through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants more ethical, and even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know if animals can “think” (covered in the ''Cognition and Decision'' volume of this series) but whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to the benefit of more than one species only. <br> <br />
<br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br> <br />
<br />
In what follows the editors would like to briefly look at the research presented in this volume and trace some of its implications. <br />
<br />
<br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening Podcast interview which sets the stage of this Living Book About Life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books including''Minding Animals, Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum, rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say "Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours." Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."&nbsp; <br />
<br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggest that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals warning that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to those beings whom they study.<br> <br />
<br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br> <br />
<br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed” and his research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br> <br />
<br />
The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br> <br />
<br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness is its “phenomenality:” that is in the various dimensions ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement.<br> <br />
<br />
Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions: for philosophy of mind are manifold: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice-versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?&nbsp; <br> <br />
<br />
The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, includes complex emotional states.&nbsp; Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals.&nbsp; And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival.&nbsp; How could this be so?&nbsp; Jaak Panskepp in "Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value.&nbsp; Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans.<br> <br />
<br />
Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival.&nbsp; The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?"&nbsp; Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones?&nbsp; Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety.&nbsp; Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
<br />
Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. These articles draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness- the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br> <br />
<br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br> <br />
<br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, et al, and Tate and Fischer, et. al respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.)&nbsp; Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation.&nbsp; More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occuring within nonhuman species.&nbsp; Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, et. al reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species."<br> <br />
<br />
<br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
<br />
Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals, however the psychological component of fish-experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed.&nbsp; (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock avoidance by discrimination learning in the shore crab (''Carcinus maenas'') is consistent with a key criterion for pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology ''Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
<br />
It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal well being cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim “A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves at 1 day of separation” where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, states like pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
<br />
Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
<br />
This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
<br />
Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
<br />
The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
<br />
<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
<br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
<br />
Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
<br />
In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
<br />
The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
<br />
Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
<br />
<br></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5684Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T11:23:36Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<br><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br />
A dominating component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness; that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats.<br> <br />
<br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. We have presented research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts, e.g. Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas) were reserved for the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin long ago theorized animal emotion and expression in his The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1852), and that selection may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, we see a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications, and so various permutations of this thesis are subsequently taken up in critical examination --denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br> <br />
<br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (established through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants more ethical, and even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know if animals can “think” (covered in the ''Cognition and Decision'' volume of this series) but whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to the benefit of more than one species only. <br> <br />
<br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br> <br />
<br />
In what follows the editors would like to briefly look at the research presented in this volume and trace some of its implications. <br />
<br />
<br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
<br />
Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening Podcast interview which sets the stage of this Living Book About Life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books including''Minding Animals, Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum, rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say "Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours." Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."&nbsp; <br />
<br />
In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggest that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals warning that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to those beings whom they study.<br> <br />
<br />
Jaak Panksepp in “Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br> <br />
<br />
In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed” and his research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br> <br />
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The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br> <br> <br />
<br />
'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br> <br />
<br />
In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness is its “phenomenality:” that is in the various dimensions ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement.<br> <br />
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Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions: for philosophy of mind are manifold: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice-versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?&nbsp; <br> <br />
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The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, includes complex emotional states.&nbsp; Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals.&nbsp; And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival.&nbsp; How could this be so?&nbsp; Jaak Panskepp in "Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”&nbsp; <br />
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Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value.&nbsp; Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans.<br> <br />
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Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival.&nbsp; The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?"&nbsp; Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones?&nbsp; Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety.&nbsp; Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share.<br> <br> <br />
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'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
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Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. These articles draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness- the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br> <br />
<br />
Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br> <br />
<br />
Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, et al, and Tate and Fischer, et. al respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.)&nbsp; Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation.&nbsp; More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occuring within nonhuman species.&nbsp; Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, et. al reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species."<br> <br />
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<br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
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Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals, however the psychological component of fish-experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed.&nbsp; (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock avoidance by discrimination learning in the shore crab (''Carcinus maenas'') is consistent with a key criterion for pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology ''Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
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It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal well being cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim “A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves at 1 day of separation” where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
<br />
In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, states like pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
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'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
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Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
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This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
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Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
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The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
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<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
<br />
In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
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Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
<br />
What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
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In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
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The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
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Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
<br />
<br></div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_science/Introduction&diff=5683Open science/Introduction2014-06-10T11:20:37Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Digitize_Me,_Visualize_Me,_Search_Me Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
= '''White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix)''' =<br />
<br />
= Gary Hall =<br />
<br />
<br><br> <youtube>PH54cp2ggFk</youtube> <br><br><br />
One of the explicit aims of the Living Books About Life series is to provide a&nbsp; point of interrogation and contestation, as well as connection and translation, between the humanities and the sciences (partly to avoid slipping into 'scientism'). Accordingly, this introduction to ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' takes as its starting point the so-called ‘computational turn’ to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities. <br><br> The phrase ‘[http://www.thecomputationalturn.com/ the computational turn]’ has been adopted to refer to the process whereby techniques and methodologies drawn from (in this case) ''computer science'' and related fields – including science visualization, interactive information visualization, image processing, network analysis, statistical data analysis, and the management, manipulation and mining of data – are being used to produce new ways of approaching and understanding texts in the humanities; what is sometimes thought of as ‘the digital humanities’. The concern in the main has been with either digitizing ‘born analog’ humanities texts and artifacts (e.g. making annotated editions of the art and writing of [http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ William Blake] available to scholars and researchers online), or gathering together ‘born digital’ humanities texts and artifacts (videos, websites, games, photography, sound recordings, 3D data), and then taking complex and often extremely large-scale data analysis techniques from computing science and related fields and applying them to these humanities texts and artifacts - to this ‘big data’, as it has been called. Witness Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative’s use of ‘[http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf digital image analysis and new visualization techniques]’ to study ‘20,000 pages of Science and Popular Science magazines… published between 1872-1922, 780 paintings by van Gogh, 4535 covers of Time magazine (1923-2009) and one million manga pages’ (Manovich, 2011), and Dan Cohen and Fred Gibb’s text mining of ‘[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader the 1,681,161 books that were published in English in the UK in the long nineteenth century]’ (Cohen, 2010). <br><br> ''What Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' endeavours to show is that such data-focused transformations in research can be seen as part of a major alteration in the status and nature of knowledge. It is an alteration that, according to the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, has been taking place since at least the 1950s, and involves nothing less than a shift away from a concern with questions of what is right and just, and toward a concern with legitimating power by optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. This shift has significant consequences for our idea of knowledge. Indeed, for Lyotard: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these language whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as ‘knowledge’ statements. (1986: 4)</blockquote> <br />
<br>In particular, ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' suggests that the turn in the humanities toward data-driven scholarship, science visualization, statistical data analysis, etc. can be placed alongside all those discourses that are being put forward at the moment - in both the academy and society - in the name of greater openness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. <br><br> '''Open Access ''' <br><br> The open access movement provides a case in point. Witness [http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf John Houghton’s] 2009 comparison of the benefits of OA for the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, which claims to show that the open access academic publishing model, in which peer reviewed scholarly research and publications are made available for free online to all those who are able to access the Internet, is actually the most cost effective mechanism for scholarly publishing. Others meanwhile have detailed the increases open access publishing enables in the amount of material that can be published, searched and stored, in the number of people who can access it, in the impact of that material, the range of its distribution, and in the speed and ease of reporting and information retrieval. The following announcement, posted on the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) list in March 2010, is fairly typical in this respect: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Today PLoS released Pubget links across its journal sites. Now, when users are browsing thousands of reference citations on PLoS journals they will be able to get to the full text article faster than ever before. <br><br> Specifically, when readers encounter citations to articles as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will also appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. <br><br> On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said: ‘Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.’ (Pubget, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Open Data ''' <br><br> Yet it is not just the research literature that is positioned as being rendered more accessible by scientists. Even the data created in the course of scientific research is promoted as being made freely and openly available for others to use, analyse and build upon.This includes data sets that are too large to be included in any resulting peer-reviewed publications. Known as open data, or data-sharing, this initiative is motivated by the idea that publishing data online on an open basis bestows it with a [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/1/Swan_-_NERC_09.pptx ‘vastly increased utility’]. Digital data sets are said to be ‘easily passed around’; they are seemingly ‘more easily reused’, reanalysed and checked for accuracy and validity; and they supposedly contain more ‘opportunities for educational and commercial exploitation’ (Swan, 2009). <br><br> Interestingly, certain academic publishers are already viewing the linking of their journals to the underlying data as another of the ‘value-added’ services they can offer, to set alongside automatic alerting and sophisticated citation, indexing, searching and linking facilities (and to no doubt help ward off the threat of disintermediation posed by the development of digital technology, which enables academics to take over the means of dissemination and publish their work for and by themselves cheaply and easily). Significantly, a [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx 2009 JISC report] also identified ‘open-ness, predictive science based on massive data volumes and citizen involvement as [all] being important features of tomorrow’s research practice’. <br><br> In a further move in this direction, all Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are now providing a broad range of article-level metrics and indicators relating to usage data on an open basis. No longer withheld as trade secrets, these metrics reveal which articles are attracting the most views, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, coverage in the media, comments, responses, ‘star’ ratings, blog coverage, and so on. PLoS has positioned this programme as enabling science scholars to assess [http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/ ‘research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published’], and they encourage readers to carry out their own analyses of this open data (Patterson, 2009). Yet it is difficult not to perceive such article-level metrics and management tools as also being part of the wider process of transforming knowledge and learning into ‘quantities of information’ (Lyotard, 1986: 4); quantities, furthermore, that are produced more to be exchanged, marketed and sold (1986: 4) – for example, by individual academics to their departments, institutions, funders and governments in the form of indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ (1986: 5). <br><br> '''From Open Science to Open Government ''' <br><br> Such developments around open access and open data are themselves part of the larger trend or phenomenon that is coming to be known as ‘open science’. As Murray et al put it: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Open science is emerging as a collaborative and transparent approach to research. It is the idea that all data (both published and unpublished) should be freely available, and that private interests should not stymie its use by means of copyright, intellectual property rights and patents. It also embraces open access publishing and open source software… (Murray et al, 2008)</blockquote><br />
<br><br />
One of the most interesting and well known examples of how such open science may work is provided by the Open Notebook Science of the organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. ‘[I]in the interests of openness’, Bradley is making the [http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml ‘details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web']. This ‘includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments’. What is more, he is doing so in ‘real time’, ‘within hours of production, not after the months or years involved in peer review’ (Poynder, 2010). Again, we can see how emphasis is being placed on the amount of research that can be shared, and the speed with which this can be achieved. This openness on Bradley’s part is also positioned as a means of achieving usefulness and impact, as is evident from the very title of one of his Open Notebook Science projects, [http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/ UsefulChem]. <br><br> To be fair, however, such discourses around openness, transparency, efficiency and utility are not confined to the sciences – or even the university, for that matter. There are also wider political initiatives, dubbed ‘Open Government’, or ‘Government 2.0’, with both the Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administrations in the UK making a great display of freeing government information. The Labour government implemented the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000, and then proceeded to launch a [http://www.data.gov.uk website] expressly dedicated to the release of governmental data sets in January 2010. It is a website that the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government continues to make extensive use of. In a similar vein, the [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Guardian] newspaper has campaigned for the UK government to relinquish its copyright on all local, regional and national data collected with taxpayers’ money and to make such data freely and openly available to the public by publishing it online, where it can be collectively and collaboratively scrutinized, searched, mined, mapped, graphed, cross-tabulated, visualized, audited and interpreted using software tools. <br><br> Nor is this phenomenon confined to the UK. In the United States Barack Obama promised throughout his election campaign to make government more open. He followed this up by issuing a memorandum on transparency the very first day after he became President, vowing to make openness one of [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html ‘the touchstones of this presidency’”] (Obama, cited in Stolberg, 2009): ‘[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration] is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (The White House, 2009). <br><br>'''The Politics of Openness''' <br><br> The connection I am making here between the movements for open access, open data, open science and open government is one that has to a certain extent already been pointed to by Michael Gurstein in his reflections on the experience of attending the 2011 conference of the [http://okfn.org/ Open Knowledge Foundation]. For Gurstein: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emerging-data-divide/ the ‘open data/open government’ movement] begins from a profoundly political perspective that government is largely ineffective and inefficient (and possibly corrupt) and that it hides that ineffectiveness and inefficiency (and possible corruption) from public scrutiny through lack of transparency in its operations and particularly in denying to the public access to information (data) about its operations. And further that this access once available would give citizens the means to hold bureaucrats (and their political masters) accountable for their actions. In doing so it would give these self-same citizens a platform on which to undertake (or at least collaborate with) these bureaucrats in certain key and significant activities—planning, analyzing, budgeting that sort of thing. Moreover through the implementation of processes of crowdsourcing this would also provide the bureaucrats with the overwhelming benefits of having access to and input from the knowledge and wisdom of the broader interested public. <br><br> Put in somewhat different terms but with essentially the same meaning—it’s the taxpayer’s money and they have the right to participate in overseeing how it is spent. Having “open” access to government’s data/information gives citizens the tools to exercise that right. (Gurstein, 2011)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Interestingly, for Gurstein, a much clearer understanding is needed than has been displayed by many open data/open government advocates to date of what exactly is meant by openness, and of where arguments in favour of open access, open information and open data are likely to lead us in the not too distant future. With this in mind, we could endeavour to put some flesh on the bones of Gurstein’s sketch of the politics of openness and suggest that, from a liberal perspective, freeing publicly funded and acquired information and data – whether it is gathered directly in the process of census collection, or indirectly as part of other activities (crime, healthcare, transport, schools and accident statistics) – is seen as helping society to perform more efficiently. For liberals, openness is said to play a key role in increasing citizen trust, participation and involvement in democracy, and indeed government, as access to information – such as that needed to intervene in public policy – is no longer restricted either to the state or to those corporations, institutions, organizations and individuals who have sufficient money and power to acquire it for themselves. <br><br> Such liberal beliefs find support in the idea that making information and data freely and transparently available goes along with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states that everyone has the right [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’]. Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, put forward a similar vision when, at the beginning of 2010, she said of her country that ‘[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full We stand for a single internet] where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas’, and against the authoritarian censorship and suppression of free speech and online search facilities like Google in countries such as China and Iran. Clinton declared: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Even in authoritarian countries], information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. <br><br> During his visit to China in November [2009], President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today. (Clinton, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
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This political sentiment was shared by Jeff Jarvis, author of ''What Would Google Do?'', when, in support of Google’s decision to stop self-filtering search results in China, he argued in March 2010 for a bill of rights for cyberspace: ‘[http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/27/a-bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace/ to claim and secure our freedom] to connect, speak, assemble, and act online; to each control our identities and data; to speak our languages; to protect what is public and private; and to assure openness’ (Jarvis, 2010: 4). Yet are Clinton and Jarvis not both guilty here of overlooking (or should that be conveniently forgetting or even denying) the way liberal ideas of freedom and openness (and, indeed, of the human) have long been used in the service of colonialism and neoliberal globalisation? Does freedom for the latter not primarily mean economic freedom, i.e., freedom of the market, freedom of the consumer to choose what to consume – not only in terms of goods, but also lifestyles and ways of being? <br><br> Even if it was before the widespread use of networked computers, it is interesting that ‘fifteen years after the Freedom of Information Act law was passed’ in the US in 1966, ‘the General Accounting Office reported that 82 percent of requests [for information] came from business, nine percent from the press, and only 1 percent from individuals or public interest groups’ (Fung et al, 2007: 27-28). Certainly, in the UK today, the 'truth is that the [UK] FOI Act [2000] isn't used, for the most part, by “the people”’, as Tony Blair acknowledged in his recent memoir. ‘It's used by journalists’ (Blair, 2010) – and by businesses, one might add. In view of this, it is no surprise to find that neoliberals also support the making of government data freely and openly available to businesses and the public. They do so on the grounds that it provides a means of achieving the best possible ‘input/output ratio’ for society (Lyotard, 1986: 54). This way of thinking is of a piece with the emphasis placed by neoliberalism’s audit culture on accountability, transparency, evaluation, measurement and centralised data management: for example, in the context of UK higher education, it is evident in the emphasis placed on measuring the impact of research on society and the economy, teaching standards, contact hours, as well as student drop-out rates, future employment destinations and earning prospects. From this perspective, such openness and communicative transparency is perceived as ensuring greater value for (taxpayers’) money, supposedly helping to eliminate corruption, enabling costs to be distributed more effectively, and increasing choice, innovation, enterprise, creativity, competiveness and accountability. <br><br> Meanwhile, some libertarians have gone so far as to argue that there is no need to make difficult policy decisions about what data and what information it is right to publish online and what to keep secret at all. Instead, we should work toward the kind of situation the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling proposes. In ''Shaping Things'', his non-fiction book on the future of design, Sterling advocates retaining all data and information, ‘the known, the unknown known, and the unknown unknown’, in large archives and databases equipped with the necessary bandwidth, processing speed and storage capacity, and simply devising search tools and metadata that are accurate, fast and powerful enough to find and access it (Sterling, 2005: 47). <br><br> Yet to have participated in the shift away from questions of truth, justice and especially what, in ''The Inhuman'', Lyotard places under the headings of ‘heterogeneity, dissensus, event…the unharmonizable’ (1991: 4), and ''toward'' a concern with performativity, measurement and optimising the relation between input and output, one does not need to be a practicing [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/09/canada-open-data data journalist], or to have actively contributed to the movements for open access, open data, open science or open government. If you are one of the 1.3 million plus people who have purchased a Kindle, and helped the sale of digital books outpace those of hardbacks on Amazon’s US website, then you have already signed a license agreement allowing the online book retailer - but not academic researchers or the public - to collect, store, mine, analyse and extract economic value from data concerning your personal reading habits for free. Similarly, if you are one of the over 687 million worldwide who use the Facebook social network, then you are already voluntarily giving your time and labour for free, not only to help its owners, their investors, and other companies make a reputed $1 billion a year from demographically targeted advertising, but to supply governments and law enforcement agencies such as the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK with profile data relating to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues and peers that they can [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement use in investigations] (Hoffman, 2010). Even if you have done neither, you will in all probability have provided the Google technology company with a host of network data and digital traces it can both monetize and give to the police as a result of having mapped your home, digitized your book, or supplied you with free music videos to enjoy via Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and YouTube, which Google also owns. Lest this shift from open access to Google should seem somewhat farfetched, it is worth recalling that ‘[http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf Google has moved to establish, embellish, or replace many core university services] such as library databases, search interfaces, and e-mail servers’ (Vaidhyanathan, 2009: 65-66); and that academia in fact gave birth to Google, Google’s PageRank algorithm being little more [http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 ‘than an expansion of what is known as citation analysis’] (Knouf, 2010).<br><br><br />
<youtube>R7yfV6RzE30</youtube> <br><br><br />
Obviously, no matter how exciting and enjoyable such activities may be, you don't ''have'' to buy that e-book reader, join that social network or display your personal metrics online, from sexual activity to food consumption, in an attempt to identify patterns in your life – what is called life-tracking or self-tracking. (Although, actually, a lot of people are quite happy to keep contributing to the networked communities reached by Facebook and YouTube, even though they realise they are being used as free labour and that, in the case of the former, much of what they do cannot be accessed by search engines and web browsers. They just see this as being part of the deal and a reasonable trade-off for the services and experiences that are provided by these companies.) Nevertheless, refusing to take part in this transformation of knowledge and learning into quantities of data, and shift ''away'' from critical questions of what is just and right ''toward'' a concern with optimizing the system’s performance is not an option for most of us. It is not something that can be opted out of by simply declining to take out a Tesco Club Card or use cash-points, refusing to look for research using Google Scholar, or committing social networking [http://www.suicidemachine.org/ ‘suicide’] and reading print-on-paper books instead. <br><br> For one thing, the process of capturing data by means not just of the internet, but a myriad of cameras, sensors and robotic devices, is now so ubiquitous and all pervasive it is impossible to avoid being caught up in it, no matter how rich, knowledgeable and technologically proficient you are. The latest research indicates there are approximately 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 32 people. Yet no one really knows how many CCTV cameras are actually in operation in Britain today - and that’s without even mentioning other means of gathering data that are reputed to be more intrusive still, such as mobile phone GPS location and automatic vehicle number plate recognition (ANPR). <br><br> For another, and as the example of CCTV illustrates, it’s not necessarily a question of actively doing something in this respect: of positively contributing free labour to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, for instance, or of refusing to do so. Nor is it merely a case of the separation between work and non-work being harder to maintain nowadays. (Is it work, leisure or play when you are writing a status update on Facebook, posting a photograph, ‘friending’ someone, interacting, detailing your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ regarding the places you eat, the films you watch, the books you read?) As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out some time ago, ‘surplus labor no longer requires labor... one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work’, or anything that even remotely resembles work for that matter, at least as it is most commonly understood: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>In these new conditions, it remains true that all labour involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized ‘machinic enslavement’, such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling – every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequalled point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. ((Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 492)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Transparency?''' <br><br> Before going any further, I should perhaps confess that I am a staunch advocate of open access in the humanities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be raised with regard to making research and data openly available online for free. <br><br> The first point to make in this respect is that, far from revealing any hitherto unknown, hidden or secret knowledge, such discourses of openness and transparency are themselves often not very open or transparent. Staying with the relationship between politics and science, let us take as an example the response of Ed Miliband, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy 'Climategate']controversy, in which climate skeptics alleged that emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that scientists have tampered with the data in order to support the theory that global warming is man-made. Miliband’s answer was to advocate ‘[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame maximum transparency]– let’s get the data out there’, he urged. ‘The people who believe that climate change is happening and is man-made have nothing to fear from transparency’ (Miliband, quoted in Westcott, 2009: 7; cited by Birchall,&nbsp;2011b). Yet, actually, complete transparency is impossible. This is because, as Clare Birchall has shown, there is an aporia at the heart of any claim to transparency. ‘For transparency to be known as transparency, there must be some agency (such as the media [or politicians, or government]) that legitimizes it as transparent, and because there is a legitimizing agent which does not itself have to be transparent, there is a limit to transparency’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). In fact, the more transparency is claimed, the more the violence of the mediating agency of this transparency is concealed, forgotten or obscured. Birchall offers the example of ‘The Daily Telegraph and its exposure of MPs’ expenses during the summer of 2009. While appearing to act on the side of transparency, as a commercial enterprise the paper itself has in the past been subject to secret takeover bids and its former owner, Lord Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstructing justice’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). To paraphrase a question from Lyotard I am going to return to at more length: Who decides what transparency is, and who knows what needs to be transparent (1986: 9)? <br><br> Furthermore, merely making such information and data available to the public online will not in itself necessarily change anything. In fact, such processes have often been adopted precisely as a means of avoiding change. Aaron Swartz provides the example of Watergate: ‘[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency after Watergate], people were upset about politicians receiving millions of dollars from large corporations. But, on the other hand, corporations seem to like paying off politicians. So instead of banning the practice, Congress simply required that politicians keep track of everyone who gives them money and file a report on it for public inspection’ (Swartz, 2010). <br><br> '''Openness?''' <br><br> Much the same can be said for the idea that making research and data accessible to the public supposedly helps to make society more open and free. Take the belief we saw expressed above by Hilary Clinton: that people in the United States have free access to the internet while those in China and Iran do not. Those of us who live and work in the West do indeed have a certain freedom to publish and search online. Yet none of this rhetoric about freedom and transparency prevented the Obama government from condemning Wikileaks in November 2010 as [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security ‘reckless and dangerous’], after it opened up access to hundreds of thousands of classified State Department documents (Gibbs, 2010); nor from putting pressure on Amazon and other companies to stop hosting the whistle-blowing website, an action which had echoes of the dispute over censorship between Google and the Chinese government earlier in 2010. (Significantly, the Obama administration has also recently withdrawn the bulk of funding from the United States open government website www.data.gov, which served as an influential precursor to the previously mentioned [http://www.data.gov.uk www.data.gov.uk] website in the UK.) Furthermore, unless you are a large political or economic actor, or one of the lucky few, the statistics show that what you publish online is unlikely to receive much attention. Just ‘three companies – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – handle 95 percent of all search queries’; while ‘for searches containing the name of a specific political organisation, Yahoo! and Google agree on the top result 90 percent of the time’ (Hindman, 2009: 59, 79). Meanwhile, one company, Google, reportedly has 65&nbsp;% of the world’s search market, ‘72 per cent share of the US search market, and almost 90 per cent in the UK’ – a degree of domination that has led the European Union to investigate Google for abusing its power to favour its own products while suppressing those of rivals (Arthur, 2010: 3). <br><br> But it is not just that Google’s algorithms are ranking some websites on the first page of its results and others on page 42 (which means, in effect, that the latter are rarely going to be accessed, since very few people read beyond the first page of Google’s results). It is that conventional search engines are reaching only an extremely small percentage of the total number of available web pages. Ten years ago Michael K. Bergman was already placing the figure at 0.03%, or [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104 ‘one in 3,000’], with ‘public information on the deep Web’ even then being ‘400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web’. Consequently, while according to Bergman as much as ‘ninety-five per cent of the deep Web’ may be ‘publicly accessible information – not subject to fees or subscriptions’ – by far the vast majority of it is left untouched (Bergman, 2001). And that is before we even begin to address the issue of how the recent rise of the app, and use of the password protected Facebook for search purposes, may today be [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ annihilating the very idea of the openly searchable Web]. <br><br> We can therefore see that it is not enough simply to [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ ‘Free Our Data’], as the Guardian has it; or to operate on the basis that ‘information wants to be free’ (Wark, 2004) (although doing so of course may be a start, especially in an era when notions of the open web and net neutrality are under severe threat). We can put ever more research and data online; we can make it freely available to both other researchers and the public under open access, open data, open science and open government conditions; we can even integrate, index and link it using the appropriate metadata to enable it to be searched and harvested with relative ease. But none of this means this research and data is going to be found. Ideas of this kind ignore the fact that all information and data is ordered, structured, selected and framed in a particular way. This is what metadata is for, after all. Metadata is information or data that describes, links to, or is otherwise used to control, find, select, filter, classify and present other data. One example would be the information provided at the front of a book detailing its publisher, date and place of publication, ISBN number, and so on. However, the term ‘metadata’ is most commonly associated with the language of computing. There, metadata is what enables computers to access files and documents, not just in their own hard drives, but potentially across a range of different platforms, servers, websites and databases. Yet for all its associations with computer science, metadata is never neutral or objective. Although the term ‘data’ comes from the Latin word datum, meaning [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=-1&text=datum ‘something given’], data is not simply objectively out there in the world already provided for us. The specific ways in which metadata is created, organized and presented helps to produce (rather than merely passively reflect) what is classified as data and information – and what is not. <br><br> Clearly, then, it is not just a question of free and open access to the research and data; nor of providing support, education and training on how to understand, interpret, use and apply it effectively, as [http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ Gurstein] has argued (2010). It is also a question of who (and what) makes decisions regarding the data and metadata, and thus gets to exercise control over it, and on what basis such decisions are made. To paraphrase Lyotard once more: who decides what data and metadata is, and who knows what needs to be decided?’ (1986: 9). Who gets to legislate? And who legitimates the legislators (1986: 8)? Will the ‘ruling class’ – top civil servants and consulting firms full of people with MBAs, ‘corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organizations’, including those behind Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, JISC, AHRC, OAI, SPARC, COASP – continue to operate as the class of interpreters, gatekeepers and ‘decision makers,’ not just with regard to having ‘access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made’, but with regard to creating and controlling the data and metadata, too (1986: 14)? <br><br>'''On Data-Intensive Scholarship''' <br><br> If, as demonstrated above, discourses of openness and transparency are themselves not very open or transparent at all, much of the current emphasis on making the research and data open and free is also lacking in self-reflectivity and meaningful critique. We can see this not just in those discourses associated with open access, open data, open science and open government that are explicitly emphasizing the importance of transparency, performativity and efficiency. This lack of criticality is apparent in much of what goes under the name of ‘digital humanities’, too, especially those elements associated with the ‘computational turn’. <br><br> We tend to think of the humanities as being self-reflexive per se, and as frequently asking questions capable of troubling culture and society. Yet after decades when humanities scholarship made active use of a variety of critical theories – Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-colonialist, post-Marxist – it seems somewhat surprising that many advocates of this current turn to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities find it difficult to understand computing and the digital as much more than tools, techniques and resources. As a result, much of the scholarship that is currently occurring under the ‘digital humanities’ agenda is uncritical, naive and at times even banal ([http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities Liu], 2011; [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ Higgen], 2010). <br><br> Witness the current emphasis on making the data not only visible but also visual. Stefanie Posavec’s frequently referred to [http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/literary-organism/ Literary Organism], which visualises the structure of Part One of Kerouac’s ''On the Road'' as a tree, provides one example; those cited earlier courtesy of Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative offer another. Now, there is a long history of critical engagement within the humanities with ideas of the visual, the image, the spectacle, the spectator and so on: not just in critical theory, but also in cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, film and television studies. Such a history of critical engagement stretches back to Guy Debord’s influential 1967 work, ''The Society of the Spectacle'', and beyond. For example, in his introduction to a 1995 book edited with Lynn Cooke, ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'', Peter Wollen writes that an excess of visual display within culture has 'the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images that might best be understood, not simply detached from a real world of things, as Debord implied, but as effacing any trace of the symbolic, condemning the viewer to a world in which we can see everything but understand nothing—allowing us viewer-victims, in Debord’s phrase, only "a random choice of ephemera"’ (1995: 9). It can come as something of a surprise, then, to discover that this humanities tradition in which ideas of the visual are engaged critically appears to have had comparatively little impact on the current enthusiasm for data visualisation that is so prominent an aspect of the turn toward data-intensive scholarship. <br><br> Of course, this (at times explicit) repudiation of criticality could be precisely what makes certain aspects of the digital humanities so seductive for many at the moment. Exponents of the computational turn can be said to be endeavouring to avoid conforming to accepted (and often moralistic) conceptions of politics that have been decided in advance, including those that see it only in terms of power, ideology, race, gender, class, sexuality, ecology, affect etc. Refusing to [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html ‘go through the motions of a critical avant-garde’], to borrow the words of Bruno Latour (2004), they often position themselves as responding to what is perceived as a fundamentally new cultural situation, and to the challenge it represents to our traditional methods of studying culture, by avoiding conventional theoretical manoeuvres and by experimenting with the development of fresh methods and approaches for the humanities instead. <br><br> Manovich, for instance, sees the sheer scale and dynamics of the contemporary new media landscape as presenting the usually accepted means of studying culture that were dominant for so much of the 20th century – the kinds of theories, concepts and methods appropriate to producing close readings of a relatively small number of texts – with a significant practical and conceptual challenge. In the past, ‘[http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories] based on small data sets (for instance, “classical Hollywood cinema”, “Italian Renaissance”, etc.) But how can we track “global digital cultures”, with their billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors’, he asks (Manovich, 2010)? Three years ago Manovich was already describing the ‘numbers of people participating in social networks, sharing media, and creating user-generated content’ as simply ‘astonishing’: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html MySpace, for example,] claims 300 million users. Cyworld, a Korean site similar to MySpace, claims 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of that country's total population (as of 2006) use it. Hi5, a leading social media site in Central America has 100 million users and Facebook, 14 million photo uploads daily. The number of new videos uploaded to YouTube every twenty-four hours (as of July 2006): 65,000. (Manovich in Franklin &amp; Rodriguez’G, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br> The solution Manovich proposes to this ‘data deluge’ is to turn to the very computers, databases, software and vast amounts of born-digital networked cultural content that are causing the problem in the first place, and to use them to help develop new methods and approaches adequate to the task at hand. This is where what he calls Cultural Analytics comes in. [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘The key idea of Cultural Analytics] is the use of computers to automatically analyze cultural artefacts in visual media, extracting large numbers of features that characterize their structure and content’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009); and what is more, to do so not just with regard to the culture of the past, but also with that of the present. To this end, Manovich (not unlike the Google technology company) calls for as much of culture as possible to be made available in external, digital form: [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘not only the exceptional but also the typical]; not only the few cultural sentences spoken by a few "great man" [sic] but the patterns in all cultural sentences spoken by everybody else’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009). <br><br> In a series of posts on his Found History blog, Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, positions such developments in terms of a shift from a concern with theory and ideology to a [http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ concern with methodology] (2008). In this respect there may well be a degree of [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ ‘relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s’] – for those in the US especially – as a result of this move ‘into the space of methodological work’ (Croxall, 2010) and what Scheinfeldt reportedly dubs [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘the post-theoretical age’] (cited in P. Cohen, 2010). The problem, though, is that without such reflexive critical thinking and theories many of those whose work forms part of this computational turn find it difficult to articulate exactly what the point of what they are doing is, as Scheinfeldt readily acknowledges (2010a). <br><br> Take one of the projects mentioned earlier: the attempt by [http://victorianbooks.org Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs] to text-mine all the books published in English in the Victorian age (or at least those digitized by Google). Among other things, this allows Cohen and Gibbs to show that use of the word ‘revolution’ in book titles of the period spiked around [http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ‘the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848’] (D. Cohen, 2010). But what argument are they trying to make with this calculation? What is it we are able to learn as a result of this use of computational power on their part that we did not know already and could not have discovered without it ([http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/ Scheinfeldt], 2008)? <br><br> In an explicit response to Cohen and Gibbs’s project, Scheinfeldt suggests that the problem of theory, or the lack of it, may actually be a question of scale: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It expects something of the scale of humanities scholarship] which I’m not sure is true anymore: that a single scholar—nay, every scholar—working alone will, over the course of his or her lifetime ... make a fundamental theoretical advance to the field. <br><br> Increasingly, this expectation is something peculiar to the humanities. ...it required the work of a generation of mathematicians and observational astronomers, gainfully employed, to enable the eventual “discovery” of Neptune... Since the scientific revolution, most theoretical advances play out over generations, not single careers. (Scheinfeldt, 2010b)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Now, it is absolutely important that we as scholars experiment with the new tools, methods and materials that digital media technologies create and make possible, in order to bring into play new forms of Foucauldian ''dispositifs'', or what Bernard Stiegler calls ''hypomnemata'', or what I am trying to think in terms of [http://garyhall.info media gifts]. I would include in this 'experimentation imperative’ techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science and other related fields, such as information visualisation, data mining and so forth. Nevertheless, there is something troubling about this kind of deferral of critical and self-reflexive theoretical questions to an unknown point in time, still possibly a generation away. After all, the frequent suggestion is that now is not the right time to be making any such decision or judgement, since we cannot yet know how humanists will eventually come to use these tools and data, and thus what data-driven scholarship may or may not turn out to be capable of, critically, politically, theoretically. One of the consequences of this deferral, however, is that it makes it extremely difficult to judge whether this postponement is indeed acting as a responsible, political and ethical opening to the (heterogeneity and incalculability of the) future, including the future of the humanities; or whether it is serving as an alibi for a naive and rather superficial form of scholarship instead ([https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/ Meeks], 2010). A form of scholarship moreover that, in uncritically and un-self-reflexively adopting techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science, can be seen as part of the larger shift in contemporary society which Lyotard associates with the widespread use of computers and databases, and with the exteriorization of knowledge in relation to the ‘knower’. As we have seen, it is a movement away from a concern with ideals, with what is right and just and true, and toward a concern to legitimate power by optimizing the system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. <br><br> All of this raises some rather significant and timely questions for the humanities. Is it merely a coincidence that such a turn toward science, computing and data-intensive research is gaining momentum at a time when the UK government is emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and withdrawing support and funding from the humanities? Or is one of the reasons all this is happening now due to the fact that the humanities, like the sciences themselves, are under pressure from government, business, management, industry and increasingly the media to prove they provide value for money in instrumental, functional, performative terms? Is the interest in computing a strategic decision on the part of some of those in the humanities? As the project of Cohen and Gibbs shows, one can get funding from the likes of Google (D. Cohen, 2010). In fact, in the summer of 2010 [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research’] (P. Cohen, 2010). To what extent is the take-up of practical techniques and approaches from computing science providing some areas of the humanities with a means of defending (and refreshing) themselves in an era of global economic crisis and severe cuts to higher education, through the transformation of their knowledge and learning into quantities of information –- so-called ‘deliverables’? Can we even position the ‘computational turn’ as an event created to justify such a move on the part of certain elements within the humanities ([http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/ Frabetti], 2010)? <br><br> Where does all this leave us as far as this Living Book on open science is concerned? As the argument above hopefully demonstrates, it is clearly not enough just to attempt to reveal or recover the scientific truth about, say, the environment, to counter the disinformation of others involved in the likes of the Climategate controversy. Nor is it enough merely to make the scientific research openly accessible to the public. Equally, it is not satisfactory simply to make the information, data, and associated tools, techniques and resources freely available to those in the humanities, so they can collectively and collaboratively search, mine, map, graph, model, visualize, analyse and interpret it in new ways – including some that may make it less abstract and easier for the majority of those in society to understand and follow – and, in doing so, help bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’. It is not so much that there is a lack of information, or access to the right kind of information, or information presented in the right kind of way to ensure that the message of the scientific research and data comes across effectively and efficiently. It is not even that there is too much information, too much white noise, as ‘Bifo’ et al call it (2009: 141-142). To be sure, as a [http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/reports/display/id=479774 2010 Mintel report] showed – to stay with the example of climate change – most people in the UK already know what is happening to the environment. They are just suffering from Green Fatigue, they are bored with thinking about it and thus enacting a backlash against what they perceive as ‘extreme’ pressure from environmentalist groups. This is perhaps one reason why [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html ‘the number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009’] (Shields, 2010: 30). Yet to argue there is too much information rather risks implying that there is a proper amount of information, and what would that be?<br><br> So we might not want to go along with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they contend that ‘we do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it’. But we might nevertheless agree when they argue that what we actually lack is creation: ‘We lack resistance to the present’ (1994: 108). In this respect, it is not just a case of supplying more scientific research and data; nor of making the research and data that has otherwise been closed, hidden, denied or suppressed openly available for free – by opening the already existing memory and databanks to the people, for example (which is what Lyotard ended by suggesting we do). It is also a case of creating work around the research and data that does not simply go along with the shift in the status and nature of knowledge that is currently taking place. As we have seen, it is a shift toward STEM subjects and away from the humanities; toward a concern with optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms, and away from a concern with questions of what is just and right; and toward an emphasis on openness, freedom and transparency, and away from what is capable of disrupting and disturbing society, and what, in remaining resistant to a culture of measurement and calculation, maintains a much needed element of inaccessibility, inefficiency, delay, error, antagonism, heterogeneity and dissensus within the system. <br><br> Can this Living Book on open science be considered one such a creation? And can this series of Living Books about Life be considered another? Are they instances of a resistance to the present? Or just more white noise? <br><br> <br> (The above is based on a paper presented at the Data Landscapes, AHRC network event, held in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey at the University of Westminster, London, December 15, 2010. An earlier version of some of the material provided above appeared in Hall [2010]) <br><br> '''References''' <br><br> Arthur, C. (2010), ‘Will Brussels Curb Google Guys’, ''The Guardian'', December 6. <br><br> 'Bifo' Berardi, F., Jacquemet, M. and Vitali, G. (2009), ''Ethereal Shadows: Communications and Power in Contemporary Italy''. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. <br><br> Bergman, M. K. (2001), ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’, ''JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing'', vol.7, no.1, August. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104.&nbsp;<br><br> Birchall, C. (2011) 'There's Been Too Much Secrecy in this City": The False Choice Between Secrecy and Transparency in US Politics,' ''Cultural Politics''&nbsp;7(1), March: 133-156.<br><br>Birchall, C (2011b forthcoming) ‘Transparency, Interrupted: Secrets of the Left’, Between Transparency and Secrecy', Annual Review, ''Theory, Culture and Society, ''December.<br><br> Blair, T. (2010), ''A Journey''. London: Hutchinson. <br><br> Clinton, H. (2010), ‘Internet Freedom: The Prepared Text of U.S. of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech, delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., January 21. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full <br><br> Cohen, D. (2010), ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen'', October 4. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Cohen, P. (2010) ‘Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches’, ''The New York Times'', November 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all. <br><br> Croxall, B. (2010) response to Tanner Higgen, ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. September 10. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1988) ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. London: Athlone. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1994), ''What is Philosophy?''. New York: Columbia University Press. <br><br> Fung, A., Graham, M., Weil, D. (2007), ''Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br><br> Frabetti, F. (2010) ‘Digital Again? The Humanities Between the Computational Turn and Originary Technicity’, talk given to the Open Media Group, Coventry School of Art and Design. November 9. http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/. <br><br> Franklin, K. D. and Rodriguez’G, K. (2008) ‘The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics’,''HPC Wire''. July 29. http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html. <br><br> Gibbs, R. (2010), Presidential press secretary, cited in ‘White House condemns WikiLeaks' release’, ''MCNBC.com News'', November 28. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010a), ‘Open Data: Empowering the Empowered or Effective Data Use for Everyone?’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 2. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010b), ‘Open Data (2): Effective Data Use’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 9. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/open-data-2-effective-data-use/ <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2011), ‘Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide’, posting to the nettime mailing list, July, 5. <br><br> Hall, G. (2010), 'We Can Know It For You: The Secret Life of Metadata', ''How We Became Metadata''. London: Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster. <br><br> Higgen, T. (2010) ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. May 25. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Hindman, M. (2009), ''The Myth of Digital Democracy''. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. <br><br> Hoffman, M. (2010), ‘EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites’, ''Electronic Frontier Foundation''. March 16. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement. <br><br> Houghton, J. (2009) ‘Open Access - What are the Economic Benefits?: A Comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark’, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne. http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf. <br><br> Jarvis, J. (2010), ‘Time For Citizens of the Internet to Stand Up’, ''The Guardian: MediaGuardian'', March 29. <br><br> JISC (2009), ‘Press Release: Open Science - the future for research?, posting to the BOAI list, November 16. 2009. <br><br> Kerssens, N. and Dekker A. (2009), ‘Interview with Lev Manovich for Archive 2020’, ''Virtueel_ Platform''. http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/#2595. <br><br> Knouf, N. (2010), ‘The JJPS Extension: Presenting Academic Performance Information’, ''Journal of Journal Performance Studies'', Vol 1, No 1. Available at http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6. Accessed 20 June, 2010. <br><br> Latour, B (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”’, ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 30, Number 2. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html. <br><br> Liu, A. (2011) ‘Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities’. Paper presented at the panel on ‘The History and Future of the Digital Humanities’” Modern Language Association convention, Los Angeles, January 7. http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities. <br><br> Lyotard, J-F. (1986), ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. <br><br> Lyotard, J.-F. (1991) ''The Inhuman: Reflections on Time''. Cambridge: Polity. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2010a) ‘Cultural Analytics Lectures by Manovich in UK (London and Swansea), March 8-9, 2010’, ''Software Studies Initiative''. March 8. http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2011) ‘Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data’,''Lev Manovich'', April 28: http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf. <br><br> Meeks, E. (2010), ‘The Digital Humanities as Imagined Community’, ''Digital Humanities Specialist''. September 14. https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/. <br><br> Mintel report, ‘Energy Efficiency in the Home - UK - July 2010’. <br><br> Murray, S. Choi, S., Hoey, J., Kendall, C., Maskalyk, J., and Palepu, A. (2008), ‘Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software at ''Open Medicine''’, ''Open Medicine'', 2(1): e1–e3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/?tool=pmcentrez http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/pdf/OpenMed-02-e1.pdf??tool=pmcentrez <br><br> Patterson, M. (2009), ‘Article-Level Metrics at PloS – Addition of Usage Data’, ''PLoS: Public Library of Science''. September 16. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/. <br><br> Pubget (2010), ‘[BOAI] PLoS Launches Fast (Open) PDF Access with Pubget’, posted on the BOAI list by Peter Suber, March 8. <br><br> Poynder, R. (2010), ‘Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley: The Impact of Open Notebook Science’, ''Information Today'', September. http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2008), ‘Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010a) ‘Where’s the Beef?: Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010b) response to Dan Cohen, ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen''. October 5. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Shields, R. (2010), ‘Green Fatigue Hits Campaign to Reduce Carbon Footprint’, ''The Independent'', October 10. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html. <br><br> Sterling, B. (2005), ''Shaping Things''. Massachussetts: MIT. <br><br> Stolberg, S. G. (2009), ‘On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone’”, ''The New York Times''. January 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html. <br><br> Swan, A. (2009), ‘Open Access and Open Data’, ''2nd NERC Data Management Workshop'', Oxford. February 17-18. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/. <br><br> Swartz, A. (2010), ‘When is Transparency Useful?’ ''Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought blog'', February 11. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency. <br><br> Vaidhyanathan, S. (2009), ‘The Googlization of Universities’, ''The NEA 2009 Almanac of Higher Education''. http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf <br><br> Wark, M. (2004), ''A Hacker Manifesto''. Harvard: Harvard University Press. <br><br> Westcott, S. (2009) ‘Global Warming: Brits Deny Humans are to Blame,’ ''The Express'', December 7. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame <br><br> The White House (2009), ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open Government’. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ <br><br> Wollen, P. and Cooke, L. eds (1995), ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances''. Seattle: Bay Press.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_science/Introduction&diff=5682Open science/Introduction2014-06-10T11:19:52Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Digitize_Me,_Visualize_Me,_Search_Me Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
= '''White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix)''' =<br />
<br />
= Gary Hall =<br />
<br />
<br><br> <youtube>PH54cp2ggFk</youtube> <br><br><br />
One of the explicit aims of the Living Books About Life series is to provide a&nbsp; point of interrogation and contestation, as well as connection and translation, between the humanities and the sciences (partly to avoid slipping into 'scientism'). Accordingly, this introduction to ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' takes as its starting point the so-called ‘computational turn’ to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities. <br><br> The phrase ‘[http://www.thecomputationalturn.com/ the computational turn]’ has been adopted to refer to the process whereby techniques and methodologies drawn from (in this case) ''computer science'' and related fields – including science visualization, interactive information visualization, image processing, network analysis, statistical data analysis, and the management, manipulation and mining of data – are being used to produce new ways of approaching and understanding texts in the humanities; what is sometimes thought of as ‘the digital humanities’. The concern in the main has been with either digitizing ‘born analog’ humanities texts and artifacts (e.g. making annotated editions of the art and writing of [http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ William Blake] available to scholars and researchers online), or gathering together ‘born digital’ humanities texts and artifacts (videos, websites, games, photography, sound recordings, 3D data), and then taking complex and often extremely large-scale data analysis techniques from computing science and related fields and applying them to these humanities texts and artifacts - to this ‘big data’, as it has been called. Witness Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative’s use of ‘[http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf digital image analysis and new visualization techniques]’ to study ‘20,000 pages of Science and Popular Science magazines… published between 1872-1922, 780 paintings by van Gogh, 4535 covers of Time magazine (1923-2009) and one million manga pages’ (Manovich, 2011), and Dan Cohen and Fred Gibb’s text mining of ‘[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader the 1,681,161 books that were published in English in the UK in the long nineteenth century]’ (Cohen, 2010). <br><br> ''What Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' endeavours to show is that such data-focused transformations in research can be seen as part of a major alteration in the status and nature of knowledge. It is an alteration that, according to the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, has been taking place since at least the 1950s, and involves nothing less than a shift away from a concern with questions of what is right and just, and toward a concern with legitimating power by optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. This shift has significant consequences for our idea of knowledge. Indeed, for Lyotard: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these language whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as ‘knowledge’ statements. (1986: 4)</blockquote> <br />
<br>In particular, ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' suggests that the turn in the humanities toward data-driven scholarship, science visualization, statistical data analysis, etc. can be placed alongside all those discourses that are being put forward at the moment - in both the academy and society - in the name of greater openness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. <br><br> '''Open Access ''' <br><br> The open access movement provides a case in point. Witness [http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf John Houghton’s] 2009 comparison of the benefits of OA for the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, which claims to show that the open access academic publishing model, in which peer reviewed scholarly research and publications are made available for free online to all those who are able to access the Internet, is actually the most cost effective mechanism for scholarly publishing. Others meanwhile have detailed the increases open access publishing enables in the amount of material that can be published, searched and stored, in the number of people who can access it, in the impact of that material, the range of its distribution, and in the speed and ease of reporting and information retrieval. The following announcement, posted on the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) list in March 2010, is fairly typical in this respect: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Today PLoS released Pubget links across its journal sites. Now, when users are browsing thousands of reference citations on PLoS journals they will be able to get to the full text article faster than ever before. <br><br> Specifically, when readers encounter citations to articles as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will also appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. <br><br> On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said: ‘Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.’ (Pubget, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Open Data ''' <br><br> Yet it is not just the research literature that is positioned as being rendered more accessible by scientists. Even the data created in the course of scientific research is promoted as being made freely and openly available for others to use, analyse and build upon.This includes data sets that are too large to be included in any resulting peer-reviewed publications. Known as open data, or data-sharing, this initiative is motivated by the idea that publishing data online on an open basis bestows it with a [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/1/Swan_-_NERC_09.pptx ‘vastly increased utility’]. Digital data sets are said to be ‘easily passed around’; they are seemingly ‘more easily reused’, reanalysed and checked for accuracy and validity; and they supposedly contain more ‘opportunities for educational and commercial exploitation’ (Swan, 2009). <br><br> Interestingly, certain academic publishers are already viewing the linking of their journals to the underlying data as another of the ‘value-added’ services they can offer, to set alongside automatic alerting and sophisticated citation, indexing, searching and linking facilities (and to no doubt help ward off the threat of disintermediation posed by the development of digital technology, which enables academics to take over the means of dissemination and publish their work for and by themselves cheaply and easily). Significantly, a [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx 2009 JISC report] also identified ‘open-ness, predictive science based on massive data volumes and citizen involvement as [all] being important features of tomorrow’s research practice’. <br><br> In a further move in this direction, all Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are now providing a broad range of article-level metrics and indicators relating to usage data on an open basis. No longer withheld as trade secrets, these metrics reveal which articles are attracting the most views, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, coverage in the media, comments, responses, ‘star’ ratings, blog coverage, and so on. PLoS has positioned this programme as enabling science scholars to assess [http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/ ‘research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published’], and they encourage readers to carry out their own analyses of this open data (Patterson, 2009). Yet it is difficult not to perceive such article-level metrics and management tools as also being part of the wider process of transforming knowledge and learning into ‘quantities of information’ (Lyotard, 1986: 4); quantities, furthermore, that are produced more to be exchanged, marketed and sold (1986: 4) – for example, by individual academics to their departments, institutions, funders and governments in the form of indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ (1986: 5). <br><br> '''From Open Science to Open Government ''' <br><br> Such developments around open access and open data are themselves part of the larger trend or phenomenon that is coming to be known as ‘open science’. As Murray et al put it: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Open science is emerging as a collaborative and transparent approach to research. It is the idea that all data (both published and unpublished) should be freely available, and that private interests should not stymie its use by means of copyright, intellectual property rights and patents. It also embraces open access publishing and open source software… (Murray et al, 2008)</blockquote><br />
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One of the most interesting and well known examples of how such open science may work is provided by the Open Notebook Science of the organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. ‘[I]in the interests of openness’, Bradley is making the [http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml ‘details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web']. This ‘includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments’. What is more, he is doing so in ‘real time’, ‘within hours of production, not after the months or years involved in peer review’ (Poynder, 2010). Again, we can see how emphasis is being placed on the amount of research that can be shared, and the speed with which this can be achieved. This openness on Bradley’s part is also positioned as a means of achieving usefulness and impact, as is evident from the very title of one of his Open Notebook Science projects, [http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/ UsefulChem]. <br><br> To be fair, however, such discourses around openness, transparency, efficiency and utility are not confined to the sciences – or even the university, for that matter. There are also wider political initiatives, dubbed ‘Open Government’, or ‘Government 2.0’, with both the Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administrations in the UK making a great display of freeing government information. The Labour government implemented the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000, and then proceeded to launch a [http://www.data.gov.uk website] expressly dedicated to the release of governmental data sets in January 2010. It is a website that the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government continues to make extensive use of. In a similar vein, the [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Guardian] newspaper has campaigned for the UK government to relinquish its copyright on all local, regional and national data collected with taxpayers’ money and to make such data freely and openly available to the public by publishing it online, where it can be collectively and collaboratively scrutinized, searched, mined, mapped, graphed, cross-tabulated, visualized, audited and interpreted using software tools. <br><br> Nor is this phenomenon confined to the UK. In the United States Barack Obama promised throughout his election campaign to make government more open. He followed this up by issuing a memorandum on transparency the very first day after he became President, vowing to make openness one of [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html ‘the touchstones of this presidency’”] (Obama, cited in Stolberg, 2009): ‘[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration] is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (The White House, 2009). <br><br>'''The Politics of Openness''' <br><br> The connection I am making here between the movements for open access, open data, open science and open government is one that has to a certain extent already been pointed to by Michael Gurstein in his reflections on the experience of attending the 2011 conference of the [http://okfn.org/ Open Knowledge Foundation]. For Gurstein: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emerging-data-divide/ the ‘open data/open government’ movement] begins from a profoundly political perspective that government is largely ineffective and inefficient (and possibly corrupt) and that it hides that ineffectiveness and inefficiency (and possible corruption) from public scrutiny through lack of transparency in its operations and particularly in denying to the public access to information (data) about its operations. And further that this access once available would give citizens the means to hold bureaucrats (and their political masters) accountable for their actions. In doing so it would give these self-same citizens a platform on which to undertake (or at least collaborate with) these bureaucrats in certain key and significant activities—planning, analyzing, budgeting that sort of thing. Moreover through the implementation of processes of crowdsourcing this would also provide the bureaucrats with the overwhelming benefits of having access to and input from the knowledge and wisdom of the broader interested public. <br><br> Put in somewhat different terms but with essentially the same meaning—it’s the taxpayer’s money and they have the right to participate in overseeing how it is spent. Having “open” access to government’s data/information gives citizens the tools to exercise that right. (Gurstein, 2011)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Interestingly, for Gurstein, a much clearer understanding is needed than has been displayed by many open data/open government advocates to date of what exactly is meant by openness, and of where arguments in favour of open access, open information and open data are likely to lead us in the not too distant future. With this in mind, we could endeavour to put some flesh on the bones of Gurstein’s sketch of the politics of openness and suggest that, from a liberal perspective, freeing publicly funded and acquired information and data – whether it is gathered directly in the process of census collection, or indirectly as part of other activities (crime, healthcare, transport, schools and accident statistics) – is seen as helping society to perform more efficiently. For liberals, openness is said to play a key role in increasing citizen trust, participation and involvement in democracy, and indeed government, as access to information – such as that needed to intervene in public policy – is no longer restricted either to the state or to those corporations, institutions, organizations and individuals who have sufficient money and power to acquire it for themselves. <br><br> Such liberal beliefs find support in the idea that making information and data freely and transparently available goes along with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states that everyone has the right [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’]. Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, put forward a similar vision when, at the beginning of 2010, she said of her country that ‘[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full We stand for a single internet] where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas’, and against the authoritarian censorship and suppression of free speech and online search facilities like Google in countries such as China and Iran. Clinton declared: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Even in authoritarian countries], information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. <br><br> During his visit to China in November [2009], President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today. (Clinton, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
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This political sentiment was shared by Jeff Jarvis, author of ''What Would Google Do?'', when, in support of Google’s decision to stop self-filtering search results in China, he argued in March 2010 for a bill of rights for cyberspace: ‘[http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/27/a-bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace/ to claim and secure our freedom] to connect, speak, assemble, and act online; to each control our identities and data; to speak our languages; to protect what is public and private; and to assure openness’ (Jarvis, 2010: 4). Yet are Clinton and Jarvis not both guilty here of overlooking (or should that be conveniently forgetting or even denying) the way liberal ideas of freedom and openness (and, indeed, of the human) have long been used in the service of colonialism and neoliberal globalisation? Does freedom for the latter not primarily mean economic freedom, i.e., freedom of the market, freedom of the consumer to choose what to consume – not only in terms of goods, but also lifestyles and ways of being? <br><br> Even if it was before the widespread use of networked computers, it is interesting that ‘fifteen years after the Freedom of Information Act law was passed’ in the US in 1966, ‘the General Accounting Office reported that 82 percent of requests [for information] came from business, nine percent from the press, and only 1 percent from individuals or public interest groups’ (Fung et al, 2007: 27-28). Certainly, in the UK today, the 'truth is that the [UK] FOI Act [2000] isn't used, for the most part, by “the people”’, as Tony Blair acknowledged in his recent memoir. ‘It's used by journalists’ (Blair, 2010) – and by businesses, one might add. In view of this, it is no surprise to find that neoliberals also support the making of government data freely and openly available to businesses and the public. They do so on the grounds that it provides a means of achieving the best possible ‘input/output ratio’ for society (Lyotard, 1986: 54). This way of thinking is of a piece with the emphasis placed by neoliberalism’s audit culture on accountability, transparency, evaluation, measurement and centralised data management: for example, in the context of UK higher education, it is evident in the emphasis placed on measuring the impact of research on society and the economy, teaching standards, contact hours, as well as student drop-out rates, future employment destinations and earning prospects. From this perspective, such openness and communicative transparency is perceived as ensuring greater value for (taxpayers’) money, supposedly helping to eliminate corruption, enabling costs to be distributed more effectively, and increasing choice, innovation, enterprise, creativity, competiveness and accountability. <br><br> Meanwhile, some libertarians have gone so far as to argue that there is no need to make difficult policy decisions about what data and what information it is right to publish online and what to keep secret at all. Instead, we should work toward the kind of situation the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling proposes. In ''Shaping Things'', his non-fiction book on the future of design, Sterling advocates retaining all data and information, ‘the known, the unknown known, and the unknown unknown’, in large archives and databases equipped with the necessary bandwidth, processing speed and storage capacity, and simply devising search tools and metadata that are accurate, fast and powerful enough to find and access it (Sterling, 2005: 47). <br><br> Yet to have participated in the shift away from questions of truth, justice and especially what, in ''The Inhuman'', Lyotard places under the headings of ‘heterogeneity, dissensus, event…the unharmonizable’ (1991: 4), and ''toward'' a concern with performativity, measurement and optimising the relation between input and output, one does not need to be a practicing [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/09/canada-open-data data journalist], or to have actively contributed to the movements for open access, open data, open science or open government. If you are one of the 1.3 million plus people who have purchased a Kindle, and helped the sale of digital books outpace those of hardbacks on Amazon’s US website, then you have already signed a license agreement allowing the online book retailer - but not academic researchers or the public - to collect, store, mine, analyse and extract economic value from data concerning your personal reading habits for free. Similarly, if you are one of the over 687 million worldwide who use the Facebook social network, then you are already voluntarily giving your time and labour for free, not only to help its owners, their investors, and other companies make a reputed $1 billion a year from demographically targeted advertising, but to supply governments and law enforcement agencies such as the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK with profile data relating to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues and peers that they can [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement use in investigations] (Hoffman, 2010). Even if you have done neither, you will in all probability have provided the Google technology company with a host of network data and digital traces it can both monetize and give to the police as a result of having mapped your home, digitized your book, or supplied you with free music videos to enjoy via Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and YouTube, which Google also owns. Lest this shift from open access to Google should seem somewhat farfetched, it is worth recalling that ‘[http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf Google has moved to establish, embellish, or replace many core university services] such as library databases, search interfaces, and e-mail servers’ (Vaidhyanathan, 2009: 65-66); and that academia in fact gave birth to Google, Google’s PageRank algorithm being little more [http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 ‘than an expansion of what is known as citation analysis’] (Knouf, 2010). <br><br> <youtube>R7yfV6RzE30</youtube> <br><br> Obviously, no matter how exciting and enjoyable such activities may be, you don't ''have'' to buy that e-book reader, join that social network or display your personal metrics online, from sexual activity to food consumption, in an attempt to identify patterns in your life – what is called life-tracking or self-tracking. (Although, actually, a lot of people are quite happy to keep contributing to the networked communities reached by Facebook and YouTube, even though they realise they are being used as free labour and that, in the case of the former, much of what they do cannot be accessed by search engines and web browsers. They just see this as being part of the deal and a reasonable trade-off for the services and experiences that are provided by these companies.) Nevertheless, refusing to take part in this transformation of knowledge and learning into quantities of data, and shift ''away'' from critical questions of what is just and right ''toward'' a concern with optimizing the system’s performance is not an option for most of us. It is not something that can be opted out of by simply declining to take out a Tesco Club Card or use cash-points, refusing to look for research using Google Scholar, or committing social networking [http://www.suicidemachine.org/ ‘suicide’] and reading print-on-paper books instead. <br><br> For one thing, the process of capturing data by means not just of the internet, but a myriad of cameras, sensors and robotic devices, is now so ubiquitous and all pervasive it is impossible to avoid being caught up in it, no matter how rich, knowledgeable and technologically proficient you are. The latest research indicates there are approximately 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 32 people. Yet no one really knows how many CCTV cameras are actually in operation in Britain today - and that’s without even mentioning other means of gathering data that are reputed to be more intrusive still, such as mobile phone GPS location and automatic vehicle number plate recognition (ANPR). <br><br> For another, and as the example of CCTV illustrates, it’s not necessarily a question of actively doing something in this respect: of positively contributing free labour to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, for instance, or of refusing to do so. Nor is it merely a case of the separation between work and non-work being harder to maintain nowadays. (Is it work, leisure or play when you are writing a status update on Facebook, posting a photograph, ‘friending’ someone, interacting, detailing your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ regarding the places you eat, the films you watch, the books you read?) As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out some time ago, ‘surplus labor no longer requires labor... one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work’, or anything that even remotely resembles work for that matter, at least as it is most commonly understood: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>In these new conditions, it remains true that all labour involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized ‘machinic enslavement’, such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling – every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequalled point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. ((Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 492)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Transparency?''' <br><br> Before going any further, I should perhaps confess that I am a staunch advocate of open access in the humanities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be raised with regard to making research and data openly available online for free. <br><br> The first point to make in this respect is that, far from revealing any hitherto unknown, hidden or secret knowledge, such discourses of openness and transparency are themselves often not very open or transparent. Staying with the relationship between politics and science, let us take as an example the response of Ed Miliband, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy 'Climategate']controversy, in which climate skeptics alleged that emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that scientists have tampered with the data in order to support the theory that global warming is man-made. Miliband’s answer was to advocate ‘[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame maximum transparency]– let’s get the data out there’, he urged. ‘The people who believe that climate change is happening and is man-made have nothing to fear from transparency’ (Miliband, quoted in Westcott, 2009: 7; cited by Birchall,&nbsp;2011b). Yet, actually, complete transparency is impossible. This is because, as Clare Birchall has shown, there is an aporia at the heart of any claim to transparency. ‘For transparency to be known as transparency, there must be some agency (such as the media [or politicians, or government]) that legitimizes it as transparent, and because there is a legitimizing agent which does not itself have to be transparent, there is a limit to transparency’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). In fact, the more transparency is claimed, the more the violence of the mediating agency of this transparency is concealed, forgotten or obscured. Birchall offers the example of ‘The Daily Telegraph and its exposure of MPs’ expenses during the summer of 2009. While appearing to act on the side of transparency, as a commercial enterprise the paper itself has in the past been subject to secret takeover bids and its former owner, Lord Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstructing justice’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). To paraphrase a question from Lyotard I am going to return to at more length: Who decides what transparency is, and who knows what needs to be transparent (1986: 9)? <br><br> Furthermore, merely making such information and data available to the public online will not in itself necessarily change anything. In fact, such processes have often been adopted precisely as a means of avoiding change. Aaron Swartz provides the example of Watergate: ‘[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency after Watergate], people were upset about politicians receiving millions of dollars from large corporations. But, on the other hand, corporations seem to like paying off politicians. So instead of banning the practice, Congress simply required that politicians keep track of everyone who gives them money and file a report on it for public inspection’ (Swartz, 2010). <br><br> '''Openness?''' <br><br> Much the same can be said for the idea that making research and data accessible to the public supposedly helps to make society more open and free. Take the belief we saw expressed above by Hilary Clinton: that people in the United States have free access to the internet while those in China and Iran do not. Those of us who live and work in the West do indeed have a certain freedom to publish and search online. Yet none of this rhetoric about freedom and transparency prevented the Obama government from condemning Wikileaks in November 2010 as [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security ‘reckless and dangerous’], after it opened up access to hundreds of thousands of classified State Department documents (Gibbs, 2010); nor from putting pressure on Amazon and other companies to stop hosting the whistle-blowing website, an action which had echoes of the dispute over censorship between Google and the Chinese government earlier in 2010. (Significantly, the Obama administration has also recently withdrawn the bulk of funding from the United States open government website www.data.gov, which served as an influential precursor to the previously mentioned [http://www.data.gov.uk www.data.gov.uk] website in the UK.) Furthermore, unless you are a large political or economic actor, or one of the lucky few, the statistics show that what you publish online is unlikely to receive much attention. Just ‘three companies – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – handle 95 percent of all search queries’; while ‘for searches containing the name of a specific political organisation, Yahoo! and Google agree on the top result 90 percent of the time’ (Hindman, 2009: 59, 79). Meanwhile, one company, Google, reportedly has 65&nbsp;% of the world’s search market, ‘72 per cent share of the US search market, and almost 90 per cent in the UK’ – a degree of domination that has led the European Union to investigate Google for abusing its power to favour its own products while suppressing those of rivals (Arthur, 2010: 3). <br><br> But it is not just that Google’s algorithms are ranking some websites on the first page of its results and others on page 42 (which means, in effect, that the latter are rarely going to be accessed, since very few people read beyond the first page of Google’s results). It is that conventional search engines are reaching only an extremely small percentage of the total number of available web pages. Ten years ago Michael K. Bergman was already placing the figure at 0.03%, or [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104 ‘one in 3,000’], with ‘public information on the deep Web’ even then being ‘400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web’. Consequently, while according to Bergman as much as ‘ninety-five per cent of the deep Web’ may be ‘publicly accessible information – not subject to fees or subscriptions’ – by far the vast majority of it is left untouched (Bergman, 2001). And that is before we even begin to address the issue of how the recent rise of the app, and use of the password protected Facebook for search purposes, may today be [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ annihilating the very idea of the openly searchable Web]. <br><br> We can therefore see that it is not enough simply to [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ ‘Free Our Data’], as the Guardian has it; or to operate on the basis that ‘information wants to be free’ (Wark, 2004) (although doing so of course may be a start, especially in an era when notions of the open web and net neutrality are under severe threat). We can put ever more research and data online; we can make it freely available to both other researchers and the public under open access, open data, open science and open government conditions; we can even integrate, index and link it using the appropriate metadata to enable it to be searched and harvested with relative ease. But none of this means this research and data is going to be found. Ideas of this kind ignore the fact that all information and data is ordered, structured, selected and framed in a particular way. This is what metadata is for, after all. Metadata is information or data that describes, links to, or is otherwise used to control, find, select, filter, classify and present other data. One example would be the information provided at the front of a book detailing its publisher, date and place of publication, ISBN number, and so on. However, the term ‘metadata’ is most commonly associated with the language of computing. There, metadata is what enables computers to access files and documents, not just in their own hard drives, but potentially across a range of different platforms, servers, websites and databases. Yet for all its associations with computer science, metadata is never neutral or objective. Although the term ‘data’ comes from the Latin word datum, meaning [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=-1&text=datum ‘something given’], data is not simply objectively out there in the world already provided for us. The specific ways in which metadata is created, organized and presented helps to produce (rather than merely passively reflect) what is classified as data and information – and what is not. <br><br> Clearly, then, it is not just a question of free and open access to the research and data; nor of providing support, education and training on how to understand, interpret, use and apply it effectively, as [http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ Gurstein] has argued (2010). It is also a question of who (and what) makes decisions regarding the data and metadata, and thus gets to exercise control over it, and on what basis such decisions are made. To paraphrase Lyotard once more: who decides what data and metadata is, and who knows what needs to be decided?’ (1986: 9). Who gets to legislate? And who legitimates the legislators (1986: 8)? Will the ‘ruling class’ – top civil servants and consulting firms full of people with MBAs, ‘corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organizations’, including those behind Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, JISC, AHRC, OAI, SPARC, COASP – continue to operate as the class of interpreters, gatekeepers and ‘decision makers,’ not just with regard to having ‘access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made’, but with regard to creating and controlling the data and metadata, too (1986: 14)? <br><br>'''On Data-Intensive Scholarship''' <br><br> If, as demonstrated above, discourses of openness and transparency are themselves not very open or transparent at all, much of the current emphasis on making the research and data open and free is also lacking in self-reflectivity and meaningful critique. We can see this not just in those discourses associated with open access, open data, open science and open government that are explicitly emphasizing the importance of transparency, performativity and efficiency. This lack of criticality is apparent in much of what goes under the name of ‘digital humanities’, too, especially those elements associated with the ‘computational turn’. <br><br> We tend to think of the humanities as being self-reflexive per se, and as frequently asking questions capable of troubling culture and society. Yet after decades when humanities scholarship made active use of a variety of critical theories – Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-colonialist, post-Marxist – it seems somewhat surprising that many advocates of this current turn to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities find it difficult to understand computing and the digital as much more than tools, techniques and resources. As a result, much of the scholarship that is currently occurring under the ‘digital humanities’ agenda is uncritical, naive and at times even banal ([http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities Liu], 2011; [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ Higgen], 2010). <br><br> Witness the current emphasis on making the data not only visible but also visual. Stefanie Posavec’s frequently referred to [http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/literary-organism/ Literary Organism], which visualises the structure of Part One of Kerouac’s ''On the Road'' as a tree, provides one example; those cited earlier courtesy of Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative offer another. Now, there is a long history of critical engagement within the humanities with ideas of the visual, the image, the spectacle, the spectator and so on: not just in critical theory, but also in cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, film and television studies. Such a history of critical engagement stretches back to Guy Debord’s influential 1967 work, ''The Society of the Spectacle'', and beyond. For example, in his introduction to a 1995 book edited with Lynn Cooke, ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'', Peter Wollen writes that an excess of visual display within culture has 'the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images that might best be understood, not simply detached from a real world of things, as Debord implied, but as effacing any trace of the symbolic, condemning the viewer to a world in which we can see everything but understand nothing—allowing us viewer-victims, in Debord’s phrase, only "a random choice of ephemera"’ (1995: 9). It can come as something of a surprise, then, to discover that this humanities tradition in which ideas of the visual are engaged critically appears to have had comparatively little impact on the current enthusiasm for data visualisation that is so prominent an aspect of the turn toward data-intensive scholarship. <br><br> Of course, this (at times explicit) repudiation of criticality could be precisely what makes certain aspects of the digital humanities so seductive for many at the moment. Exponents of the computational turn can be said to be endeavouring to avoid conforming to accepted (and often moralistic) conceptions of politics that have been decided in advance, including those that see it only in terms of power, ideology, race, gender, class, sexuality, ecology, affect etc. Refusing to [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html ‘go through the motions of a critical avant-garde’], to borrow the words of Bruno Latour (2004), they often position themselves as responding to what is perceived as a fundamentally new cultural situation, and to the challenge it represents to our traditional methods of studying culture, by avoiding conventional theoretical manoeuvres and by experimenting with the development of fresh methods and approaches for the humanities instead. <br><br> Manovich, for instance, sees the sheer scale and dynamics of the contemporary new media landscape as presenting the usually accepted means of studying culture that were dominant for so much of the 20th century – the kinds of theories, concepts and methods appropriate to producing close readings of a relatively small number of texts – with a significant practical and conceptual challenge. In the past, ‘[http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories] based on small data sets (for instance, “classical Hollywood cinema”, “Italian Renaissance”, etc.) But how can we track “global digital cultures”, with their billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors’, he asks (Manovich, 2010)? Three years ago Manovich was already describing the ‘numbers of people participating in social networks, sharing media, and creating user-generated content’ as simply ‘astonishing’: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html MySpace, for example,] claims 300 million users. Cyworld, a Korean site similar to MySpace, claims 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of that country's total population (as of 2006) use it. Hi5, a leading social media site in Central America has 100 million users and Facebook, 14 million photo uploads daily. The number of new videos uploaded to YouTube every twenty-four hours (as of July 2006): 65,000. (Manovich in Franklin &amp; Rodriguez’G, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br> The solution Manovich proposes to this ‘data deluge’ is to turn to the very computers, databases, software and vast amounts of born-digital networked cultural content that are causing the problem in the first place, and to use them to help develop new methods and approaches adequate to the task at hand. This is where what he calls Cultural Analytics comes in. [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘The key idea of Cultural Analytics] is the use of computers to automatically analyze cultural artefacts in visual media, extracting large numbers of features that characterize their structure and content’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009); and what is more, to do so not just with regard to the culture of the past, but also with that of the present. To this end, Manovich (not unlike the Google technology company) calls for as much of culture as possible to be made available in external, digital form: [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘not only the exceptional but also the typical]; not only the few cultural sentences spoken by a few "great man" [sic] but the patterns in all cultural sentences spoken by everybody else’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009). <br><br> In a series of posts on his Found History blog, Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, positions such developments in terms of a shift from a concern with theory and ideology to a [http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ concern with methodology] (2008). In this respect there may well be a degree of [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ ‘relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s’] – for those in the US especially – as a result of this move ‘into the space of methodological work’ (Croxall, 2010) and what Scheinfeldt reportedly dubs [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘the post-theoretical age’] (cited in P. Cohen, 2010). The problem, though, is that without such reflexive critical thinking and theories many of those whose work forms part of this computational turn find it difficult to articulate exactly what the point of what they are doing is, as Scheinfeldt readily acknowledges (2010a). <br><br> Take one of the projects mentioned earlier: the attempt by [http://victorianbooks.org Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs] to text-mine all the books published in English in the Victorian age (or at least those digitized by Google). Among other things, this allows Cohen and Gibbs to show that use of the word ‘revolution’ in book titles of the period spiked around [http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ‘the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848’] (D. Cohen, 2010). But what argument are they trying to make with this calculation? What is it we are able to learn as a result of this use of computational power on their part that we did not know already and could not have discovered without it ([http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/ Scheinfeldt], 2008)? <br><br> In an explicit response to Cohen and Gibbs’s project, Scheinfeldt suggests that the problem of theory, or the lack of it, may actually be a question of scale: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It expects something of the scale of humanities scholarship] which I’m not sure is true anymore: that a single scholar—nay, every scholar—working alone will, over the course of his or her lifetime ... make a fundamental theoretical advance to the field. <br><br> Increasingly, this expectation is something peculiar to the humanities. ...it required the work of a generation of mathematicians and observational astronomers, gainfully employed, to enable the eventual “discovery” of Neptune... Since the scientific revolution, most theoretical advances play out over generations, not single careers. (Scheinfeldt, 2010b)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Now, it is absolutely important that we as scholars experiment with the new tools, methods and materials that digital media technologies create and make possible, in order to bring into play new forms of Foucauldian ''dispositifs'', or what Bernard Stiegler calls ''hypomnemata'', or what I am trying to think in terms of [http://garyhall.info media gifts]. I would include in this 'experimentation imperative’ techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science and other related fields, such as information visualisation, data mining and so forth. Nevertheless, there is something troubling about this kind of deferral of critical and self-reflexive theoretical questions to an unknown point in time, still possibly a generation away. After all, the frequent suggestion is that now is not the right time to be making any such decision or judgement, since we cannot yet know how humanists will eventually come to use these tools and data, and thus what data-driven scholarship may or may not turn out to be capable of, critically, politically, theoretically. One of the consequences of this deferral, however, is that it makes it extremely difficult to judge whether this postponement is indeed acting as a responsible, political and ethical opening to the (heterogeneity and incalculability of the) future, including the future of the humanities; or whether it is serving as an alibi for a naive and rather superficial form of scholarship instead ([https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/ Meeks], 2010). A form of scholarship moreover that, in uncritically and un-self-reflexively adopting techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science, can be seen as part of the larger shift in contemporary society which Lyotard associates with the widespread use of computers and databases, and with the exteriorization of knowledge in relation to the ‘knower’. As we have seen, it is a movement away from a concern with ideals, with what is right and just and true, and toward a concern to legitimate power by optimizing the system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. <br><br> All of this raises some rather significant and timely questions for the humanities. Is it merely a coincidence that such a turn toward science, computing and data-intensive research is gaining momentum at a time when the UK government is emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and withdrawing support and funding from the humanities? Or is one of the reasons all this is happening now due to the fact that the humanities, like the sciences themselves, are under pressure from government, business, management, industry and increasingly the media to prove they provide value for money in instrumental, functional, performative terms? Is the interest in computing a strategic decision on the part of some of those in the humanities? As the project of Cohen and Gibbs shows, one can get funding from the likes of Google (D. Cohen, 2010). In fact, in the summer of 2010 [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research’] (P. Cohen, 2010). To what extent is the take-up of practical techniques and approaches from computing science providing some areas of the humanities with a means of defending (and refreshing) themselves in an era of global economic crisis and severe cuts to higher education, through the transformation of their knowledge and learning into quantities of information –- so-called ‘deliverables’? Can we even position the ‘computational turn’ as an event created to justify such a move on the part of certain elements within the humanities ([http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/ Frabetti], 2010)? <br><br> Where does all this leave us as far as this Living Book on open science is concerned? As the argument above hopefully demonstrates, it is clearly not enough just to attempt to reveal or recover the scientific truth about, say, the environment, to counter the disinformation of others involved in the likes of the Climategate controversy. Nor is it enough merely to make the scientific research openly accessible to the public. Equally, it is not satisfactory simply to make the information, data, and associated tools, techniques and resources freely available to those in the humanities, so they can collectively and collaboratively search, mine, map, graph, model, visualize, analyse and interpret it in new ways – including some that may make it less abstract and easier for the majority of those in society to understand and follow – and, in doing so, help bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’. It is not so much that there is a lack of information, or access to the right kind of information, or information presented in the right kind of way to ensure that the message of the scientific research and data comes across effectively and efficiently. It is not even that there is too much information, too much white noise, as ‘Bifo’ et al call it (2009: 141-142). To be sure, as a [http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/reports/display/id=479774 2010 Mintel report] showed – to stay with the example of climate change – most people in the UK already know what is happening to the environment. They are just suffering from Green Fatigue, they are bored with thinking about it and thus enacting a backlash against what they perceive as ‘extreme’ pressure from environmentalist groups. This is perhaps one reason why [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html ‘the number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009’] (Shields, 2010: 30). Yet to argue there is too much information rather risks implying that there is a proper amount of information, and what would that be?<br><br> So we might not want to go along with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they contend that ‘we do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it’. But we might nevertheless agree when they argue that what we actually lack is creation: ‘We lack resistance to the present’ (1994: 108). In this respect, it is not just a case of supplying more scientific research and data; nor of making the research and data that has otherwise been closed, hidden, denied or suppressed openly available for free – by opening the already existing memory and databanks to the people, for example (which is what Lyotard ended by suggesting we do). It is also a case of creating work around the research and data that does not simply go along with the shift in the status and nature of knowledge that is currently taking place. As we have seen, it is a shift toward STEM subjects and away from the humanities; toward a concern with optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms, and away from a concern with questions of what is just and right; and toward an emphasis on openness, freedom and transparency, and away from what is capable of disrupting and disturbing society, and what, in remaining resistant to a culture of measurement and calculation, maintains a much needed element of inaccessibility, inefficiency, delay, error, antagonism, heterogeneity and dissensus within the system. <br><br> Can this Living Book on open science be considered one such a creation? And can this series of Living Books about Life be considered another? Are they instances of a resistance to the present? Or just more white noise? <br><br> <br> (The above is based on a paper presented at the Data Landscapes, AHRC network event, held in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey at the University of Westminster, London, December 15, 2010. An earlier version of some of the material provided above appeared in Hall [2010]) <br><br> '''References''' <br><br> Arthur, C. (2010), ‘Will Brussels Curb Google Guys’, ''The Guardian'', December 6. <br><br> 'Bifo' Berardi, F., Jacquemet, M. and Vitali, G. (2009), ''Ethereal Shadows: Communications and Power in Contemporary Italy''. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. <br><br> Bergman, M. K. (2001), ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’, ''JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing'', vol.7, no.1, August. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104.&nbsp;<br><br> Birchall, C. (2011) 'There's Been Too Much Secrecy in this City": The False Choice Between Secrecy and Transparency in US Politics,' ''Cultural Politics''&nbsp;7(1), March: 133-156.<br><br>Birchall, C (2011b forthcoming) ‘Transparency, Interrupted: Secrets of the Left’, Between Transparency and Secrecy', Annual Review, ''Theory, Culture and Society, ''December.<br><br> Blair, T. (2010), ''A Journey''. London: Hutchinson. <br><br> Clinton, H. (2010), ‘Internet Freedom: The Prepared Text of U.S. of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech, delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., January 21. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full <br><br> Cohen, D. (2010), ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen'', October 4. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Cohen, P. (2010) ‘Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches’, ''The New York Times'', November 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all. <br><br> Croxall, B. (2010) response to Tanner Higgen, ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. September 10. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1988) ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. London: Athlone. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1994), ''What is Philosophy?''. New York: Columbia University Press. <br><br> Fung, A., Graham, M., Weil, D. (2007), ''Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br><br> Frabetti, F. (2010) ‘Digital Again? The Humanities Between the Computational Turn and Originary Technicity’, talk given to the Open Media Group, Coventry School of Art and Design. November 9. http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/. <br><br> Franklin, K. D. and Rodriguez’G, K. (2008) ‘The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics’,''HPC Wire''. July 29. http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html. <br><br> Gibbs, R. (2010), Presidential press secretary, cited in ‘White House condemns WikiLeaks' release’, ''MCNBC.com News'', November 28. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010a), ‘Open Data: Empowering the Empowered or Effective Data Use for Everyone?’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 2. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010b), ‘Open Data (2): Effective Data Use’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 9. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/open-data-2-effective-data-use/ <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2011), ‘Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide’, posting to the nettime mailing list, July, 5. <br><br> Hall, G. (2010), 'We Can Know It For You: The Secret Life of Metadata', ''How We Became Metadata''. London: Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster. <br><br> Higgen, T. (2010) ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. May 25. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Hindman, M. (2009), ''The Myth of Digital Democracy''. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. <br><br> Hoffman, M. (2010), ‘EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites’, ''Electronic Frontier Foundation''. March 16. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement. <br><br> Houghton, J. (2009) ‘Open Access - What are the Economic Benefits?: A Comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark’, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne. http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf. <br><br> Jarvis, J. (2010), ‘Time For Citizens of the Internet to Stand Up’, ''The Guardian: MediaGuardian'', March 29. <br><br> JISC (2009), ‘Press Release: Open Science - the future for research?, posting to the BOAI list, November 16. 2009. <br><br> Kerssens, N. and Dekker A. (2009), ‘Interview with Lev Manovich for Archive 2020’, ''Virtueel_ Platform''. http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/#2595. <br><br> Knouf, N. (2010), ‘The JJPS Extension: Presenting Academic Performance Information’, ''Journal of Journal Performance Studies'', Vol 1, No 1. Available at http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6. Accessed 20 June, 2010. <br><br> Latour, B (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”’, ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 30, Number 2. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html. <br><br> Liu, A. (2011) ‘Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities’. Paper presented at the panel on ‘The History and Future of the Digital Humanities’” Modern Language Association convention, Los Angeles, January 7. http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities. <br><br> Lyotard, J-F. (1986), ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. <br><br> Lyotard, J.-F. (1991) ''The Inhuman: Reflections on Time''. Cambridge: Polity. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2010a) ‘Cultural Analytics Lectures by Manovich in UK (London and Swansea), March 8-9, 2010’, ''Software Studies Initiative''. March 8. http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2011) ‘Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data’,''Lev Manovich'', April 28: http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf. <br><br> Meeks, E. (2010), ‘The Digital Humanities as Imagined Community’, ''Digital Humanities Specialist''. September 14. https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/. <br><br> Mintel report, ‘Energy Efficiency in the Home - UK - July 2010’. <br><br> Murray, S. Choi, S., Hoey, J., Kendall, C., Maskalyk, J., and Palepu, A. (2008), ‘Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software at ''Open Medicine''’, ''Open Medicine'', 2(1): e1–e3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/?tool=pmcentrez http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/pdf/OpenMed-02-e1.pdf??tool=pmcentrez <br><br> Patterson, M. (2009), ‘Article-Level Metrics at PloS – Addition of Usage Data’, ''PLoS: Public Library of Science''. September 16. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/. <br><br> Pubget (2010), ‘[BOAI] PLoS Launches Fast (Open) PDF Access with Pubget’, posted on the BOAI list by Peter Suber, March 8. <br><br> Poynder, R. (2010), ‘Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley: The Impact of Open Notebook Science’, ''Information Today'', September. http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2008), ‘Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010a) ‘Where’s the Beef?: Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010b) response to Dan Cohen, ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen''. October 5. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Shields, R. (2010), ‘Green Fatigue Hits Campaign to Reduce Carbon Footprint’, ''The Independent'', October 10. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html. <br><br> Sterling, B. (2005), ''Shaping Things''. Massachussetts: MIT. <br><br> Stolberg, S. G. (2009), ‘On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone’”, ''The New York Times''. January 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html. <br><br> Swan, A. (2009), ‘Open Access and Open Data’, ''2nd NERC Data Management Workshop'', Oxford. February 17-18. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/. <br><br> Swartz, A. (2010), ‘When is Transparency Useful?’ ''Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought blog'', February 11. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency. <br><br> Vaidhyanathan, S. (2009), ‘The Googlization of Universities’, ''The NEA 2009 Almanac of Higher Education''. http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf <br><br> Wark, M. (2004), ''A Hacker Manifesto''. Harvard: Harvard University Press. <br><br> Westcott, S. (2009) ‘Global Warming: Brits Deny Humans are to Blame,’ ''The Express'', December 7. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame <br><br> The White House (2009), ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open Government’. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ <br><br> Wollen, P. and Cooke, L. eds (1995), ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances''. Seattle: Bay Press.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_science/Introduction&diff=5681Open science/Introduction2014-06-10T11:18:20Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Digitize_Me,_Visualize_Me,_Search_Me Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
= '''White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix)''' =<br />
<br />
= Gary Hall =<br />
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<br><br> <youtube>PH54cp2ggFk</youtube> <br><br><br />
One of the explicit aims of the Living Books About Life series is to provide a&nbsp; point of interrogation and contestation, as well as connection and translation, between the humanities and the sciences (partly to avoid slipping into 'scientism'). Accordingly, this introduction to ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' takes as its starting point the so-called ‘computational turn’ to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities. <br><br> The phrase ‘[http://www.thecomputationalturn.com/ the computational turn]’ has been adopted to refer to the process whereby techniques and methodologies drawn from (in this case) ''computer science'' and related fields – including science visualization, interactive information visualization, image processing, network analysis, statistical data analysis, and the management, manipulation and mining of data – are being used to produce new ways of approaching and understanding texts in the humanities; what is sometimes thought of as ‘the digital humanities’. The concern in the main has been with either digitizing ‘born analog’ humanities texts and artifacts (e.g. making annotated editions of the art and writing of [http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ William Blake] available to scholars and researchers online), or gathering together ‘born digital’ humanities texts and artifacts (videos, websites, games, photography, sound recordings, 3D data), and then taking complex and often extremely large-scale data analysis techniques from computing science and related fields and applying them to these humanities texts and artifacts - to this ‘big data’, as it has been called. Witness Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative’s use of ‘[http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf digital image analysis and new visualization techniques]’ to study ‘20,000 pages of Science and Popular Science magazines… published between 1872-1922, 780 paintings by van Gogh, 4535 covers of Time magazine (1923-2009) and one million manga pages’ (Manovich, 2011), and Dan Cohen and Fred Gibb’s text mining of ‘[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader the 1,681,161 books that were published in English in the UK in the long nineteenth century]’ (Cohen, 2010). <br><br> ''What Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' endeavours to show is that such data-focused transformations in research can be seen as part of a major alteration in the status and nature of knowledge. It is an alteration that, according to the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, has been taking place since at least the 1950s, and involves nothing less than a shift away from a concern with questions of what is right and just, and toward a concern with legitimating power by optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. This shift has significant consequences for our idea of knowledge. Indeed, for Lyotard: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these language whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as ‘knowledge’ statements. (1986: 4)</blockquote> <br />
<br>In particular, ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' suggests that the turn in the humanities toward data-driven scholarship, science visualization, statistical data analysis, etc. can be placed alongside all those discourses that are being put forward at the moment - in both the academy and society - in the name of greater openness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. <br><br> '''Open Access ''' <br><br> The open access movement provides a case in point. Witness [http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf John Houghton’s] 2009 comparison of the benefits of OA for the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, which claims to show that the open access academic publishing model, in which peer reviewed scholarly research and publications are made available for free online to all those who are able to access the Internet, is actually the most cost effective mechanism for scholarly publishing. Others meanwhile have detailed the increases open access publishing enables in the amount of material that can be published, searched and stored, in the number of people who can access it, in the impact of that material, the range of its distribution, and in the speed and ease of reporting and information retrieval. The following announcement, posted on the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) list in March 2010, is fairly typical in this respect: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Today PLoS released Pubget links across its journal sites. Now, when users are browsing thousands of reference citations on PLoS journals they will be able to get to the full text article faster than ever before. <br><br> Specifically, when readers encounter citations to articles as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will also appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. <br><br> On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said: ‘Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.’ (Pubget, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Open Data ''' <br><br> Yet it is not just the research literature that is positioned as being rendered more accessible by scientists. Even the data created in the course of scientific research is promoted as being made freely and openly available for others to use, analyse and build upon.This includes data sets that are too large to be included in any resulting peer-reviewed publications. Known as open data, or data-sharing, this initiative is motivated by the idea that publishing data online on an open basis bestows it with a [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/1/Swan_-_NERC_09.pptx ‘vastly increased utility’]. Digital data sets are said to be ‘easily passed around’; they are seemingly ‘more easily reused’, reanalysed and checked for accuracy and validity; and they supposedly contain more ‘opportunities for educational and commercial exploitation’ (Swan, 2009). <br><br> Interestingly, certain academic publishers are already viewing the linking of their journals to the underlying data as another of the ‘value-added’ services they can offer, to set alongside automatic alerting and sophisticated citation, indexing, searching and linking facilities (and to no doubt help ward off the threat of disintermediation posed by the development of digital technology, which enables academics to take over the means of dissemination and publish their work for and by themselves cheaply and easily). Significantly, a [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx 2009 JISC report] also identified ‘open-ness, predictive science based on massive data volumes and citizen involvement as [all] being important features of tomorrow’s research practice’. <br><br> In a further move in this direction, all Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are now providing a broad range of article-level metrics and indicators relating to usage data on an open basis. No longer withheld as trade secrets, these metrics reveal which articles are attracting the most views, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, coverage in the media, comments, responses, ‘star’ ratings, blog coverage, and so on. PLoS has positioned this programme as enabling science scholars to assess [http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/ ‘research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published’], and they encourage readers to carry out their own analyses of this open data (Patterson, 2009). Yet it is difficult not to perceive such article-level metrics and management tools as also being part of the wider process of transforming knowledge and learning into ‘quantities of information’ (Lyotard, 1986: 4); quantities, furthermore, that are produced more to be exchanged, marketed and sold (1986: 4) – for example, by individual academics to their departments, institutions, funders and governments in the form of indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ (1986: 5). <br><br> '''From Open Science to Open Government ''' <br><br> Such developments around open access and open data are themselves part of the larger trend or phenomenon that is coming to be known as ‘open science’. As Murray et al put it: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Open science is emerging as a collaborative and transparent approach to research. It is the idea that all data (both published and unpublished) should be freely available, and that private interests should not stymie its use by means of copyright, intellectual property rights and patents. It also embraces open access publishing and open source software… (Murray et al, 2008)</blockquote><br />
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One of the most interesting and well known examples of how such open science may work is provided by the Open Notebook Science of the organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. ‘[I]in the interests of openness’, Bradley is making the [http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml ‘details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web']. This ‘includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments’. What is more, he is doing so in ‘real time’, ‘within hours of production, not after the months or years involved in peer review’ (Poynder, 2010). Again, we can see how emphasis is being placed on the amount of research that can be shared, and the speed with which this can be achieved. This openness on Bradley’s part is also positioned as a means of achieving usefulness and impact, as is evident from the very title of one of his Open Notebook Science projects, [http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/ UsefulChem]. <br><br> To be fair, however, such discourses around openness, transparency, efficiency and utility are not confined to the sciences – or even the university, for that matter. There are also wider political initiatives, dubbed ‘Open Government’, or ‘Government 2.0’, with both the Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administrations in the UK making a great display of freeing government information. The Labour government implemented the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000, and then proceeded to launch a [http://www.data.gov.uk website] expressly dedicated to the release of governmental data sets in January 2010. It is a website that the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government continues to make extensive use of. In a similar vein, the [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Guardian] newspaper has campaigned for the UK government to relinquish its copyright on all local, regional and national data collected with taxpayers’ money and to make such data freely and openly available to the public by publishing it online, where it can be collectively and collaboratively scrutinized, searched, mined, mapped, graphed, cross-tabulated, visualized, audited and interpreted using software tools. <br><br> Nor is this phenomenon confined to the UK. In the United States Barack Obama promised throughout his election campaign to make government more open. He followed this up by issuing a memorandum on transparency the very first day after he became President, vowing to make openness one of [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html ‘the touchstones of this presidency’”] (Obama, cited in Stolberg, 2009): ‘[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration] is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (The White House, 2009). <br><br>'''The Politics of Openness''' <br><br> The connection I am making here between the movements for open access, open data, open science and open government is one that has to a certain extent already been pointed to by Michael Gurstein in his reflections on the experience of attending the 2011 conference of the [http://okfn.org/ Open Knowledge Foundation]. For Gurstein: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emerging-data-divide/ the ‘open data/open government’ movement] begins from a profoundly political perspective that government is largely ineffective and inefficient (and possibly corrupt) and that it hides that ineffectiveness and inefficiency (and possible corruption) from public scrutiny through lack of transparency in its operations and particularly in denying to the public access to information (data) about its operations. And further that this access once available would give citizens the means to hold bureaucrats (and their political masters) accountable for their actions. In doing so it would give these self-same citizens a platform on which to undertake (or at least collaborate with) these bureaucrats in certain key and significant activities—planning, analyzing, budgeting that sort of thing. Moreover through the implementation of processes of crowdsourcing this would also provide the bureaucrats with the overwhelming benefits of having access to and input from the knowledge and wisdom of the broader interested public. <br><br> Put in somewhat different terms but with essentially the same meaning—it’s the taxpayer’s money and they have the right to participate in overseeing how it is spent. Having “open” access to government’s data/information gives citizens the tools to exercise that right. (Gurstein, 2011)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Interestingly, for Gurstein, a much clearer understanding is needed than has been displayed by many open data/open government advocates to date of what exactly is meant by openness, and of where arguments in favour of open access, open information and open data are likely to lead us in the not too distant future. With this in mind, we could endeavour to put some flesh on the bones of Gurstein’s sketch of the politics of openness and suggest that, from a liberal perspective, freeing publicly funded and acquired information and data – whether it is gathered directly in the process of census collection, or indirectly as part of other activities (crime, healthcare, transport, schools and accident statistics) – is seen as helping society to perform more efficiently. For liberals, openness is said to play a key role in increasing citizen trust, participation and involvement in democracy, and indeed government, as access to information – such as that needed to intervene in public policy – is no longer restricted either to the state or to those corporations, institutions, organizations and individuals who have sufficient money and power to acquire it for themselves. <br><br> Such liberal beliefs find support in the idea that making information and data freely and transparently available goes along with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states that everyone has the right [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’]. Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, put forward a similar vision when, at the beginning of 2010, she said of her country that ‘[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full We stand for a single internet] where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas’, and against the authoritarian censorship and suppression of free speech and online search facilities like Google in countries such as China and Iran. Clinton declared: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Even in authoritarian countries], information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. <br><br> During his visit to China in November [2009], President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today. (Clinton, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
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This political sentiment was shared by Jeff Jarvis, author of ''What Would Google Do?'', when, in support of Google’s decision to stop self-filtering search results in China, he argued in March 2010 for a bill of rights for cyberspace: ‘[http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/27/a-bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace/ to claim and secure our freedom] to connect, speak, assemble, and act online; to each control our identities and data; to speak our languages; to protect what is public and private; and to assure openness’ (Jarvis, 2010: 4). Yet are Clinton and Jarvis not both guilty here of overlooking (or should that be conveniently forgetting or even denying) the way liberal ideas of freedom and openness (and, indeed, of the human) have long been used in the service of colonialism and neoliberal globalisation? Does freedom for the latter not primarily mean economic freedom, i.e., freedom of the market, freedom of the consumer to choose what to consume – not only in terms of goods, but also lifestyles and ways of being? <br><br> Even if it was before the widespread use of networked computers, it is interesting that ‘fifteen years after the Freedom of Information Act law was passed’ in the US in 1966, ‘the General Accounting Office reported that 82 percent of requests [for information] came from business, nine percent from the press, and only 1 percent from individuals or public interest groups’ (Fung et al, 2007: 27-28). Certainly, in the UK today, the 'truth is that the [UK] FOI Act [2000] isn't used, for the most part, by “the people”’, as Tony Blair acknowledged in his recent memoir. ‘It's used by journalists’ (Blair, 2010) – and by businesses, one might add. In view of this, it is no surprise to find that neoliberals also support the making of government data freely and openly available to businesses and the public. They do so on the grounds that it provides a means of achieving the best possible ‘input/output ratio’ for society (Lyotard, 1986: 54). This way of thinking is of a piece with the emphasis placed by neoliberalism’s audit culture on accountability, transparency, evaluation, measurement and centralised data management: for example, in the context of UK higher education, it is evident in the emphasis placed on measuring the impact of research on society and the economy, teaching standards, contact hours, as well as student drop-out rates, future employment destinations and earning prospects. From this perspective, such openness and communicative transparency is perceived as ensuring greater value for (taxpayers’) money, supposedly helping to eliminate corruption, enabling costs to be distributed more effectively, and increasing choice, innovation, enterprise, creativity, competiveness and accountability. <br><br> Meanwhile, some libertarians have gone so far as to argue that there is no need to make difficult policy decisions about what data and what information it is right to publish online and what to keep secret at all. Instead, we should work toward the kind of situation the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling proposes. In ''Shaping Things'', his non-fiction book on the future of design, Sterling advocates retaining all data and information, ‘the known, the unknown known, and the unknown unknown’, in large archives and databases equipped with the necessary bandwidth, processing speed and storage capacity, and simply devising search tools and metadata that are accurate, fast and powerful enough to find and access it (Sterling, 2005: 47). <br><br> Yet to have participated in the shift away from questions of truth, justice and especially what, in ''The Inhuman'', Lyotard places under the headings of ‘heterogeneity, dissensus, event…the unharmonizable’ (1991: 4), and ''toward'' a concern with performativity, measurement and optimising the relation between input and output, one does not need to be a practicing [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/09/canada-open-data data journalist], or to have actively contributed to the movements for open access, open data, open science or open government. If you are one of the 1.3 million plus people who have purchased a Kindle, and helped the sale of digital books outpace those of hardbacks on Amazon’s US website, then you have already signed a license agreement allowing the online book retailer - but not academic researchers or the public - to collect, store, mine, analyse and extract economic value from data concerning your personal reading habits for free. Similarly, if you are one of the over 687 million worldwide who use the Facebook social network, then you are already voluntarily giving your time and labour for free, not only to help its owners, their investors, and other companies make a reputed $1 billion a year from demographically targeted advertising, but to supply governments and law enforcement agencies such as the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK with profile data relating to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues and peers that they can [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement use in investigations] (Hoffman, 2010). Even if you have done neither, you will in all probability have provided the Google technology company with a host of network data and digital traces it can both monetize and give to the police as a result of having mapped your home, digitized your book, or supplied you with free music videos to enjoy via Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and YouTube, which Google also owns. Lest this shift from open access to Google should seem somewhat farfetched, it is worth recalling that ‘[http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf Google has moved to establish, embellish, or replace many core university services] such as library databases, search interfaces, and e-mail servers’ (Vaidhyanathan, 2009: 65-66); and that academia in fact gave birth to Google, Google’s PageRank algorithm being little more [http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 ‘than an expansion of what is known as citation analysis’] (Knouf, 2010). <br><br> <youtube>R7yfV6RzE30</youtube> <br><br> Obviously, no matter how exciting and enjoyable such activities may be, you don't ''have'' to buy that e-book reader, join that social network or display your personal metrics online, from sexual activity to food consumption, in an attempt to identify patterns in your life – what is called life-tracking or self-tracking. (Although, actually, a lot of people are quite happy to keep contributing to the networked communities reached by Facebook and YouTube, even though they realise they are being used as free labour and that, in the case of the former, much of what they do cannot be accessed by search engines and web browsers. They just see this as being part of the deal and a reasonable trade-off for the services and experiences that are provided by these companies.) Nevertheless, refusing to take part in this transformation of knowledge and learning into quantities of data, and shift ''away'' from critical questions of what is just and right ''toward'' a concern with optimizing the system’s performance is not an option for most of us. It is not something that can be opted out of by simply declining to take out a Tesco Club Card or use cash-points, refusing to look for research using Google Scholar, or committing social networking [http://www.suicidemachine.org/ ‘suicide’] and reading print-on-paper books instead. <br><br> For one thing, the process of capturing data by means not just of the internet, but a myriad of cameras, sensors and robotic devices, is now so ubiquitous and all pervasive it is impossible to avoid being caught up in it, no matter how rich, knowledgeable and technologically proficient you are. The latest research indicates there are approximately 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 32 people. Yet no one really knows how many CCTV cameras are actually in operation in Britain today - and that’s without even mentioning other means of gathering data that are reputed to be more intrusive still, such as mobile phone GPS location and automatic vehicle number plate recognition (ANPR). <br><br> For another, and as the example of CCTV illustrates, it’s not necessarily a question of actively doing something in this respect: of positively contributing free labour to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, for instance, or of refusing to do so. Nor is it merely a case of the separation between work and non-work being harder to maintain nowadays. (Is it work, leisure or play when you are writing a status update on Facebook, posting a photograph, ‘friending’ someone, interacting, detailing your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ regarding the places you eat, the films you watch, the books you read?) As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out some time ago, ‘surplus labor no longer requires labor... one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work’, or anything that even remotely resembles work for that matter, at least as it is most commonly understood: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>In these new conditions, it remains true that all labour involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized ‘machinic enslavement’, such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling – every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequalled point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. ((Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 492)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Transparency?''' <br><br> Before going any further, I should perhaps confess that I am a staunch advocate of open access in the humanities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be raised with regard to making research and data openly available online for free. <br><br> The first point to make in this respect is that, far from revealing any hitherto unknown, hidden or secret knowledge, such discourses of openness and transparency are themselves often not very open or transparent. Staying with the relationship between politics and science, let us take as an example the response of Ed Miliband, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy 'Climategate']controversy, in which climate skeptics alleged that emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that scientists have tampered with the data in order to support the theory that global warming is man-made. Miliband’s answer was to advocate ‘[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame maximum transparency]– let’s get the data out there’, he urged. ‘The people who believe that climate change is happening and is man-made have nothing to fear from transparency’ (Miliband, quoted in Westcott, 2009: 7; cited by Birchall,&nbsp;2011b). Yet, actually, complete transparency is impossible. This is because, as Clare Birchall has shown, there is an aporia at the heart of any claim to transparency. ‘For transparency to be known as transparency, there must be some agency (such as the media [or politicians, or government]) that legitimizes it as transparent, and because there is a legitimizing agent which does not itself have to be transparent, there is a limit to transparency’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). In fact, the more transparency is claimed, the more the violence of the mediating agency of this transparency is concealed, forgotten or obscured. Birchall offers the example of ‘The Daily Telegraph and its exposure of MPs’ expenses during the summer of 2009. While appearing to act on the side of transparency, as a commercial enterprise the paper itself has in the past been subject to secret takeover bids and its former owner, Lord Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstructing justice’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). To paraphrase a question from Lyotard I am going to return to at more length: Who decides what transparency is, and who knows what needs to be transparent (1986: 9)? <br><br> Furthermore, merely making such information and data available to the public online will not in itself necessarily change anything. In fact, such processes have often been adopted precisely as a means of avoiding change. Aaron Swartz provides the example of Watergate: ‘[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency after Watergate], people were upset about politicians receiving millions of dollars from large corporations. But, on the other hand, corporations seem to like paying off politicians. So instead of banning the practice, Congress simply required that politicians keep track of everyone who gives them money and file a report on it for public inspection’ (Swartz, 2010). <br><br> '''Openness?''' <br><br> Much the same can be said for the idea that making research and data accessible to the public supposedly helps to make society more open and free. Take the belief we saw expressed above by Hilary Clinton: that people in the United States have free access to the internet while those in China and Iran do not. Those of us who live and work in the West do indeed have a certain freedom to publish and search online. Yet none of this rhetoric about freedom and transparency prevented the Obama government from condemning Wikileaks in November 2010 as [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security ‘reckless and dangerous’], after it opened up access to hundreds of thousands of classified State Department documents (Gibbs, 2010); nor from putting pressure on Amazon and other companies to stop hosting the whistle-blowing website, an action which had echoes of the dispute over censorship between Google and the Chinese government earlier in 2010. (Significantly, the Obama administration has also recently withdrawn the bulk of funding from the United States open government website www.data.gov, which served as an influential precursor to the previously mentioned [http://www.data.gov.uk www.data.gov.uk] website in the UK.) Furthermore, unless you are a large political or economic actor, or one of the lucky few, the statistics show that what you publish online is unlikely to receive much attention. Just ‘three companies – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – handle 95 percent of all search queries’; while ‘for searches containing the name of a specific political organisation, Yahoo! and Google agree on the top result 90 percent of the time’ (Hindman, 2009: 59, 79). Meanwhile, one company, Google, reportedly has 65&nbsp;% of the world’s search market, ‘72 per cent share of the US search market, and almost 90 per cent in the UK’ – a degree of domination that has led the European Union to investigate Google for abusing its power to favour its own products while suppressing those of rivals (Arthur, 2010: 3). <br><br> But it is not just that Google’s algorithms are ranking some websites on the first page of its results and others on page 42 (which means, in effect, that the latter are rarely going to be accessed, since very few people read beyond the first page of Google’s results). It is that conventional search engines are reaching only an extremely small percentage of the total number of available web pages. Ten years ago Michael K. Bergman was already placing the figure at 0.03%, or [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104 ‘one in 3,000’], with ‘public information on the deep Web’ even then being ‘400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web’. Consequently, while according to Bergman as much as ‘ninety-five per cent of the deep Web’ may be ‘publicly accessible information – not subject to fees or subscriptions’ – by far the vast majority of it is left untouched (Bergman, 2001). And that is before we even begin to address the issue of how the recent rise of the app, and use of the password protected Facebook for search purposes, may today be [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ annihilating the very idea of the openly searchable Web]. <br><br> We can therefore see that it is not enough simply to [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ ‘Free Our Data’], as the Guardian has it; or to operate on the basis that ‘information wants to be free’ (Wark, 2004) (although doing so of course may be a start, especially in an era when notions of the open web and net neutrality are under severe threat). We can put ever more research and data online; we can make it freely available to both other researchers and the public under open access, open data, open science and open government conditions; we can even integrate, index and link it using the appropriate metadata to enable it to be searched and harvested with relative ease. But none of this means this research and data is going to be found. Ideas of this kind ignore the fact that all information and data is ordered, structured, selected and framed in a particular way. This is what metadata is for, after all. Metadata is information or data that describes, links to, or is otherwise used to control, find, select, filter, classify and present other data. One example would be the information provided at the front of a book detailing its publisher, date and place of publication, ISBN number, and so on. However, the term ‘metadata’ is most commonly associated with the language of computing. There, metadata is what enables computers to access files and documents, not just in their own hard drives, but potentially across a range of different platforms, servers, websites and databases. Yet for all its associations with computer science, metadata is never neutral or objective. Although the term ‘data’ comes from the Latin word datum, meaning [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=-1&text=datum ‘something given’], data is not simply objectively out there in the world already provided for us. The specific ways in which metadata is created, organized and presented helps to produce (rather than merely passively reflect) what is classified as data and information – and what is not. <br><br> Clearly, then, it is not just a question of free and open access to the research and data; nor of providing support, education and training on how to understand, interpret, use and apply it effectively, as [http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ Gurstein] has argued (2010). It is also a question of who (and what) makes decisions regarding the data and metadata, and thus gets to exercise control over it, and on what basis such decisions are made. To paraphrase Lyotard once more: who decides what data and metadata is, and who knows what needs to be decided?’ (1986: 9). Who gets to legislate? And who legitimates the legislators (1986: 8)? Will the ‘ruling class’ – top civil servants and consulting firms full of people with MBAs, ‘corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organizations’, including those behind Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, JISC, AHRC, OAI, SPARC, COASP – continue to operate as the class of interpreters, gatekeepers and ‘decision makers,’ not just with regard to having ‘access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made’, but with regard to creating and controlling the data and metadata, too (1986: 14)? <br><br>'''On Data-Intensive Scholarship''' <br><br> If, as demonstrated above, discourses of openness and transparency are themselves not very open or transparent at all, much of the current emphasis on making the research and data open and free is also lacking in self-reflectivity and meaningful critique. We can see this not just in those discourses associated with open access, open data, open science and open government that are explicitly emphasizing the importance of transparency, performativity and efficiency. This lack of criticality is apparent in much of what goes under the name of ‘digital humanities’, too, especially those elements associated with the ‘computational turn’. <br><br> We tend to think of the humanities as being self-reflexive per se, and as frequently asking questions capable of troubling culture and society. Yet after decades when humanities scholarship made active use of a variety of critical theories – Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-colonialist, post-Marxist – it seems somewhat surprising that many advocates of this current turn to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities find it difficult to understand computing and the digital as much more than tools, techniques and resources. As a result, much of the scholarship that is currently occurring under the ‘digital humanities’ agenda is uncritical, naive and at times even banal ([http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities Liu], 2011; [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ Higgen], 2010). <br><br> Witness the current emphasis on making the data not only visible but also visual. Stefanie Posavec’s frequently referred to [http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/literary-organism/ Literary Organism], which visualises the structure of Part One of Kerouac’s ''On the Road'' as a tree, provides one example; those cited earlier courtesy of Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative offer another. Now, there is a long history of critical engagement within the humanities with ideas of the visual, the image, the spectacle, the spectator and so on: not just in critical theory, but also in cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, film and television studies. Such a history of critical engagement stretches back to Guy Debord’s influential 1967 work, ''The Society of the Spectacle'', and beyond. For example, in his introduction to a 1995 book edited with Lynn Cooke, ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'', Peter Wollen writes that an excess of visual display within culture has 'the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images that might best be understood, not simply detached from a real world of things, as Debord implied, but as effacing any trace of the symbolic, condemning the viewer to a world in which we can see everything but understand nothing—allowing us viewer-victims, in Debord’s phrase, only "a random choice of ephemera"’ (1995: 9). It can come as something of a surprise, then, to discover that this humanities tradition in which ideas of the visual are engaged critically appears to have had comparatively little impact on the current enthusiasm for data visualisation that is so prominent an aspect of the turn toward data-intensive scholarship. <br><br> Of course, this (at times explicit) repudiation of criticality could be precisely what makes certain aspects of the digital humanities so seductive for many at the moment. Exponents of the computational turn can be said to be endeavouring to avoid conforming to accepted (and often moralistic) conceptions of politics that have been decided in advance, including those that see it only in terms of power, ideology, race, gender, class, sexuality, ecology, affect etc. Refusing to [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html ‘go through the motions of a critical avant-garde’], to borrow the words of Bruno Latour (2004), they often position themselves as responding to what is perceived as a fundamentally new cultural situation, and to the challenge it represents to our traditional methods of studying culture, by avoiding conventional theoretical manoeuvres and by experimenting with the development of fresh methods and approaches for the humanities instead. <br><br> Manovich, for instance, sees the sheer scale and dynamics of the contemporary new media landscape as presenting the usually accepted means of studying culture that were dominant for so much of the 20th century – the kinds of theories, concepts and methods appropriate to producing close readings of a relatively small number of texts – with a significant practical and conceptual challenge. In the past, ‘[http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories] based on small data sets (for instance, “classical Hollywood cinema”, “Italian Renaissance”, etc.) But how can we track “global digital cultures”, with their billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors’, he asks (Manovich, 2010)? Three years ago Manovich was already describing the ‘numbers of people participating in social networks, sharing media, and creating user-generated content’ as simply ‘astonishing’: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html MySpace, for example,] claims 300 million users. Cyworld, a Korean site similar to MySpace, claims 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of that country's total population (as of 2006) use it. Hi5, a leading social media site in Central America has 100 million users and Facebook, 14 million photo uploads daily. The number of new videos uploaded to YouTube every twenty-four hours (as of July 2006): 65,000. (Manovich in Franklin &amp; Rodriguez’G, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br> The solution Manovich proposes to this ‘data deluge’ is to turn to the very computers, databases, software and vast amounts of born-digital networked cultural content that are causing the problem in the first place, and to use them to help develop new methods and approaches adequate to the task at hand. This is where what he calls Cultural Analytics comes in. [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘The key idea of Cultural Analytics] is the use of computers to automatically analyze cultural artefacts in visual media, extracting large numbers of features that characterize their structure and content’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009); and what is more, to do so not just with regard to the culture of the past, but also with that of the present. To this end, Manovich (not unlike the Google technology company) calls for as much of culture as possible to be made available in external, digital form: [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘not only the exceptional but also the typical]; not only the few cultural sentences spoken by a few "great man" [sic] but the patterns in all cultural sentences spoken by everybody else’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009). <br><br> In a series of posts on his Found History blog, Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, positions such developments in terms of a shift from a concern with theory and ideology to a [http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ concern with methodology] (2008). In this respect there may well be a degree of [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ ‘relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s’] – for those in the US especially – as a result of this move ‘into the space of methodological work’ (Croxall, 2010) and what Scheinfeldt reportedly dubs [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘the post-theoretical age’] (cited in P. Cohen, 2010). The problem, though, is that without such reflexive critical thinking and theories many of those whose work forms part of this computational turn find it difficult to articulate exactly what the point of what they are doing is, as Scheinfeldt readily acknowledges (2010a). <br><br> Take one of the projects mentioned earlier: the attempt by [http://victorianbooks.org Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs] to text-mine all the books published in English in the Victorian age (or at least those digitized by Google). Among other things, this allows Cohen and Gibbs to show that use of the word ‘revolution’ in book titles of the period spiked around [http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ‘the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848’] (D. Cohen, 2010). But what argument are they trying to make with this calculation? What is it we are able to learn as a result of this use of computational power on their part that we did not know already and could not have discovered without it ([http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/ Scheinfeldt], 2008)? <br><br> In an explicit response to Cohen and Gibbs’s project, Scheinfeldt suggests that the problem of theory, or the lack of it, may actually be a question of scale: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It expects something of the scale of humanities scholarship] which I’m not sure is true anymore: that a single scholar—nay, every scholar—working alone will, over the course of his or her lifetime ... make a fundamental theoretical advance to the field. <br><br> Increasingly, this expectation is something peculiar to the humanities. ...it required the work of a generation of mathematicians and observational astronomers, gainfully employed, to enable the eventual “discovery” of Neptune... Since the scientific revolution, most theoretical advances play out over generations, not single careers. (Scheinfeldt, 2010b)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Now, it is absolutely important that we as scholars experiment with the new tools, methods and materials that digital media technologies create and make possible, in order to bring into play new forms of Foucauldian ''dispositifs'', or what Bernard Stiegler calls ''hypomnemata'', or what I am trying to think in terms of [http://garyhall.info media gifts]. I would include in this 'experimentation imperative’ techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science and other related fields, such as information visualisation, data mining and so forth. Nevertheless, there is something troubling about this kind of deferral of critical and self-reflexive theoretical questions to an unknown point in time, still possibly a generation away. After all, the frequent suggestion is that now is not the right time to be making any such decision or judgement, since we cannot yet know how humanists will eventually come to use these tools and data, and thus what data-driven scholarship may or may not turn out to be capable of, critically, politically, theoretically. One of the consequences of this deferral, however, is that it makes it extremely difficult to judge whether this postponement is indeed acting as a responsible, political and ethical opening to the (heterogeneity and incalculability of the) future, including the future of the humanities; or whether it is serving as an alibi for a naive and rather superficial form of scholarship instead ([https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/ Meeks], 2010). A form of scholarship moreover that, in uncritically and un-self-reflexively adopting techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science, can be seen as part of the larger shift in contemporary society which Lyotard associates with the widespread use of computers and databases, and with the exteriorization of knowledge in relation to the ‘knower’. As we have seen, it is a movement away from a concern with ideals, with what is right and just and true, and toward a concern to legitimate power by optimizing the system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. <br><br> All of this raises some rather significant and timely questions for the humanities. Is it merely a coincidence that such a turn toward science, computing and data-intensive research is gaining momentum at a time when the UK government is emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and withdrawing support and funding from the humanities? Or is one of the reasons all this is happening now due to the fact that the humanities, like the sciences themselves, are under pressure from government, business, management, industry and increasingly the media to prove they provide value for money in instrumental, functional, performative terms? Is the interest in computing a strategic decision on the part of some of those in the humanities? As the project of Cohen and Gibbs shows, one can get funding from the likes of Google (D. Cohen, 2010). In fact, in the summer of 2010 [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research’] (P. Cohen, 2010). To what extent is the take-up of practical techniques and approaches from computing science providing some areas of the humanities with a means of defending (and refreshing) themselves in an era of global economic crisis and severe cuts to higher education, through the transformation of their knowledge and learning into quantities of information –- so-called ‘deliverables’? Can we even position the ‘computational turn’ as an event created to justify such a move on the part of certain elements within the humanities ([http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/ Frabetti], 2010)? <br><br> Where does all this leave us as far as this Living Book on open science is concerned? As the argument above hopefully demonstrates, it is clearly not enough just to attempt to reveal or recover the scientific truth about, say, the environment, to counter the disinformation of others involved in the likes of the Climategate controversy. Nor is it enough merely to make the scientific research openly accessible to the public. Equally, it is not satisfactory simply to make the information, data, and associated tools, techniques and resources freely available to those in the humanities, so they can collectively and collaboratively search, mine, map, graph, model, visualize, analyse and interpret it in new ways – including some that may make it less abstract and easier for the majority of those in society to understand and follow – and, in doing so, help bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’. It is not so much that there is a lack of information, or access to the right kind of information, or information presented in the right kind of way to ensure that the message of the scientific research and data comes across effectively and efficiently. It is not even that there is too much information, too much white noise, as ‘Bifo’ et al call it (2009: 141-142). To be sure, as a [http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/reports/display/id=479774 2010 Mintel report] showed – to stay with the example of climate change – most people in the UK already know what is happening to the environment. They are just suffering from Green Fatigue, they are bored with thinking about it and thus enacting a backlash against what they perceive as ‘extreme’ pressure from environmentalist groups. This is perhaps one reason why [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html ‘the number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009’] (Shields, 2010: 30). Yet to argue there is too much information rather risks implying that there is a proper amount of information, and what would that be?<br><br> So we might not want to go along with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they contend that ‘we do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it’. But we might nevertheless agree when they argue that what we actually lack is creation: ‘We lack resistance to the present’ (1994: 108). In this respect, it is not just a case of supplying more scientific research and data; nor of making the research and data that has otherwise been closed, hidden, denied or suppressed openly available for free – by opening the already existing memory and databanks to the people, for example (which is what Lyotard ended by suggesting we do). It is also a case of creating work around the research and data that does not simply go along with the shift in the status and nature of knowledge that is currently taking place. As we have seen, it is a shift toward STEM subjects and away from the humanities; toward a concern with optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms, and away from a concern with questions of what is just and right; and toward an emphasis on openness, freedom and transparency, and away from what is capable of disrupting and disturbing society, and what, in remaining resistant to a culture of measurement and calculation, maintains a much needed element of inaccessibility, inefficiency, delay, error, antagonism, heterogeneity and dissensus within the system. <br><br> Can this Living Book on open science be considered one such a creation? And can this series of Living Books about Life be considered another? Are they instances of a resistance to the present? Or just more white noise? <br><br> <br> (The above is based on a paper presented at the Data Landscapes, AHRC network event, held in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey at the University of Westminster, London, December 15, 2010. An earlier version of some of the material provided above appeared in Hall [2010]) <br><br> '''References''' <br><br> Arthur, C. (2010), ‘Will Brussels Curb Google Guys’, ''The Guardian'', December 6. <br><br> 'Bifo' Berardi, F., Jacquemet, M. and Vitali, G. (2009), ''Ethereal Shadows: Communications and Power in Contemporary Italy''. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. <br><br> Bergman, M. K. (2001), ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’, ''JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing'', vol.7, no.1, August. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104.&nbsp;<br><br> Birchall, C. 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(2008), ‘Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software at ''Open Medicine''’, ''Open Medicine'', 2(1): e1–e3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/?tool=pmcentrez http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/pdf/OpenMed-02-e1.pdf??tool=pmcentrez <br><br> Patterson, M. (2009), ‘Article-Level Metrics at PloS – Addition of Usage Data’, ''PLoS: Public Library of Science''. September 16. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/. <br><br> Pubget (2010), ‘[BOAI] PLoS Launches Fast (Open) PDF Access with Pubget’, posted on the BOAI list by Peter Suber, March 8. <br><br> Poynder, R. (2010), ‘Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley: The Impact of Open Notebook Science’, ''Information Today'', September. http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2008), ‘Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010a) ‘Where’s the Beef?: Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010b) response to Dan Cohen, ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen''. October 5. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Shields, R. (2010), ‘Green Fatigue Hits Campaign to Reduce Carbon Footprint’, ''The Independent'', October 10. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html. <br><br> Sterling, B. (2005), ''Shaping Things''. Massachussetts: MIT. <br><br> Stolberg, S. G. (2009), ‘On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone’”, ''The New York Times''. January 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html. <br><br> Swan, A. (2009), ‘Open Access and Open Data’, ''2nd NERC Data Management Workshop'', Oxford. February 17-18. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/. <br><br> Swartz, A. (2010), ‘When is Transparency Useful?’ ''Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought blog'', February 11. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency. <br><br> Vaidhyanathan, S. (2009), ‘The Googlization of Universities’, ''The NEA 2009 Almanac of Higher Education''. http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf <br><br> Wark, M. (2004), ''A Hacker Manifesto''. Harvard: Harvard University Press. <br><br> Westcott, S. (2009) ‘Global Warming: Brits Deny Humans are to Blame,’ ''The Express'', December 7. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame <br><br> The White House (2009), ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open Government’. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ <br><br> Wollen, P. and Cooke, L. eds (1995), ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances''. Seattle: Bay Press.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_science/Introduction&diff=5680Open science/Introduction2014-06-10T11:17:18Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Digitize_Me,_Visualize_Me,_Search_Me Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
= '''White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix)''' =<br />
<br />
= Gary Hall =<br />
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<br><br> <youtube>PH54cp2ggFk</youtube> <br><br><br />
One of the explicit aims of the Living Books About Life series is to provide a&nbsp; point of interrogation and contestation, as well as connection and translation, between the humanities and the sciences (partly to avoid slipping into 'scientism'). Accordingly, this introduction to ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' takes as its starting point the so-called ‘computational turn’ to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities. <br><br> The phrase ‘[http://www.thecomputationalturn.com/ the computational turn]’ has been adopted to refer to the process whereby techniques and methodologies drawn from (in this case) ''computer science'' and related fields – including science visualization, interactive information visualization, image processing, network analysis, statistical data analysis, and the management, manipulation and mining of data – are being used to produce new ways of approaching and understanding texts in the humanities; what is sometimes thought of as ‘the digital humanities’. The concern in the main has been with either digitizing ‘born analog’ humanities texts and artifacts (e.g. making annotated editions of the art and writing of [http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ William Blake] available to scholars and researchers online), or gathering together ‘born digital’ humanities texts and artifacts (videos, websites, games, photography, sound recordings, 3D data), and then taking complex and often extremely large-scale data analysis techniques from computing science and related fields and applying them to these humanities texts and artifacts - to this ‘big data’, as it has been called. Witness Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative’s use of ‘[http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf digital image analysis and new visualization techniques]’ to study ‘20,000 pages of Science and Popular Science magazines… published between 1872-1922, 780 paintings by van Gogh, 4535 covers of Time magazine (1923-2009) and one million manga pages’ (Manovich, 2011), and Dan Cohen and Fred Gibb’s text mining of ‘[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader the 1,681,161 books that were published in English in the UK in the long nineteenth century]’ (Cohen, 2010). <br><br> ''What Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' endeavours to show is that such data-focused transformations in research can be seen as part of a major alteration in the status and nature of knowledge. It is an alteration that, according to the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, has been taking place since at least the 1950s, and involves nothing less than a shift away from a concern with questions of what is right and just, and toward a concern with legitimating power by optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. This shift has significant consequences for our idea of knowledge. Indeed, for Lyotard: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these language whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as ‘knowledge’ statements. (1986: 4)</blockquote> <br />
<br>In particular, ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' suggests that the turn in the humanities toward data-driven scholarship, science visualization, statistical data analysis, etc. can be placed alongside all those discourses that are being put forward at the moment - in both the academy and society - in the name of greater openness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. <br><br> '''Open Access ''' <br><br> The open access movement provides a case in point. Witness [http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf John Houghton’s] 2009 comparison of the benefits of OA for the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, which claims to show that the open access academic publishing model, in which peer reviewed scholarly research and publications are made available for free online to all those who are able to access the Internet, is actually the most cost effective mechanism for scholarly publishing. Others meanwhile have detailed the increases open access publishing enables in the amount of material that can be published, searched and stored, in the number of people who can access it, in the impact of that material, the range of its distribution, and in the speed and ease of reporting and information retrieval. The following announcement, posted on the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) list in March 2010, is fairly typical in this respect: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Today PLoS released Pubget links across its journal sites. Now, when users are browsing thousands of reference citations on PLoS journals they will be able to get to the full text article faster than ever before. <br><br> Specifically, when readers encounter citations to articles as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will also appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. <br><br> On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said: ‘Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.’ (Pubget, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Open Data ''' <br><br> Yet it is not just the research literature that is positioned as being rendered more accessible by scientists. Even the data created in the course of scientific research is promoted as being made freely and openly available for others to use, analyse and build upon.This includes data sets that are too large to be included in any resulting peer-reviewed publications. Known as open data, or data-sharing, this initiative is motivated by the idea that publishing data online on an open basis bestows it with a [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/1/Swan_-_NERC_09.pptx ‘vastly increased utility’]. Digital data sets are said to be ‘easily passed around’; they are seemingly ‘more easily reused’, reanalysed and checked for accuracy and validity; and they supposedly contain more ‘opportunities for educational and commercial exploitation’ (Swan, 2009). <br><br> Interestingly, certain academic publishers are already viewing the linking of their journals to the underlying data as another of the ‘value-added’ services they can offer, to set alongside automatic alerting and sophisticated citation, indexing, searching and linking facilities (and to no doubt help ward off the threat of disintermediation posed by the development of digital technology, which enables academics to take over the means of dissemination and publish their work for and by themselves cheaply and easily). Significantly, a [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx 2009 JISC report] also identified ‘open-ness, predictive science based on massive data volumes and citizen involvement as [all] being important features of tomorrow’s research practice’. <br><br> In a further move in this direction, all Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are now providing a broad range of article-level metrics and indicators relating to usage data on an open basis. No longer withheld as trade secrets, these metrics reveal which articles are attracting the most views, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, coverage in the media, comments, responses, ‘star’ ratings, blog coverage, and so on. PLoS has positioned this programme as enabling science scholars to assess [http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/ ‘research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published’], and they encourage readers to carry out their own analyses of this open data (Patterson, 2009). Yet it is difficult not to perceive such article-level metrics and management tools as also being part of the wider process of transforming knowledge and learning into ‘quantities of information’ (Lyotard, 1986: 4); quantities, furthermore, that are produced more to be exchanged, marketed and sold (1986: 4) – for example, by individual academics to their departments, institutions, funders and governments in the form of indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ (1986: 5). <br><br> '''From Open Science to Open Government ''' <br><br> Such developments around open access and open data are themselves part of the larger trend or phenomenon that is coming to be known as ‘open science’. As Murray et al put it: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Open science is emerging as a collaborative and transparent approach to research. It is the idea that all data (both published and unpublished) should be freely available, and that private interests should not stymie its use by means of copyright, intellectual property rights and patents. It also embraces open access publishing and open source software… (Murray et al, 2008)</blockquote><br />
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One of the most interesting and well known examples of how such open science may work is provided by the Open Notebook Science of the organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. ‘[I]in the interests of openness’, Bradley is making the [http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml ‘details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web']. This ‘includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments’. What is more, he is doing so in ‘real time’, ‘within hours of production, not after the months or years involved in peer review’ (Poynder, 2010). Again, we can see how emphasis is being placed on the amount of research that can be shared, and the speed with which this can be achieved. This openness on Bradley’s part is also positioned as a means of achieving usefulness and impact, as is evident from the very title of one of his Open Notebook Science projects, [http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/ UsefulChem]. <br><br> To be fair, however, such discourses around openness, transparency, efficiency and utility are not confined to the sciences – or even the university, for that matter. There are also wider political initiatives, dubbed ‘Open Government’, or ‘Government 2.0’, with both the Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administrations in the UK making a great display of freeing government information. The Labour government implemented the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000, and then proceeded to launch a [http://www.data.gov.uk website] expressly dedicated to the release of governmental data sets in January 2010. It is a website that the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government continues to make extensive use of. In a similar vein, the [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Guardian] newspaper has campaigned for the UK government to relinquish its copyright on all local, regional and national data collected with taxpayers’ money and to make such data freely and openly available to the public by publishing it online, where it can be collectively and collaboratively scrutinized, searched, mined, mapped, graphed, cross-tabulated, visualized, audited and interpreted using software tools. <br><br> Nor is this phenomenon confined to the UK. In the United States Barack Obama promised throughout his election campaign to make government more open. He followed this up by issuing a memorandum on transparency the very first day after he became President, vowing to make openness one of [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html ‘the touchstones of this presidency’”] (Obama, cited in Stolberg, 2009): ‘[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration] is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (The White House, 2009). <br><br>'''The Politics of Openness''' <br><br> The connection I am making here between the movements for open access, open data, open science and open government is one that has to a certain extent already been pointed to by Michael Gurstein in his reflections on the experience of attending the 2011 conference of the [http://okfn.org/ Open Knowledge Foundation]. For Gurstein: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emerging-data-divide/ the ‘open data/open government’ movement] begins from a profoundly political perspective that government is largely ineffective and inefficient (and possibly corrupt) and that it hides that ineffectiveness and inefficiency (and possible corruption) from public scrutiny through lack of transparency in its operations and particularly in denying to the public access to information (data) about its operations. And further that this access once available would give citizens the means to hold bureaucrats (and their political masters) accountable for their actions. In doing so it would give these self-same citizens a platform on which to undertake (or at least collaborate with) these bureaucrats in certain key and significant activities—planning, analyzing, budgeting that sort of thing. Moreover through the implementation of processes of crowdsourcing this would also provide the bureaucrats with the overwhelming benefits of having access to and input from the knowledge and wisdom of the broader interested public. <br><br> Put in somewhat different terms but with essentially the same meaning—it’s the taxpayer’s money and they have the right to participate in overseeing how it is spent. Having “open” access to government’s data/information gives citizens the tools to exercise that right. (Gurstein, 2011)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Interestingly, for Gurstein, a much clearer understanding is needed than has been displayed by many open data/open government advocates to date of what exactly is meant by openness, and of where arguments in favour of open access, open information and open data are likely to lead us in the not too distant future. With this in mind, we could endeavour to put some flesh on the bones of Gurstein’s sketch of the politics of openness and suggest that, from a liberal perspective, freeing publicly funded and acquired information and data – whether it is gathered directly in the process of census collection, or indirectly as part of other activities (crime, healthcare, transport, schools and accident statistics) – is seen as helping society to perform more efficiently. For liberals, openness is said to play a key role in increasing citizen trust, participation and involvement in democracy, and indeed government, as access to information – such as that needed to intervene in public policy – is no longer restricted either to the state or to those corporations, institutions, organizations and individuals who have sufficient money and power to acquire it for themselves. <br><br> Such liberal beliefs find support in the idea that making information and data freely and transparently available goes along with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states that everyone has the right [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’]. Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, put forward a similar vision when, at the beginning of 2010, she said of her country that ‘[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full We stand for a single internet] where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas’, and against the authoritarian censorship and suppression of free speech and online search facilities like Google in countries such as China and Iran. Clinton declared: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Even in authoritarian countries], information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. <br><br> During his visit to China in November [2009], President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today. (Clinton, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br> This political sentiment was shared by Jeff Jarvis, author of ''What Would Google Do?'', when, in support of Google’s decision to stop self-filtering search results in China, he argued in March 2010 for a bill of rights for cyberspace: ‘[http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/27/a-bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace/ to claim and secure our freedom] to connect, speak, assemble, and act online; to each control our identities and data; to speak our languages; to protect what is public and private; and to assure openness’ (Jarvis, 2010: 4). Yet are Clinton and Jarvis not both guilty here of overlooking (or should that be conveniently forgetting or even denying) the way liberal ideas of freedom and openness (and, indeed, of the human) have long been used in the service of colonialism and neoliberal globalisation? Does freedom for the latter not primarily mean economic freedom, i.e., freedom of the market, freedom of the consumer to choose what to consume – not only in terms of goods, but also lifestyles and ways of being? <br><br> Even if it was before the widespread use of networked computers, it is interesting that ‘fifteen years after the Freedom of Information Act law was passed’ in the US in 1966, ‘the General Accounting Office reported that 82 percent of requests [for information] came from business, nine percent from the press, and only 1 percent from individuals or public interest groups’ (Fung et al, 2007: 27-28). Certainly, in the UK today, the 'truth is that the [UK] FOI Act [2000] isn't used, for the most part, by “the people”’, as Tony Blair acknowledged in his recent memoir. ‘It's used by journalists’ (Blair, 2010) – and by businesses, one might add. In view of this, it is no surprise to find that neoliberals also support the making of government data freely and openly available to businesses and the public. They do so on the grounds that it provides a means of achieving the best possible ‘input/output ratio’ for society (Lyotard, 1986: 54). This way of thinking is of a piece with the emphasis placed by neoliberalism’s audit culture on accountability, transparency, evaluation, measurement and centralised data management: for example, in the context of UK higher education, it is evident in the emphasis placed on measuring the impact of research on society and the economy, teaching standards, contact hours, as well as student drop-out rates, future employment destinations and earning prospects. From this perspective, such openness and communicative transparency is perceived as ensuring greater value for (taxpayers’) money, supposedly helping to eliminate corruption, enabling costs to be distributed more effectively, and increasing choice, innovation, enterprise, creativity, competiveness and accountability. <br><br> Meanwhile, some libertarians have gone so far as to argue that there is no need to make difficult policy decisions about what data and what information it is right to publish online and what to keep secret at all. Instead, we should work toward the kind of situation the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling proposes. In ''Shaping Things'', his non-fiction book on the future of design, Sterling advocates retaining all data and information, ‘the known, the unknown known, and the unknown unknown’, in large archives and databases equipped with the necessary bandwidth, processing speed and storage capacity, and simply devising search tools and metadata that are accurate, fast and powerful enough to find and access it (Sterling, 2005: 47). <br><br> Yet to have participated in the shift away from questions of truth, justice and especially what, in ''The Inhuman'', Lyotard places under the headings of ‘heterogeneity, dissensus, event…the unharmonizable’ (1991: 4), and ''toward'' a concern with performativity, measurement and optimising the relation between input and output, one does not need to be a practicing [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/09/canada-open-data data journalist], or to have actively contributed to the movements for open access, open data, open science or open government. If you are one of the 1.3 million plus people who have purchased a Kindle, and helped the sale of digital books outpace those of hardbacks on Amazon’s US website, then you have already signed a license agreement allowing the online book retailer - but not academic researchers or the public - to collect, store, mine, analyse and extract economic value from data concerning your personal reading habits for free. Similarly, if you are one of the over 687 million worldwide who use the Facebook social network, then you are already voluntarily giving your time and labour for free, not only to help its owners, their investors, and other companies make a reputed $1 billion a year from demographically targeted advertising, but to supply governments and law enforcement agencies such as the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK with profile data relating to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues and peers that they can [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement use in investigations] (Hoffman, 2010). Even if you have done neither, you will in all probability have provided the Google technology company with a host of network data and digital traces it can both monetize and give to the police as a result of having mapped your home, digitized your book, or supplied you with free music videos to enjoy via Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and YouTube, which Google also owns. Lest this shift from open access to Google should seem somewhat farfetched, it is worth recalling that ‘[http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf Google has moved to establish, embellish, or replace many core university services] such as library databases, search interfaces, and e-mail servers’ (Vaidhyanathan, 2009: 65-66); and that academia in fact gave birth to Google, Google’s PageRank algorithm being little more [http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 ‘than an expansion of what is known as citation analysis’] (Knouf, 2010). <br><br> <youtube>R7yfV6RzE30</youtube> <br><br> Obviously, no matter how exciting and enjoyable such activities may be, you don't ''have'' to buy that e-book reader, join that social network or display your personal metrics online, from sexual activity to food consumption, in an attempt to identify patterns in your life – what is called life-tracking or self-tracking. (Although, actually, a lot of people are quite happy to keep contributing to the networked communities reached by Facebook and YouTube, even though they realise they are being used as free labour and that, in the case of the former, much of what they do cannot be accessed by search engines and web browsers. They just see this as being part of the deal and a reasonable trade-off for the services and experiences that are provided by these companies.) Nevertheless, refusing to take part in this transformation of knowledge and learning into quantities of data, and shift ''away'' from critical questions of what is just and right ''toward'' a concern with optimizing the system’s performance is not an option for most of us. It is not something that can be opted out of by simply declining to take out a Tesco Club Card or use cash-points, refusing to look for research using Google Scholar, or committing social networking [http://www.suicidemachine.org/ ‘suicide’] and reading print-on-paper books instead. <br><br> For one thing, the process of capturing data by means not just of the internet, but a myriad of cameras, sensors and robotic devices, is now so ubiquitous and all pervasive it is impossible to avoid being caught up in it, no matter how rich, knowledgeable and technologically proficient you are. The latest research indicates there are approximately 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 32 people. Yet no one really knows how many CCTV cameras are actually in operation in Britain today - and that’s without even mentioning other means of gathering data that are reputed to be more intrusive still, such as mobile phone GPS location and automatic vehicle number plate recognition (ANPR). <br><br> For another, and as the example of CCTV illustrates, it’s not necessarily a question of actively doing something in this respect: of positively contributing free labour to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, for instance, or of refusing to do so. Nor is it merely a case of the separation between work and non-work being harder to maintain nowadays. (Is it work, leisure or play when you are writing a status update on Facebook, posting a photograph, ‘friending’ someone, interacting, detailing your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ regarding the places you eat, the films you watch, the books you read?) As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out some time ago, ‘surplus labor no longer requires labor... one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work’, or anything that even remotely resembles work for that matter, at least as it is most commonly understood: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>In these new conditions, it remains true that all labour involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized ‘machinic enslavement’, such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling – every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequalled point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. ((Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 492)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Transparency?''' <br><br> Before going any further, I should perhaps confess that I am a staunch advocate of open access in the humanities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be raised with regard to making research and data openly available online for free. <br><br> The first point to make in this respect is that, far from revealing any hitherto unknown, hidden or secret knowledge, such discourses of openness and transparency are themselves often not very open or transparent. Staying with the relationship between politics and science, let us take as an example the response of Ed Miliband, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy 'Climategate']controversy, in which climate skeptics alleged that emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that scientists have tampered with the data in order to support the theory that global warming is man-made. Miliband’s answer was to advocate ‘[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame maximum transparency]– let’s get the data out there’, he urged. ‘The people who believe that climate change is happening and is man-made have nothing to fear from transparency’ (Miliband, quoted in Westcott, 2009: 7; cited by Birchall,&nbsp;2011b). Yet, actually, complete transparency is impossible. This is because, as Clare Birchall has shown, there is an aporia at the heart of any claim to transparency. ‘For transparency to be known as transparency, there must be some agency (such as the media [or politicians, or government]) that legitimizes it as transparent, and because there is a legitimizing agent which does not itself have to be transparent, there is a limit to transparency’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). In fact, the more transparency is claimed, the more the violence of the mediating agency of this transparency is concealed, forgotten or obscured. Birchall offers the example of ‘The Daily Telegraph and its exposure of MPs’ expenses during the summer of 2009. While appearing to act on the side of transparency, as a commercial enterprise the paper itself has in the past been subject to secret takeover bids and its former owner, Lord Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstructing justice’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). To paraphrase a question from Lyotard I am going to return to at more length: Who decides what transparency is, and who knows what needs to be transparent (1986: 9)? <br><br> Furthermore, merely making such information and data available to the public online will not in itself necessarily change anything. In fact, such processes have often been adopted precisely as a means of avoiding change. Aaron Swartz provides the example of Watergate: ‘[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency after Watergate], people were upset about politicians receiving millions of dollars from large corporations. But, on the other hand, corporations seem to like paying off politicians. So instead of banning the practice, Congress simply required that politicians keep track of everyone who gives them money and file a report on it for public inspection’ (Swartz, 2010). <br><br> '''Openness?''' <br><br> Much the same can be said for the idea that making research and data accessible to the public supposedly helps to make society more open and free. Take the belief we saw expressed above by Hilary Clinton: that people in the United States have free access to the internet while those in China and Iran do not. Those of us who live and work in the West do indeed have a certain freedom to publish and search online. Yet none of this rhetoric about freedom and transparency prevented the Obama government from condemning Wikileaks in November 2010 as [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security ‘reckless and dangerous’], after it opened up access to hundreds of thousands of classified State Department documents (Gibbs, 2010); nor from putting pressure on Amazon and other companies to stop hosting the whistle-blowing website, an action which had echoes of the dispute over censorship between Google and the Chinese government earlier in 2010. (Significantly, the Obama administration has also recently withdrawn the bulk of funding from the United States open government website www.data.gov, which served as an influential precursor to the previously mentioned [http://www.data.gov.uk www.data.gov.uk] website in the UK.) Furthermore, unless you are a large political or economic actor, or one of the lucky few, the statistics show that what you publish online is unlikely to receive much attention. Just ‘three companies – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – handle 95 percent of all search queries’; while ‘for searches containing the name of a specific political organisation, Yahoo! and Google agree on the top result 90 percent of the time’ (Hindman, 2009: 59, 79). Meanwhile, one company, Google, reportedly has 65&nbsp;% of the world’s search market, ‘72 per cent share of the US search market, and almost 90 per cent in the UK’ – a degree of domination that has led the European Union to investigate Google for abusing its power to favour its own products while suppressing those of rivals (Arthur, 2010: 3). <br><br> But it is not just that Google’s algorithms are ranking some websites on the first page of its results and others on page 42 (which means, in effect, that the latter are rarely going to be accessed, since very few people read beyond the first page of Google’s results). It is that conventional search engines are reaching only an extremely small percentage of the total number of available web pages. Ten years ago Michael K. Bergman was already placing the figure at 0.03%, or [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104 ‘one in 3,000’], with ‘public information on the deep Web’ even then being ‘400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web’. Consequently, while according to Bergman as much as ‘ninety-five per cent of the deep Web’ may be ‘publicly accessible information – not subject to fees or subscriptions’ – by far the vast majority of it is left untouched (Bergman, 2001). And that is before we even begin to address the issue of how the recent rise of the app, and use of the password protected Facebook for search purposes, may today be [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ annihilating the very idea of the openly searchable Web]. <br><br> We can therefore see that it is not enough simply to [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ ‘Free Our Data’], as the Guardian has it; or to operate on the basis that ‘information wants to be free’ (Wark, 2004) (although doing so of course may be a start, especially in an era when notions of the open web and net neutrality are under severe threat). We can put ever more research and data online; we can make it freely available to both other researchers and the public under open access, open data, open science and open government conditions; we can even integrate, index and link it using the appropriate metadata to enable it to be searched and harvested with relative ease. But none of this means this research and data is going to be found. Ideas of this kind ignore the fact that all information and data is ordered, structured, selected and framed in a particular way. This is what metadata is for, after all. Metadata is information or data that describes, links to, or is otherwise used to control, find, select, filter, classify and present other data. One example would be the information provided at the front of a book detailing its publisher, date and place of publication, ISBN number, and so on. However, the term ‘metadata’ is most commonly associated with the language of computing. There, metadata is what enables computers to access files and documents, not just in their own hard drives, but potentially across a range of different platforms, servers, websites and databases. Yet for all its associations with computer science, metadata is never neutral or objective. Although the term ‘data’ comes from the Latin word datum, meaning [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=-1&text=datum ‘something given’], data is not simply objectively out there in the world already provided for us. The specific ways in which metadata is created, organized and presented helps to produce (rather than merely passively reflect) what is classified as data and information – and what is not. <br><br> Clearly, then, it is not just a question of free and open access to the research and data; nor of providing support, education and training on how to understand, interpret, use and apply it effectively, as [http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ Gurstein] has argued (2010). It is also a question of who (and what) makes decisions regarding the data and metadata, and thus gets to exercise control over it, and on what basis such decisions are made. To paraphrase Lyotard once more: who decides what data and metadata is, and who knows what needs to be decided?’ (1986: 9). Who gets to legislate? And who legitimates the legislators (1986: 8)? Will the ‘ruling class’ – top civil servants and consulting firms full of people with MBAs, ‘corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organizations’, including those behind Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, JISC, AHRC, OAI, SPARC, COASP – continue to operate as the class of interpreters, gatekeepers and ‘decision makers,’ not just with regard to having ‘access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made’, but with regard to creating and controlling the data and metadata, too (1986: 14)? <br><br>'''On Data-Intensive Scholarship''' <br><br> If, as demonstrated above, discourses of openness and transparency are themselves not very open or transparent at all, much of the current emphasis on making the research and data open and free is also lacking in self-reflectivity and meaningful critique. We can see this not just in those discourses associated with open access, open data, open science and open government that are explicitly emphasizing the importance of transparency, performativity and efficiency. This lack of criticality is apparent in much of what goes under the name of ‘digital humanities’, too, especially those elements associated with the ‘computational turn’. <br><br> We tend to think of the humanities as being self-reflexive per se, and as frequently asking questions capable of troubling culture and society. Yet after decades when humanities scholarship made active use of a variety of critical theories – Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-colonialist, post-Marxist – it seems somewhat surprising that many advocates of this current turn to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities find it difficult to understand computing and the digital as much more than tools, techniques and resources. As a result, much of the scholarship that is currently occurring under the ‘digital humanities’ agenda is uncritical, naive and at times even banal ([http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities Liu], 2011; [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ Higgen], 2010). <br><br> Witness the current emphasis on making the data not only visible but also visual. Stefanie Posavec’s frequently referred to [http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/literary-organism/ Literary Organism], which visualises the structure of Part One of Kerouac’s ''On the Road'' as a tree, provides one example; those cited earlier courtesy of Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative offer another. Now, there is a long history of critical engagement within the humanities with ideas of the visual, the image, the spectacle, the spectator and so on: not just in critical theory, but also in cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, film and television studies. Such a history of critical engagement stretches back to Guy Debord’s influential 1967 work, ''The Society of the Spectacle'', and beyond. For example, in his introduction to a 1995 book edited with Lynn Cooke, ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'', Peter Wollen writes that an excess of visual display within culture has 'the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images that might best be understood, not simply detached from a real world of things, as Debord implied, but as effacing any trace of the symbolic, condemning the viewer to a world in which we can see everything but understand nothing—allowing us viewer-victims, in Debord’s phrase, only "a random choice of ephemera"’ (1995: 9). It can come as something of a surprise, then, to discover that this humanities tradition in which ideas of the visual are engaged critically appears to have had comparatively little impact on the current enthusiasm for data visualisation that is so prominent an aspect of the turn toward data-intensive scholarship. <br><br> Of course, this (at times explicit) repudiation of criticality could be precisely what makes certain aspects of the digital humanities so seductive for many at the moment. Exponents of the computational turn can be said to be endeavouring to avoid conforming to accepted (and often moralistic) conceptions of politics that have been decided in advance, including those that see it only in terms of power, ideology, race, gender, class, sexuality, ecology, affect etc. Refusing to [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html ‘go through the motions of a critical avant-garde’], to borrow the words of Bruno Latour (2004), they often position themselves as responding to what is perceived as a fundamentally new cultural situation, and to the challenge it represents to our traditional methods of studying culture, by avoiding conventional theoretical manoeuvres and by experimenting with the development of fresh methods and approaches for the humanities instead. <br><br> Manovich, for instance, sees the sheer scale and dynamics of the contemporary new media landscape as presenting the usually accepted means of studying culture that were dominant for so much of the 20th century – the kinds of theories, concepts and methods appropriate to producing close readings of a relatively small number of texts – with a significant practical and conceptual challenge. In the past, ‘[http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories] based on small data sets (for instance, “classical Hollywood cinema”, “Italian Renaissance”, etc.) But how can we track “global digital cultures”, with their billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors’, he asks (Manovich, 2010)? Three years ago Manovich was already describing the ‘numbers of people participating in social networks, sharing media, and creating user-generated content’ as simply ‘astonishing’: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html MySpace, for example,] claims 300 million users. Cyworld, a Korean site similar to MySpace, claims 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of that country's total population (as of 2006) use it. Hi5, a leading social media site in Central America has 100 million users and Facebook, 14 million photo uploads daily. The number of new videos uploaded to YouTube every twenty-four hours (as of July 2006): 65,000. (Manovich in Franklin &amp; Rodriguez’G, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br> The solution Manovich proposes to this ‘data deluge’ is to turn to the very computers, databases, software and vast amounts of born-digital networked cultural content that are causing the problem in the first place, and to use them to help develop new methods and approaches adequate to the task at hand. This is where what he calls Cultural Analytics comes in. [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘The key idea of Cultural Analytics] is the use of computers to automatically analyze cultural artefacts in visual media, extracting large numbers of features that characterize their structure and content’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009); and what is more, to do so not just with regard to the culture of the past, but also with that of the present. To this end, Manovich (not unlike the Google technology company) calls for as much of culture as possible to be made available in external, digital form: [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘not only the exceptional but also the typical]; not only the few cultural sentences spoken by a few "great man" [sic] but the patterns in all cultural sentences spoken by everybody else’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009). <br><br> In a series of posts on his Found History blog, Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, positions such developments in terms of a shift from a concern with theory and ideology to a [http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ concern with methodology] (2008). In this respect there may well be a degree of [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ ‘relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s’] – for those in the US especially – as a result of this move ‘into the space of methodological work’ (Croxall, 2010) and what Scheinfeldt reportedly dubs [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘the post-theoretical age’] (cited in P. Cohen, 2010). The problem, though, is that without such reflexive critical thinking and theories many of those whose work forms part of this computational turn find it difficult to articulate exactly what the point of what they are doing is, as Scheinfeldt readily acknowledges (2010a). <br><br> Take one of the projects mentioned earlier: the attempt by [http://victorianbooks.org Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs] to text-mine all the books published in English in the Victorian age (or at least those digitized by Google). Among other things, this allows Cohen and Gibbs to show that use of the word ‘revolution’ in book titles of the period spiked around [http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ‘the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848’] (D. Cohen, 2010). But what argument are they trying to make with this calculation? What is it we are able to learn as a result of this use of computational power on their part that we did not know already and could not have discovered without it ([http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/ Scheinfeldt], 2008)? <br><br> In an explicit response to Cohen and Gibbs’s project, Scheinfeldt suggests that the problem of theory, or the lack of it, may actually be a question of scale: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It expects something of the scale of humanities scholarship] which I’m not sure is true anymore: that a single scholar—nay, every scholar—working alone will, over the course of his or her lifetime ... make a fundamental theoretical advance to the field. <br><br> Increasingly, this expectation is something peculiar to the humanities. ...it required the work of a generation of mathematicians and observational astronomers, gainfully employed, to enable the eventual “discovery” of Neptune... Since the scientific revolution, most theoretical advances play out over generations, not single careers. (Scheinfeldt, 2010b)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Now, it is absolutely important that we as scholars experiment with the new tools, methods and materials that digital media technologies create and make possible, in order to bring into play new forms of Foucauldian ''dispositifs'', or what Bernard Stiegler calls ''hypomnemata'', or what I am trying to think in terms of [http://garyhall.info media gifts]. I would include in this 'experimentation imperative’ techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science and other related fields, such as information visualisation, data mining and so forth. Nevertheless, there is something troubling about this kind of deferral of critical and self-reflexive theoretical questions to an unknown point in time, still possibly a generation away. After all, the frequent suggestion is that now is not the right time to be making any such decision or judgement, since we cannot yet know how humanists will eventually come to use these tools and data, and thus what data-driven scholarship may or may not turn out to be capable of, critically, politically, theoretically. One of the consequences of this deferral, however, is that it makes it extremely difficult to judge whether this postponement is indeed acting as a responsible, political and ethical opening to the (heterogeneity and incalculability of the) future, including the future of the humanities; or whether it is serving as an alibi for a naive and rather superficial form of scholarship instead ([https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/ Meeks], 2010). A form of scholarship moreover that, in uncritically and un-self-reflexively adopting techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science, can be seen as part of the larger shift in contemporary society which Lyotard associates with the widespread use of computers and databases, and with the exteriorization of knowledge in relation to the ‘knower’. As we have seen, it is a movement away from a concern with ideals, with what is right and just and true, and toward a concern to legitimate power by optimizing the system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. <br><br> All of this raises some rather significant and timely questions for the humanities. Is it merely a coincidence that such a turn toward science, computing and data-intensive research is gaining momentum at a time when the UK government is emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and withdrawing support and funding from the humanities? Or is one of the reasons all this is happening now due to the fact that the humanities, like the sciences themselves, are under pressure from government, business, management, industry and increasingly the media to prove they provide value for money in instrumental, functional, performative terms? Is the interest in computing a strategic decision on the part of some of those in the humanities? As the project of Cohen and Gibbs shows, one can get funding from the likes of Google (D. Cohen, 2010). In fact, in the summer of 2010 [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research’] (P. Cohen, 2010). To what extent is the take-up of practical techniques and approaches from computing science providing some areas of the humanities with a means of defending (and refreshing) themselves in an era of global economic crisis and severe cuts to higher education, through the transformation of their knowledge and learning into quantities of information –- so-called ‘deliverables’? Can we even position the ‘computational turn’ as an event created to justify such a move on the part of certain elements within the humanities ([http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/ Frabetti], 2010)? <br><br> Where does all this leave us as far as this Living Book on open science is concerned? As the argument above hopefully demonstrates, it is clearly not enough just to attempt to reveal or recover the scientific truth about, say, the environment, to counter the disinformation of others involved in the likes of the Climategate controversy. Nor is it enough merely to make the scientific research openly accessible to the public. Equally, it is not satisfactory simply to make the information, data, and associated tools, techniques and resources freely available to those in the humanities, so they can collectively and collaboratively search, mine, map, graph, model, visualize, analyse and interpret it in new ways – including some that may make it less abstract and easier for the majority of those in society to understand and follow – and, in doing so, help bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’. It is not so much that there is a lack of information, or access to the right kind of information, or information presented in the right kind of way to ensure that the message of the scientific research and data comes across effectively and efficiently. It is not even that there is too much information, too much white noise, as ‘Bifo’ et al call it (2009: 141-142). To be sure, as a [http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/reports/display/id=479774 2010 Mintel report] showed – to stay with the example of climate change – most people in the UK already know what is happening to the environment. They are just suffering from Green Fatigue, they are bored with thinking about it and thus enacting a backlash against what they perceive as ‘extreme’ pressure from environmentalist groups. This is perhaps one reason why [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html ‘the number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009’] (Shields, 2010: 30). Yet to argue there is too much information rather risks implying that there is a proper amount of information, and what would that be?<br><br> So we might not want to go along with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they contend that ‘we do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it’. But we might nevertheless agree when they argue that what we actually lack is creation: ‘We lack resistance to the present’ (1994: 108). In this respect, it is not just a case of supplying more scientific research and data; nor of making the research and data that has otherwise been closed, hidden, denied or suppressed openly available for free – by opening the already existing memory and databanks to the people, for example (which is what Lyotard ended by suggesting we do). It is also a case of creating work around the research and data that does not simply go along with the shift in the status and nature of knowledge that is currently taking place. As we have seen, it is a shift toward STEM subjects and away from the humanities; toward a concern with optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms, and away from a concern with questions of what is just and right; and toward an emphasis on openness, freedom and transparency, and away from what is capable of disrupting and disturbing society, and what, in remaining resistant to a culture of measurement and calculation, maintains a much needed element of inaccessibility, inefficiency, delay, error, antagonism, heterogeneity and dissensus within the system. <br><br> Can this Living Book on open science be considered one such a creation? And can this series of Living Books about Life be considered another? Are they instances of a resistance to the present? Or just more white noise? <br><br> <br> (The above is based on a paper presented at the Data Landscapes, AHRC network event, held in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey at the University of Westminster, London, December 15, 2010. An earlier version of some of the material provided above appeared in Hall [2010]) <br><br> '''References''' <br><br> Arthur, C. (2010), ‘Will Brussels Curb Google Guys’, ''The Guardian'', December 6. <br><br> 'Bifo' Berardi, F., Jacquemet, M. and Vitali, G. (2009), ''Ethereal Shadows: Communications and Power in Contemporary Italy''. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. <br><br> Bergman, M. K. (2001), ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’, ''JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing'', vol.7, no.1, August. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104.&nbsp;<br><br> Birchall, C. 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(2010b), ‘Open Data (2): Effective Data Use’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 9. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/open-data-2-effective-data-use/ <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2011), ‘Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide’, posting to the nettime mailing list, July, 5. <br><br> Hall, G. (2010), 'We Can Know It For You: The Secret Life of Metadata', ''How We Became Metadata''. London: Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster. <br><br> Higgen, T. (2010) ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. May 25. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Hindman, M. (2009), ''The Myth of Digital Democracy''. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. <br><br> Hoffman, M. (2010), ‘EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites’, ''Electronic Frontier Foundation''. March 16. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement. <br><br> Houghton, J. (2009) ‘Open Access - What are the Economic Benefits?: A Comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark’, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne. http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf. <br><br> Jarvis, J. (2010), ‘Time For Citizens of the Internet to Stand Up’, ''The Guardian: MediaGuardian'', March 29. <br><br> JISC (2009), ‘Press Release: Open Science - the future for research?, posting to the BOAI list, November 16. 2009. <br><br> Kerssens, N. and Dekker A. (2009), ‘Interview with Lev Manovich for Archive 2020’, ''Virtueel_ Platform''. http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/#2595. <br><br> Knouf, N. (2010), ‘The JJPS Extension: Presenting Academic Performance Information’, ''Journal of Journal Performance Studies'', Vol 1, No 1. Available at http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6. Accessed 20 June, 2010. <br><br> Latour, B (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”’, ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 30, Number 2. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html. <br><br> Liu, A. (2011) ‘Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities’. Paper presented at the panel on ‘The History and Future of the Digital Humanities’” Modern Language Association convention, Los Angeles, January 7. http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities. <br><br> Lyotard, J-F. (1986), ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. <br><br> Lyotard, J.-F. (1991) ''The Inhuman: Reflections on Time''. Cambridge: Polity. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2010a) ‘Cultural Analytics Lectures by Manovich in UK (London and Swansea), March 8-9, 2010’, ''Software Studies Initiative''. March 8. http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2011) ‘Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data’,''Lev Manovich'', April 28: http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf. <br><br> Meeks, E. (2010), ‘The Digital Humanities as Imagined Community’, ''Digital Humanities Specialist''. September 14. https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/. <br><br> Mintel report, ‘Energy Efficiency in the Home - UK - July 2010’. <br><br> Murray, S. Choi, S., Hoey, J., Kendall, C., Maskalyk, J., and Palepu, A. (2008), ‘Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software at ''Open Medicine''’, ''Open Medicine'', 2(1): e1–e3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/?tool=pmcentrez http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/pdf/OpenMed-02-e1.pdf??tool=pmcentrez <br><br> Patterson, M. (2009), ‘Article-Level Metrics at PloS – Addition of Usage Data’, ''PLoS: Public Library of Science''. September 16. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/. <br><br> Pubget (2010), ‘[BOAI] PLoS Launches Fast (Open) PDF Access with Pubget’, posted on the BOAI list by Peter Suber, March 8. <br><br> Poynder, R. (2010), ‘Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley: The Impact of Open Notebook Science’, ''Information Today'', September. http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2008), ‘Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010a) ‘Where’s the Beef?: Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010b) response to Dan Cohen, ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen''. October 5. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Shields, R. (2010), ‘Green Fatigue Hits Campaign to Reduce Carbon Footprint’, ''The Independent'', October 10. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html. <br><br> Sterling, B. (2005), ''Shaping Things''. Massachussetts: MIT. <br><br> Stolberg, S. G. (2009), ‘On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone’”, ''The New York Times''. January 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html. <br><br> Swan, A. (2009), ‘Open Access and Open Data’, ''2nd NERC Data Management Workshop'', Oxford. February 17-18. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/. <br><br> Swartz, A. (2010), ‘When is Transparency Useful?’ ''Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought blog'', February 11. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency. <br><br> Vaidhyanathan, S. (2009), ‘The Googlization of Universities’, ''The NEA 2009 Almanac of Higher Education''. http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf <br><br> Wark, M. (2004), ''A Hacker Manifesto''. Harvard: Harvard University Press. <br><br> Westcott, S. (2009) ‘Global Warming: Brits Deny Humans are to Blame,’ ''The Express'', December 7. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame <br><br> The White House (2009), ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open Government’. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ <br><br> Wollen, P. and Cooke, L. eds (1995), ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances''. Seattle: Bay Press.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_science/Introduction&diff=5679Open science/Introduction2014-06-10T11:16:46Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Digitize_Me,_Visualize_Me,_Search_Me Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
= '''White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix)''' =<br />
<br />
= Gary Hall =<br />
<br />
<br><br> <youtube>PH54cp2ggFk</youtube> <br><br><br />
One of the explicit aims of the Living Books About Life series is to provide a&nbsp; point of interrogation and contestation, as well as connection and translation, between the humanities and the sciences (partly to avoid slipping into 'scientism'). Accordingly, this introduction to ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' takes as its starting point the so-called ‘computational turn’ to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities. <br><br> The phrase ‘[http://www.thecomputationalturn.com/ the computational turn]’ has been adopted to refer to the process whereby techniques and methodologies drawn from (in this case) ''computer science'' and related fields – including science visualization, interactive information visualization, image processing, network analysis, statistical data analysis, and the management, manipulation and mining of data – are being used to produce new ways of approaching and understanding texts in the humanities; what is sometimes thought of as ‘the digital humanities’. The concern in the main has been with either digitizing ‘born analog’ humanities texts and artifacts (e.g. making annotated editions of the art and writing of [http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ William Blake] available to scholars and researchers online), or gathering together ‘born digital’ humanities texts and artifacts (videos, websites, games, photography, sound recordings, 3D data), and then taking complex and often extremely large-scale data analysis techniques from computing science and related fields and applying them to these humanities texts and artifacts - to this ‘big data’, as it has been called. Witness Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative’s use of ‘[http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf digital image analysis and new visualization techniques]’ to study ‘20,000 pages of Science and Popular Science magazines… published between 1872-1922, 780 paintings by van Gogh, 4535 covers of Time magazine (1923-2009) and one million manga pages’ (Manovich, 2011), and Dan Cohen and Fred Gibb’s text mining of ‘[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader the 1,681,161 books that were published in English in the UK in the long nineteenth century]’ (Cohen, 2010). <br><br> ''What Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' endeavours to show is that such data-focused transformations in research can be seen as part of a major alteration in the status and nature of knowledge. It is an alteration that, according to the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, has been taking place since at least the 1950s, and involves nothing less than a shift away from a concern with questions of what is right and just, and toward a concern with legitimating power by optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. This shift has significant consequences for our idea of knowledge. Indeed, for Lyotard: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these language whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as ‘knowledge’ statements. (1986: 4)</blockquote> <br />
<br>In particular, ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' suggests that the turn in the humanities toward data-driven scholarship, science visualization, statistical data analysis, etc. can be placed alongside all those discourses that are being put forward at the moment - in both the academy and society - in the name of greater openness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. <br><br> '''Open Access ''' <br><br> The open access movement provides a case in point. Witness [http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf John Houghton’s] 2009 comparison of the benefits of OA for the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, which claims to show that the open access academic publishing model, in which peer reviewed scholarly research and publications are made available for free online to all those who are able to access the Internet, is actually the most cost effective mechanism for scholarly publishing. Others meanwhile have detailed the increases open access publishing enables in the amount of material that can be published, searched and stored, in the number of people who can access it, in the impact of that material, the range of its distribution, and in the speed and ease of reporting and information retrieval. The following announcement, posted on the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) list in March 2010, is fairly typical in this respect: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Today PLoS released Pubget links across its journal sites. Now, when users are browsing thousands of reference citations on PLoS journals they will be able to get to the full text article faster than ever before. <br><br> Specifically, when readers encounter citations to articles as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will also appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. <br><br> On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said: ‘Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.’ (Pubget, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Open Data ''' <br><br> Yet it is not just the research literature that is positioned as being rendered more accessible by scientists. Even the data created in the course of scientific research is promoted as being made freely and openly available for others to use, analyse and build upon.This includes data sets that are too large to be included in any resulting peer-reviewed publications. Known as open data, or data-sharing, this initiative is motivated by the idea that publishing data online on an open basis bestows it with a [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/1/Swan_-_NERC_09.pptx ‘vastly increased utility’]. Digital data sets are said to be ‘easily passed around’; they are seemingly ‘more easily reused’, reanalysed and checked for accuracy and validity; and they supposedly contain more ‘opportunities for educational and commercial exploitation’ (Swan, 2009). <br><br> Interestingly, certain academic publishers are already viewing the linking of their journals to the underlying data as another of the ‘value-added’ services they can offer, to set alongside automatic alerting and sophisticated citation, indexing, searching and linking facilities (and to no doubt help ward off the threat of disintermediation posed by the development of digital technology, which enables academics to take over the means of dissemination and publish their work for and by themselves cheaply and easily). Significantly, a [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx 2009 JISC report] also identified ‘open-ness, predictive science based on massive data volumes and citizen involvement as [all] being important features of tomorrow’s research practice’. <br><br> In a further move in this direction, all Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are now providing a broad range of article-level metrics and indicators relating to usage data on an open basis. No longer withheld as trade secrets, these metrics reveal which articles are attracting the most views, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, coverage in the media, comments, responses, ‘star’ ratings, blog coverage, and so on. PLoS has positioned this programme as enabling science scholars to assess [http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/ ‘research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published’], and they encourage readers to carry out their own analyses of this open data (Patterson, 2009). Yet it is difficult not to perceive such article-level metrics and management tools as also being part of the wider process of transforming knowledge and learning into ‘quantities of information’ (Lyotard, 1986: 4); quantities, furthermore, that are produced more to be exchanged, marketed and sold (1986: 4) – for example, by individual academics to their departments, institutions, funders and governments in the form of indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ (1986: 5). <br><br> '''From Open Science to Open Government ''' <br><br> Such developments around open access and open data are themselves part of the larger trend or phenomenon that is coming to be known as ‘open science’. As Murray et al put it: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Open science is emerging as a collaborative and transparent approach to research. It is the idea that all data (both published and unpublished) should be freely available, and that private interests should not stymie its use by means of copyright, intellectual property rights and patents. It also embraces open access publishing and open source software… (Murray et al, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
One of the most interesting and well known examples of how such open science may work is provided by the Open Notebook Science of the organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. ‘[I]in the interests of openness’, Bradley is making the [http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml ‘details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web']. This ‘includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments’. What is more, he is doing so in ‘real time’, ‘within hours of production, not after the months or years involved in peer review’ (Poynder, 2010). Again, we can see how emphasis is being placed on the amount of research that can be shared, and the speed with which this can be achieved. This openness on Bradley’s part is also positioned as a means of achieving usefulness and impact, as is evident from the very title of one of his Open Notebook Science projects, [http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/ UsefulChem]. <br><br> To be fair, however, such discourses around openness, transparency, efficiency and utility are not confined to the sciences – or even the university, for that matter. There are also wider political initiatives, dubbed ‘Open Government’, or ‘Government 2.0’, with both the Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administrations in the UK making a great display of freeing government information. The Labour government implemented the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000, and then proceeded to launch a [http://www.data.gov.uk website] expressly dedicated to the release of governmental data sets in January 2010. It is a website that the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government continues to make extensive use of. In a similar vein, the [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Guardian] newspaper has campaigned for the UK government to relinquish its copyright on all local, regional and national data collected with taxpayers’ money and to make such data freely and openly available to the public by publishing it online, where it can be collectively and collaboratively scrutinized, searched, mined, mapped, graphed, cross-tabulated, visualized, audited and interpreted using software tools. <br><br> Nor is this phenomenon confined to the UK. In the United States Barack Obama promised throughout his election campaign to make government more open. He followed this up by issuing a memorandum on transparency the very first day after he became President, vowing to make openness one of [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html ‘the touchstones of this presidency’”] (Obama, cited in Stolberg, 2009): ‘[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration] is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (The White House, 2009). <br><br>'''The Politics of Openness''' <br><br> The connection I am making here between the movements for open access, open data, open science and open government is one that has to a certain extent already been pointed to by Michael Gurstein in his reflections on the experience of attending the 2011 conference of the [http://okfn.org/ Open Knowledge Foundation]. For Gurstein: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emerging-data-divide/ the ‘open data/open government’ movement] begins from a profoundly political perspective that government is largely ineffective and inefficient (and possibly corrupt) and that it hides that ineffectiveness and inefficiency (and possible corruption) from public scrutiny through lack of transparency in its operations and particularly in denying to the public access to information (data) about its operations. And further that this access once available would give citizens the means to hold bureaucrats (and their political masters) accountable for their actions. In doing so it would give these self-same citizens a platform on which to undertake (or at least collaborate with) these bureaucrats in certain key and significant activities—planning, analyzing, budgeting that sort of thing. Moreover through the implementation of processes of crowdsourcing this would also provide the bureaucrats with the overwhelming benefits of having access to and input from the knowledge and wisdom of the broader interested public. <br><br> Put in somewhat different terms but with essentially the same meaning—it’s the taxpayer’s money and they have the right to participate in overseeing how it is spent. Having “open” access to government’s data/information gives citizens the tools to exercise that right. (Gurstein, 2011)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Interestingly, for Gurstein, a much clearer understanding is needed than has been displayed by many open data/open government advocates to date of what exactly is meant by openness, and of where arguments in favour of open access, open information and open data are likely to lead us in the not too distant future. With this in mind, we could endeavour to put some flesh on the bones of Gurstein’s sketch of the politics of openness and suggest that, from a liberal perspective, freeing publicly funded and acquired information and data – whether it is gathered directly in the process of census collection, or indirectly as part of other activities (crime, healthcare, transport, schools and accident statistics) – is seen as helping society to perform more efficiently. For liberals, openness is said to play a key role in increasing citizen trust, participation and involvement in democracy, and indeed government, as access to information – such as that needed to intervene in public policy – is no longer restricted either to the state or to those corporations, institutions, organizations and individuals who have sufficient money and power to acquire it for themselves. <br><br> Such liberal beliefs find support in the idea that making information and data freely and transparently available goes along with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states that everyone has the right [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’]. Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, put forward a similar vision when, at the beginning of 2010, she said of her country that ‘[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full We stand for a single internet] where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas’, and against the authoritarian censorship and suppression of free speech and online search facilities like Google in countries such as China and Iran. Clinton declared: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Even in authoritarian countries], information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. <br><br> During his visit to China in November [2009], President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today. (Clinton, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br> This political sentiment was shared by Jeff Jarvis, author of ''What Would Google Do?'', when, in support of Google’s decision to stop self-filtering search results in China, he argued in March 2010 for a bill of rights for cyberspace: ‘[http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/27/a-bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace/ to claim and secure our freedom] to connect, speak, assemble, and act online; to each control our identities and data; to speak our languages; to protect what is public and private; and to assure openness’ (Jarvis, 2010: 4). Yet are Clinton and Jarvis not both guilty here of overlooking (or should that be conveniently forgetting or even denying) the way liberal ideas of freedom and openness (and, indeed, of the human) have long been used in the service of colonialism and neoliberal globalisation? Does freedom for the latter not primarily mean economic freedom, i.e., freedom of the market, freedom of the consumer to choose what to consume – not only in terms of goods, but also lifestyles and ways of being? <br><br> Even if it was before the widespread use of networked computers, it is interesting that ‘fifteen years after the Freedom of Information Act law was passed’ in the US in 1966, ‘the General Accounting Office reported that 82 percent of requests [for information] came from business, nine percent from the press, and only 1 percent from individuals or public interest groups’ (Fung et al, 2007: 27-28). Certainly, in the UK today, the 'truth is that the [UK] FOI Act [2000] isn't used, for the most part, by “the people”’, as Tony Blair acknowledged in his recent memoir. ‘It's used by journalists’ (Blair, 2010) – and by businesses, one might add. In view of this, it is no surprise to find that neoliberals also support the making of government data freely and openly available to businesses and the public. They do so on the grounds that it provides a means of achieving the best possible ‘input/output ratio’ for society (Lyotard, 1986: 54). This way of thinking is of a piece with the emphasis placed by neoliberalism’s audit culture on accountability, transparency, evaluation, measurement and centralised data management: for example, in the context of UK higher education, it is evident in the emphasis placed on measuring the impact of research on society and the economy, teaching standards, contact hours, as well as student drop-out rates, future employment destinations and earning prospects. From this perspective, such openness and communicative transparency is perceived as ensuring greater value for (taxpayers’) money, supposedly helping to eliminate corruption, enabling costs to be distributed more effectively, and increasing choice, innovation, enterprise, creativity, competiveness and accountability. <br><br> Meanwhile, some libertarians have gone so far as to argue that there is no need to make difficult policy decisions about what data and what information it is right to publish online and what to keep secret at all. Instead, we should work toward the kind of situation the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling proposes. In ''Shaping Things'', his non-fiction book on the future of design, Sterling advocates retaining all data and information, ‘the known, the unknown known, and the unknown unknown’, in large archives and databases equipped with the necessary bandwidth, processing speed and storage capacity, and simply devising search tools and metadata that are accurate, fast and powerful enough to find and access it (Sterling, 2005: 47). <br><br> Yet to have participated in the shift away from questions of truth, justice and especially what, in ''The Inhuman'', Lyotard places under the headings of ‘heterogeneity, dissensus, event…the unharmonizable’ (1991: 4), and ''toward'' a concern with performativity, measurement and optimising the relation between input and output, one does not need to be a practicing [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/09/canada-open-data data journalist], or to have actively contributed to the movements for open access, open data, open science or open government. If you are one of the 1.3 million plus people who have purchased a Kindle, and helped the sale of digital books outpace those of hardbacks on Amazon’s US website, then you have already signed a license agreement allowing the online book retailer - but not academic researchers or the public - to collect, store, mine, analyse and extract economic value from data concerning your personal reading habits for free. Similarly, if you are one of the over 687 million worldwide who use the Facebook social network, then you are already voluntarily giving your time and labour for free, not only to help its owners, their investors, and other companies make a reputed $1 billion a year from demographically targeted advertising, but to supply governments and law enforcement agencies such as the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK with profile data relating to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues and peers that they can [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement use in investigations] (Hoffman, 2010). Even if you have done neither, you will in all probability have provided the Google technology company with a host of network data and digital traces it can both monetize and give to the police as a result of having mapped your home, digitized your book, or supplied you with free music videos to enjoy via Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and YouTube, which Google also owns. Lest this shift from open access to Google should seem somewhat farfetched, it is worth recalling that ‘[http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf Google has moved to establish, embellish, or replace many core university services] such as library databases, search interfaces, and e-mail servers’ (Vaidhyanathan, 2009: 65-66); and that academia in fact gave birth to Google, Google’s PageRank algorithm being little more [http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 ‘than an expansion of what is known as citation analysis’] (Knouf, 2010). <br><br> <youtube>R7yfV6RzE30</youtube> <br><br> Obviously, no matter how exciting and enjoyable such activities may be, you don't ''have'' to buy that e-book reader, join that social network or display your personal metrics online, from sexual activity to food consumption, in an attempt to identify patterns in your life – what is called life-tracking or self-tracking. (Although, actually, a lot of people are quite happy to keep contributing to the networked communities reached by Facebook and YouTube, even though they realise they are being used as free labour and that, in the case of the former, much of what they do cannot be accessed by search engines and web browsers. They just see this as being part of the deal and a reasonable trade-off for the services and experiences that are provided by these companies.) Nevertheless, refusing to take part in this transformation of knowledge and learning into quantities of data, and shift ''away'' from critical questions of what is just and right ''toward'' a concern with optimizing the system’s performance is not an option for most of us. It is not something that can be opted out of by simply declining to take out a Tesco Club Card or use cash-points, refusing to look for research using Google Scholar, or committing social networking [http://www.suicidemachine.org/ ‘suicide’] and reading print-on-paper books instead. <br><br> For one thing, the process of capturing data by means not just of the internet, but a myriad of cameras, sensors and robotic devices, is now so ubiquitous and all pervasive it is impossible to avoid being caught up in it, no matter how rich, knowledgeable and technologically proficient you are. The latest research indicates there are approximately 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 32 people. Yet no one really knows how many CCTV cameras are actually in operation in Britain today - and that’s without even mentioning other means of gathering data that are reputed to be more intrusive still, such as mobile phone GPS location and automatic vehicle number plate recognition (ANPR). <br><br> For another, and as the example of CCTV illustrates, it’s not necessarily a question of actively doing something in this respect: of positively contributing free labour to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, for instance, or of refusing to do so. Nor is it merely a case of the separation between work and non-work being harder to maintain nowadays. (Is it work, leisure or play when you are writing a status update on Facebook, posting a photograph, ‘friending’ someone, interacting, detailing your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ regarding the places you eat, the films you watch, the books you read?) As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out some time ago, ‘surplus labor no longer requires labor... one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work’, or anything that even remotely resembles work for that matter, at least as it is most commonly understood: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>In these new conditions, it remains true that all labour involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized ‘machinic enslavement’, such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling – every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequalled point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. ((Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 492)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Transparency?''' <br><br> Before going any further, I should perhaps confess that I am a staunch advocate of open access in the humanities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be raised with regard to making research and data openly available online for free. <br><br> The first point to make in this respect is that, far from revealing any hitherto unknown, hidden or secret knowledge, such discourses of openness and transparency are themselves often not very open or transparent. Staying with the relationship between politics and science, let us take as an example the response of Ed Miliband, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy 'Climategate']controversy, in which climate skeptics alleged that emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that scientists have tampered with the data in order to support the theory that global warming is man-made. Miliband’s answer was to advocate ‘[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame maximum transparency]– let’s get the data out there’, he urged. ‘The people who believe that climate change is happening and is man-made have nothing to fear from transparency’ (Miliband, quoted in Westcott, 2009: 7; cited by Birchall,&nbsp;2011b). Yet, actually, complete transparency is impossible. This is because, as Clare Birchall has shown, there is an aporia at the heart of any claim to transparency. ‘For transparency to be known as transparency, there must be some agency (such as the media [or politicians, or government]) that legitimizes it as transparent, and because there is a legitimizing agent which does not itself have to be transparent, there is a limit to transparency’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). In fact, the more transparency is claimed, the more the violence of the mediating agency of this transparency is concealed, forgotten or obscured. Birchall offers the example of ‘The Daily Telegraph and its exposure of MPs’ expenses during the summer of 2009. While appearing to act on the side of transparency, as a commercial enterprise the paper itself has in the past been subject to secret takeover bids and its former owner, Lord Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstructing justice’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). To paraphrase a question from Lyotard I am going to return to at more length: Who decides what transparency is, and who knows what needs to be transparent (1986: 9)? <br><br> Furthermore, merely making such information and data available to the public online will not in itself necessarily change anything. In fact, such processes have often been adopted precisely as a means of avoiding change. Aaron Swartz provides the example of Watergate: ‘[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency after Watergate], people were upset about politicians receiving millions of dollars from large corporations. But, on the other hand, corporations seem to like paying off politicians. So instead of banning the practice, Congress simply required that politicians keep track of everyone who gives them money and file a report on it for public inspection’ (Swartz, 2010). <br><br> '''Openness?''' <br><br> Much the same can be said for the idea that making research and data accessible to the public supposedly helps to make society more open and free. Take the belief we saw expressed above by Hilary Clinton: that people in the United States have free access to the internet while those in China and Iran do not. Those of us who live and work in the West do indeed have a certain freedom to publish and search online. Yet none of this rhetoric about freedom and transparency prevented the Obama government from condemning Wikileaks in November 2010 as [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security ‘reckless and dangerous’], after it opened up access to hundreds of thousands of classified State Department documents (Gibbs, 2010); nor from putting pressure on Amazon and other companies to stop hosting the whistle-blowing website, an action which had echoes of the dispute over censorship between Google and the Chinese government earlier in 2010. (Significantly, the Obama administration has also recently withdrawn the bulk of funding from the United States open government website www.data.gov, which served as an influential precursor to the previously mentioned [http://www.data.gov.uk www.data.gov.uk] website in the UK.) Furthermore, unless you are a large political or economic actor, or one of the lucky few, the statistics show that what you publish online is unlikely to receive much attention. Just ‘three companies – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – handle 95 percent of all search queries’; while ‘for searches containing the name of a specific political organisation, Yahoo! and Google agree on the top result 90 percent of the time’ (Hindman, 2009: 59, 79). Meanwhile, one company, Google, reportedly has 65&nbsp;% of the world’s search market, ‘72 per cent share of the US search market, and almost 90 per cent in the UK’ – a degree of domination that has led the European Union to investigate Google for abusing its power to favour its own products while suppressing those of rivals (Arthur, 2010: 3). <br><br> But it is not just that Google’s algorithms are ranking some websites on the first page of its results and others on page 42 (which means, in effect, that the latter are rarely going to be accessed, since very few people read beyond the first page of Google’s results). It is that conventional search engines are reaching only an extremely small percentage of the total number of available web pages. Ten years ago Michael K. Bergman was already placing the figure at 0.03%, or [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104 ‘one in 3,000’], with ‘public information on the deep Web’ even then being ‘400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web’. Consequently, while according to Bergman as much as ‘ninety-five per cent of the deep Web’ may be ‘publicly accessible information – not subject to fees or subscriptions’ – by far the vast majority of it is left untouched (Bergman, 2001). And that is before we even begin to address the issue of how the recent rise of the app, and use of the password protected Facebook for search purposes, may today be [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ annihilating the very idea of the openly searchable Web]. <br><br> We can therefore see that it is not enough simply to [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ ‘Free Our Data’], as the Guardian has it; or to operate on the basis that ‘information wants to be free’ (Wark, 2004) (although doing so of course may be a start, especially in an era when notions of the open web and net neutrality are under severe threat). We can put ever more research and data online; we can make it freely available to both other researchers and the public under open access, open data, open science and open government conditions; we can even integrate, index and link it using the appropriate metadata to enable it to be searched and harvested with relative ease. But none of this means this research and data is going to be found. Ideas of this kind ignore the fact that all information and data is ordered, structured, selected and framed in a particular way. This is what metadata is for, after all. Metadata is information or data that describes, links to, or is otherwise used to control, find, select, filter, classify and present other data. One example would be the information provided at the front of a book detailing its publisher, date and place of publication, ISBN number, and so on. However, the term ‘metadata’ is most commonly associated with the language of computing. There, metadata is what enables computers to access files and documents, not just in their own hard drives, but potentially across a range of different platforms, servers, websites and databases. Yet for all its associations with computer science, metadata is never neutral or objective. Although the term ‘data’ comes from the Latin word datum, meaning [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=-1&text=datum ‘something given’], data is not simply objectively out there in the world already provided for us. The specific ways in which metadata is created, organized and presented helps to produce (rather than merely passively reflect) what is classified as data and information – and what is not. <br><br> Clearly, then, it is not just a question of free and open access to the research and data; nor of providing support, education and training on how to understand, interpret, use and apply it effectively, as [http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ Gurstein] has argued (2010). It is also a question of who (and what) makes decisions regarding the data and metadata, and thus gets to exercise control over it, and on what basis such decisions are made. To paraphrase Lyotard once more: who decides what data and metadata is, and who knows what needs to be decided?’ (1986: 9). Who gets to legislate? And who legitimates the legislators (1986: 8)? Will the ‘ruling class’ – top civil servants and consulting firms full of people with MBAs, ‘corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organizations’, including those behind Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, JISC, AHRC, OAI, SPARC, COASP – continue to operate as the class of interpreters, gatekeepers and ‘decision makers,’ not just with regard to having ‘access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made’, but with regard to creating and controlling the data and metadata, too (1986: 14)? <br><br>'''On Data-Intensive Scholarship''' <br><br> If, as demonstrated above, discourses of openness and transparency are themselves not very open or transparent at all, much of the current emphasis on making the research and data open and free is also lacking in self-reflectivity and meaningful critique. We can see this not just in those discourses associated with open access, open data, open science and open government that are explicitly emphasizing the importance of transparency, performativity and efficiency. This lack of criticality is apparent in much of what goes under the name of ‘digital humanities’, too, especially those elements associated with the ‘computational turn’. <br><br> We tend to think of the humanities as being self-reflexive per se, and as frequently asking questions capable of troubling culture and society. Yet after decades when humanities scholarship made active use of a variety of critical theories – Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-colonialist, post-Marxist – it seems somewhat surprising that many advocates of this current turn to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities find it difficult to understand computing and the digital as much more than tools, techniques and resources. As a result, much of the scholarship that is currently occurring under the ‘digital humanities’ agenda is uncritical, naive and at times even banal ([http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities Liu], 2011; [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ Higgen], 2010). <br><br> Witness the current emphasis on making the data not only visible but also visual. Stefanie Posavec’s frequently referred to [http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/literary-organism/ Literary Organism], which visualises the structure of Part One of Kerouac’s ''On the Road'' as a tree, provides one example; those cited earlier courtesy of Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative offer another. Now, there is a long history of critical engagement within the humanities with ideas of the visual, the image, the spectacle, the spectator and so on: not just in critical theory, but also in cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, film and television studies. Such a history of critical engagement stretches back to Guy Debord’s influential 1967 work, ''The Society of the Spectacle'', and beyond. For example, in his introduction to a 1995 book edited with Lynn Cooke, ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'', Peter Wollen writes that an excess of visual display within culture has 'the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images that might best be understood, not simply detached from a real world of things, as Debord implied, but as effacing any trace of the symbolic, condemning the viewer to a world in which we can see everything but understand nothing—allowing us viewer-victims, in Debord’s phrase, only "a random choice of ephemera"’ (1995: 9). It can come as something of a surprise, then, to discover that this humanities tradition in which ideas of the visual are engaged critically appears to have had comparatively little impact on the current enthusiasm for data visualisation that is so prominent an aspect of the turn toward data-intensive scholarship. <br><br> Of course, this (at times explicit) repudiation of criticality could be precisely what makes certain aspects of the digital humanities so seductive for many at the moment. Exponents of the computational turn can be said to be endeavouring to avoid conforming to accepted (and often moralistic) conceptions of politics that have been decided in advance, including those that see it only in terms of power, ideology, race, gender, class, sexuality, ecology, affect etc. Refusing to [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html ‘go through the motions of a critical avant-garde’], to borrow the words of Bruno Latour (2004), they often position themselves as responding to what is perceived as a fundamentally new cultural situation, and to the challenge it represents to our traditional methods of studying culture, by avoiding conventional theoretical manoeuvres and by experimenting with the development of fresh methods and approaches for the humanities instead. <br><br> Manovich, for instance, sees the sheer scale and dynamics of the contemporary new media landscape as presenting the usually accepted means of studying culture that were dominant for so much of the 20th century – the kinds of theories, concepts and methods appropriate to producing close readings of a relatively small number of texts – with a significant practical and conceptual challenge. In the past, ‘[http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories] based on small data sets (for instance, “classical Hollywood cinema”, “Italian Renaissance”, etc.) But how can we track “global digital cultures”, with their billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors’, he asks (Manovich, 2010)? Three years ago Manovich was already describing the ‘numbers of people participating in social networks, sharing media, and creating user-generated content’ as simply ‘astonishing’: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html MySpace, for example,] claims 300 million users. Cyworld, a Korean site similar to MySpace, claims 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of that country's total population (as of 2006) use it. Hi5, a leading social media site in Central America has 100 million users and Facebook, 14 million photo uploads daily. The number of new videos uploaded to YouTube every twenty-four hours (as of July 2006): 65,000. (Manovich in Franklin &amp; Rodriguez’G, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br> The solution Manovich proposes to this ‘data deluge’ is to turn to the very computers, databases, software and vast amounts of born-digital networked cultural content that are causing the problem in the first place, and to use them to help develop new methods and approaches adequate to the task at hand. This is where what he calls Cultural Analytics comes in. [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘The key idea of Cultural Analytics] is the use of computers to automatically analyze cultural artefacts in visual media, extracting large numbers of features that characterize their structure and content’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009); and what is more, to do so not just with regard to the culture of the past, but also with that of the present. To this end, Manovich (not unlike the Google technology company) calls for as much of culture as possible to be made available in external, digital form: [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘not only the exceptional but also the typical]; not only the few cultural sentences spoken by a few "great man" [sic] but the patterns in all cultural sentences spoken by everybody else’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009). <br><br> In a series of posts on his Found History blog, Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, positions such developments in terms of a shift from a concern with theory and ideology to a [http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ concern with methodology] (2008). In this respect there may well be a degree of [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ ‘relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s’] – for those in the US especially – as a result of this move ‘into the space of methodological work’ (Croxall, 2010) and what Scheinfeldt reportedly dubs [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘the post-theoretical age’] (cited in P. Cohen, 2010). The problem, though, is that without such reflexive critical thinking and theories many of those whose work forms part of this computational turn find it difficult to articulate exactly what the point of what they are doing is, as Scheinfeldt readily acknowledges (2010a). <br><br> Take one of the projects mentioned earlier: the attempt by [http://victorianbooks.org Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs] to text-mine all the books published in English in the Victorian age (or at least those digitized by Google). Among other things, this allows Cohen and Gibbs to show that use of the word ‘revolution’ in book titles of the period spiked around [http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ‘the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848’] (D. Cohen, 2010). But what argument are they trying to make with this calculation? What is it we are able to learn as a result of this use of computational power on their part that we did not know already and could not have discovered without it ([http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/ Scheinfeldt], 2008)? <br><br> In an explicit response to Cohen and Gibbs’s project, Scheinfeldt suggests that the problem of theory, or the lack of it, may actually be a question of scale: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It expects something of the scale of humanities scholarship] which I’m not sure is true anymore: that a single scholar—nay, every scholar—working alone will, over the course of his or her lifetime ... make a fundamental theoretical advance to the field. <br><br> Increasingly, this expectation is something peculiar to the humanities. ...it required the work of a generation of mathematicians and observational astronomers, gainfully employed, to enable the eventual “discovery” of Neptune... Since the scientific revolution, most theoretical advances play out over generations, not single careers. (Scheinfeldt, 2010b)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Now, it is absolutely important that we as scholars experiment with the new tools, methods and materials that digital media technologies create and make possible, in order to bring into play new forms of Foucauldian ''dispositifs'', or what Bernard Stiegler calls ''hypomnemata'', or what I am trying to think in terms of [http://garyhall.info media gifts]. I would include in this 'experimentation imperative’ techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science and other related fields, such as information visualisation, data mining and so forth. Nevertheless, there is something troubling about this kind of deferral of critical and self-reflexive theoretical questions to an unknown point in time, still possibly a generation away. After all, the frequent suggestion is that now is not the right time to be making any such decision or judgement, since we cannot yet know how humanists will eventually come to use these tools and data, and thus what data-driven scholarship may or may not turn out to be capable of, critically, politically, theoretically. One of the consequences of this deferral, however, is that it makes it extremely difficult to judge whether this postponement is indeed acting as a responsible, political and ethical opening to the (heterogeneity and incalculability of the) future, including the future of the humanities; or whether it is serving as an alibi for a naive and rather superficial form of scholarship instead ([https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/ Meeks], 2010). A form of scholarship moreover that, in uncritically and un-self-reflexively adopting techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science, can be seen as part of the larger shift in contemporary society which Lyotard associates with the widespread use of computers and databases, and with the exteriorization of knowledge in relation to the ‘knower’. As we have seen, it is a movement away from a concern with ideals, with what is right and just and true, and toward a concern to legitimate power by optimizing the system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. <br><br> All of this raises some rather significant and timely questions for the humanities. Is it merely a coincidence that such a turn toward science, computing and data-intensive research is gaining momentum at a time when the UK government is emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and withdrawing support and funding from the humanities? Or is one of the reasons all this is happening now due to the fact that the humanities, like the sciences themselves, are under pressure from government, business, management, industry and increasingly the media to prove they provide value for money in instrumental, functional, performative terms? Is the interest in computing a strategic decision on the part of some of those in the humanities? As the project of Cohen and Gibbs shows, one can get funding from the likes of Google (D. Cohen, 2010). In fact, in the summer of 2010 [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research’] (P. Cohen, 2010). To what extent is the take-up of practical techniques and approaches from computing science providing some areas of the humanities with a means of defending (and refreshing) themselves in an era of global economic crisis and severe cuts to higher education, through the transformation of their knowledge and learning into quantities of information –- so-called ‘deliverables’? Can we even position the ‘computational turn’ as an event created to justify such a move on the part of certain elements within the humanities ([http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/ Frabetti], 2010)? <br><br> Where does all this leave us as far as this Living Book on open science is concerned? As the argument above hopefully demonstrates, it is clearly not enough just to attempt to reveal or recover the scientific truth about, say, the environment, to counter the disinformation of others involved in the likes of the Climategate controversy. Nor is it enough merely to make the scientific research openly accessible to the public. Equally, it is not satisfactory simply to make the information, data, and associated tools, techniques and resources freely available to those in the humanities, so they can collectively and collaboratively search, mine, map, graph, model, visualize, analyse and interpret it in new ways – including some that may make it less abstract and easier for the majority of those in society to understand and follow – and, in doing so, help bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’. It is not so much that there is a lack of information, or access to the right kind of information, or information presented in the right kind of way to ensure that the message of the scientific research and data comes across effectively and efficiently. It is not even that there is too much information, too much white noise, as ‘Bifo’ et al call it (2009: 141-142). To be sure, as a [http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/reports/display/id=479774 2010 Mintel report] showed – to stay with the example of climate change – most people in the UK already know what is happening to the environment. They are just suffering from Green Fatigue, they are bored with thinking about it and thus enacting a backlash against what they perceive as ‘extreme’ pressure from environmentalist groups. This is perhaps one reason why [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html ‘the number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009’] (Shields, 2010: 30). Yet to argue there is too much information rather risks implying that there is a proper amount of information, and what would that be?<br><br> So we might not want to go along with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they contend that ‘we do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it’. But we might nevertheless agree when they argue that what we actually lack is creation: ‘We lack resistance to the present’ (1994: 108). In this respect, it is not just a case of supplying more scientific research and data; nor of making the research and data that has otherwise been closed, hidden, denied or suppressed openly available for free – by opening the already existing memory and databanks to the people, for example (which is what Lyotard ended by suggesting we do). It is also a case of creating work around the research and data that does not simply go along with the shift in the status and nature of knowledge that is currently taking place. As we have seen, it is a shift toward STEM subjects and away from the humanities; toward a concern with optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms, and away from a concern with questions of what is just and right; and toward an emphasis on openness, freedom and transparency, and away from what is capable of disrupting and disturbing society, and what, in remaining resistant to a culture of measurement and calculation, maintains a much needed element of inaccessibility, inefficiency, delay, error, antagonism, heterogeneity and dissensus within the system. <br><br> Can this Living Book on open science be considered one such a creation? And can this series of Living Books about Life be considered another? Are they instances of a resistance to the present? Or just more white noise? <br><br> <br> (The above is based on a paper presented at the Data Landscapes, AHRC network event, held in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey at the University of Westminster, London, December 15, 2010. An earlier version of some of the material provided above appeared in Hall [2010]) <br><br> '''References''' <br><br> Arthur, C. (2010), ‘Will Brussels Curb Google Guys’, ''The Guardian'', December 6. <br><br> 'Bifo' Berardi, F., Jacquemet, M. and Vitali, G. (2009), ''Ethereal Shadows: Communications and Power in Contemporary Italy''. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. <br><br> Bergman, M. K. (2001), ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’, ''JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing'', vol.7, no.1, August. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104.&nbsp;<br><br> Birchall, C. (2011) 'There's Been Too Much Secrecy in this City": The False Choice Between Secrecy and Transparency in US Politics,' ''Cultural Politics''&nbsp;7(1), March: 133-156.<br><br>Birchall, C (2011b forthcoming) ‘Transparency, Interrupted: Secrets of the Left’, Between Transparency and Secrecy', Annual Review, ''Theory, Culture and Society, ''December.<br><br> Blair, T. (2010), ''A Journey''. London: Hutchinson. <br><br> Clinton, H. (2010), ‘Internet Freedom: The Prepared Text of U.S. of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech, delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., January 21. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full <br><br> Cohen, D. (2010), ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen'', October 4. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Cohen, P. (2010) ‘Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches’, ''The New York Times'', November 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all. <br><br> Croxall, B. (2010) response to Tanner Higgen, ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. September 10. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1988) ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. London: Athlone. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1994), ''What is Philosophy?''. New York: Columbia University Press. <br><br> Fung, A., Graham, M., Weil, D. (2007), ''Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br><br> Frabetti, F. (2010) ‘Digital Again? The Humanities Between the Computational Turn and Originary Technicity’, talk given to the Open Media Group, Coventry School of Art and Design. November 9. http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/. <br><br> Franklin, K. D. and Rodriguez’G, K. (2008) ‘The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics’,''HPC Wire''. July 29. http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html. <br><br> Gibbs, R. (2010), Presidential press secretary, cited in ‘White House condemns WikiLeaks' release’, ''MCNBC.com News'', November 28. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010a), ‘Open Data: Empowering the Empowered or Effective Data Use for Everyone?’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 2. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010b), ‘Open Data (2): Effective Data Use’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 9. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/open-data-2-effective-data-use/ <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2011), ‘Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide’, posting to the nettime mailing list, July, 5. <br><br> Hall, G. (2010), 'We Can Know It For You: The Secret Life of Metadata', ''How We Became Metadata''. London: Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster. <br><br> Higgen, T. (2010) ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. May 25. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Hindman, M. (2009), ''The Myth of Digital Democracy''. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. <br><br> Hoffman, M. (2010), ‘EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites’, ''Electronic Frontier Foundation''. March 16. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement. <br><br> Houghton, J. (2009) ‘Open Access - What are the Economic Benefits?: A Comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark’, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne. http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf. <br><br> Jarvis, J. (2010), ‘Time For Citizens of the Internet to Stand Up’, ''The Guardian: MediaGuardian'', March 29. <br><br> JISC (2009), ‘Press Release: Open Science - the future for research?, posting to the BOAI list, November 16. 2009. <br><br> Kerssens, N. and Dekker A. (2009), ‘Interview with Lev Manovich for Archive 2020’, ''Virtueel_ Platform''. http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/#2595. <br><br> Knouf, N. (2010), ‘The JJPS Extension: Presenting Academic Performance Information’, ''Journal of Journal Performance Studies'', Vol 1, No 1. Available at http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6. Accessed 20 June, 2010. <br><br> Latour, B (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”’, ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 30, Number 2. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html. <br><br> Liu, A. (2011) ‘Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities’. Paper presented at the panel on ‘The History and Future of the Digital Humanities’” Modern Language Association convention, Los Angeles, January 7. http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities. <br><br> Lyotard, J-F. (1986), ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. <br><br> Lyotard, J.-F. (1991) ''The Inhuman: Reflections on Time''. Cambridge: Polity. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2010a) ‘Cultural Analytics Lectures by Manovich in UK (London and Swansea), March 8-9, 2010’, ''Software Studies Initiative''. March 8. http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2011) ‘Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data’,''Lev Manovich'', April 28: http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf. <br><br> Meeks, E. (2010), ‘The Digital Humanities as Imagined Community’, ''Digital Humanities Specialist''. September 14. https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/. <br><br> Mintel report, ‘Energy Efficiency in the Home - UK - July 2010’. <br><br> Murray, S. Choi, S., Hoey, J., Kendall, C., Maskalyk, J., and Palepu, A. (2008), ‘Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software at ''Open Medicine''’, ''Open Medicine'', 2(1): e1–e3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/?tool=pmcentrez http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/pdf/OpenMed-02-e1.pdf??tool=pmcentrez <br><br> Patterson, M. (2009), ‘Article-Level Metrics at PloS – Addition of Usage Data’, ''PLoS: Public Library of Science''. September 16. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/. <br><br> Pubget (2010), ‘[BOAI] PLoS Launches Fast (Open) PDF Access with Pubget’, posted on the BOAI list by Peter Suber, March 8. <br><br> Poynder, R. (2010), ‘Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley: The Impact of Open Notebook Science’, ''Information Today'', September. http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2008), ‘Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010a) ‘Where’s the Beef?: Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010b) response to Dan Cohen, ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen''. October 5. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Shields, R. (2010), ‘Green Fatigue Hits Campaign to Reduce Carbon Footprint’, ''The Independent'', October 10. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html. <br><br> Sterling, B. (2005), ''Shaping Things''. Massachussetts: MIT. <br><br> Stolberg, S. G. (2009), ‘On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone’”, ''The New York Times''. January 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html. <br><br> Swan, A. (2009), ‘Open Access and Open Data’, ''2nd NERC Data Management Workshop'', Oxford. February 17-18. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/. <br><br> Swartz, A. (2010), ‘When is Transparency Useful?’ ''Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought blog'', February 11. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency. <br><br> Vaidhyanathan, S. (2009), ‘The Googlization of Universities’, ''The NEA 2009 Almanac of Higher Education''. http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf <br><br> Wark, M. (2004), ''A Hacker Manifesto''. Harvard: Harvard University Press. <br><br> Westcott, S. (2009) ‘Global Warming: Brits Deny Humans are to Blame,’ ''The Express'', December 7. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame <br><br> The White House (2009), ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open Government’. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ <br><br> Wollen, P. and Cooke, L. eds (1995), ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances''. Seattle: Bay Press.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_science/Introduction&diff=5678Open science/Introduction2014-06-10T11:16:03Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Digitize_Me,_Visualize_Me,_Search_Me Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
= '''White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix)''' =<br />
<br />
= Gary Hall =<br />
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<br><br> <youtube>PH54cp2ggFk</youtube> <br><br> One of the explicit aims of the Living Books About Life series is to provide a&nbsp; point of interrogation and contestation, as well as connection and translation, between the humanities and the sciences (partly to avoid slipping into 'scientism'). Accordingly, this introduction to ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' takes as its starting point the so-called ‘computational turn’ to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities. <br><br> The phrase ‘[http://www.thecomputationalturn.com/ the computational turn]’ has been adopted to refer to the process whereby techniques and methodologies drawn from (in this case) ''computer science'' and related fields – including science visualization, interactive information visualization, image processing, network analysis, statistical data analysis, and the management, manipulation and mining of data – are being used to produce new ways of approaching and understanding texts in the humanities; what is sometimes thought of as ‘the digital humanities’. The concern in the main has been with either digitizing ‘born analog’ humanities texts and artifacts (e.g. making annotated editions of the art and writing of [http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ William Blake] available to scholars and researchers online), or gathering together ‘born digital’ humanities texts and artifacts (videos, websites, games, photography, sound recordings, 3D data), and then taking complex and often extremely large-scale data analysis techniques from computing science and related fields and applying them to these humanities texts and artifacts - to this ‘big data’, as it has been called. Witness Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative’s use of ‘[http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf digital image analysis and new visualization techniques]’ to study ‘20,000 pages of Science and Popular Science magazines… published between 1872-1922, 780 paintings by van Gogh, 4535 covers of Time magazine (1923-2009) and one million manga pages’ (Manovich, 2011), and Dan Cohen and Fred Gibb’s text mining of ‘[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader the 1,681,161 books that were published in English in the UK in the long nineteenth century]’ (Cohen, 2010). <br><br> ''What Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' endeavours to show is that such data-focused transformations in research can be seen as part of a major alteration in the status and nature of knowledge. It is an alteration that, according to the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, has been taking place since at least the 1950s, and involves nothing less than a shift away from a concern with questions of what is right and just, and toward a concern with legitimating power by optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. This shift has significant consequences for our idea of knowledge. Indeed, for Lyotard: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these language whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as ‘knowledge’ statements. (1986: 4)</blockquote> <br />
<br>In particular, ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' suggests that the turn in the humanities toward data-driven scholarship, science visualization, statistical data analysis, etc. can be placed alongside all those discourses that are being put forward at the moment - in both the academy and society - in the name of greater openness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. <br><br> '''Open Access ''' <br><br> The open access movement provides a case in point. Witness [http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf John Houghton’s] 2009 comparison of the benefits of OA for the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, which claims to show that the open access academic publishing model, in which peer reviewed scholarly research and publications are made available for free online to all those who are able to access the Internet, is actually the most cost effective mechanism for scholarly publishing. Others meanwhile have detailed the increases open access publishing enables in the amount of material that can be published, searched and stored, in the number of people who can access it, in the impact of that material, the range of its distribution, and in the speed and ease of reporting and information retrieval. The following announcement, posted on the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) list in March 2010, is fairly typical in this respect: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Today PLoS released Pubget links across its journal sites. Now, when users are browsing thousands of reference citations on PLoS journals they will be able to get to the full text article faster than ever before. <br><br> Specifically, when readers encounter citations to articles as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will also appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. <br><br> On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said: ‘Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.’ (Pubget, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Open Data ''' <br><br> Yet it is not just the research literature that is positioned as being rendered more accessible by scientists. Even the data created in the course of scientific research is promoted as being made freely and openly available for others to use, analyse and build upon.This includes data sets that are too large to be included in any resulting peer-reviewed publications. Known as open data, or data-sharing, this initiative is motivated by the idea that publishing data online on an open basis bestows it with a [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/1/Swan_-_NERC_09.pptx ‘vastly increased utility’]. Digital data sets are said to be ‘easily passed around’; they are seemingly ‘more easily reused’, reanalysed and checked for accuracy and validity; and they supposedly contain more ‘opportunities for educational and commercial exploitation’ (Swan, 2009). <br><br> Interestingly, certain academic publishers are already viewing the linking of their journals to the underlying data as another of the ‘value-added’ services they can offer, to set alongside automatic alerting and sophisticated citation, indexing, searching and linking facilities (and to no doubt help ward off the threat of disintermediation posed by the development of digital technology, which enables academics to take over the means of dissemination and publish their work for and by themselves cheaply and easily). Significantly, a [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx 2009 JISC report] also identified ‘open-ness, predictive science based on massive data volumes and citizen involvement as [all] being important features of tomorrow’s research practice’. <br><br> In a further move in this direction, all Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are now providing a broad range of article-level metrics and indicators relating to usage data on an open basis. No longer withheld as trade secrets, these metrics reveal which articles are attracting the most views, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, coverage in the media, comments, responses, ‘star’ ratings, blog coverage, and so on. PLoS has positioned this programme as enabling science scholars to assess [http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/ ‘research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published’], and they encourage readers to carry out their own analyses of this open data (Patterson, 2009). Yet it is difficult not to perceive such article-level metrics and management tools as also being part of the wider process of transforming knowledge and learning into ‘quantities of information’ (Lyotard, 1986: 4); quantities, furthermore, that are produced more to be exchanged, marketed and sold (1986: 4) – for example, by individual academics to their departments, institutions, funders and governments in the form of indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ (1986: 5). <br><br> '''From Open Science to Open Government ''' <br><br> Such developments around open access and open data are themselves part of the larger trend or phenomenon that is coming to be known as ‘open science’. As Murray et al put it: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Open science is emerging as a collaborative and transparent approach to research. It is the idea that all data (both published and unpublished) should be freely available, and that private interests should not stymie its use by means of copyright, intellectual property rights and patents. It also embraces open access publishing and open source software… (Murray et al, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
One of the most interesting and well known examples of how such open science may work is provided by the Open Notebook Science of the organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. ‘[I]in the interests of openness’, Bradley is making the [http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml ‘details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web']. This ‘includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments’. What is more, he is doing so in ‘real time’, ‘within hours of production, not after the months or years involved in peer review’ (Poynder, 2010). Again, we can see how emphasis is being placed on the amount of research that can be shared, and the speed with which this can be achieved. This openness on Bradley’s part is also positioned as a means of achieving usefulness and impact, as is evident from the very title of one of his Open Notebook Science projects, [http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/ UsefulChem]. <br><br> To be fair, however, such discourses around openness, transparency, efficiency and utility are not confined to the sciences – or even the university, for that matter. There are also wider political initiatives, dubbed ‘Open Government’, or ‘Government 2.0’, with both the Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administrations in the UK making a great display of freeing government information. The Labour government implemented the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000, and then proceeded to launch a [http://www.data.gov.uk website] expressly dedicated to the release of governmental data sets in January 2010. It is a website that the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government continues to make extensive use of. In a similar vein, the [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Guardian] newspaper has campaigned for the UK government to relinquish its copyright on all local, regional and national data collected with taxpayers’ money and to make such data freely and openly available to the public by publishing it online, where it can be collectively and collaboratively scrutinized, searched, mined, mapped, graphed, cross-tabulated, visualized, audited and interpreted using software tools. <br><br> Nor is this phenomenon confined to the UK. In the United States Barack Obama promised throughout his election campaign to make government more open. He followed this up by issuing a memorandum on transparency the very first day after he became President, vowing to make openness one of [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html ‘the touchstones of this presidency’”] (Obama, cited in Stolberg, 2009): ‘[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration] is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (The White House, 2009). <br><br>'''The Politics of Openness''' <br><br> The connection I am making here between the movements for open access, open data, open science and open government is one that has to a certain extent already been pointed to by Michael Gurstein in his reflections on the experience of attending the 2011 conference of the [http://okfn.org/ Open Knowledge Foundation]. For Gurstein: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emerging-data-divide/ the ‘open data/open government’ movement] begins from a profoundly political perspective that government is largely ineffective and inefficient (and possibly corrupt) and that it hides that ineffectiveness and inefficiency (and possible corruption) from public scrutiny through lack of transparency in its operations and particularly in denying to the public access to information (data) about its operations. And further that this access once available would give citizens the means to hold bureaucrats (and their political masters) accountable for their actions. In doing so it would give these self-same citizens a platform on which to undertake (or at least collaborate with) these bureaucrats in certain key and significant activities—planning, analyzing, budgeting that sort of thing. Moreover through the implementation of processes of crowdsourcing this would also provide the bureaucrats with the overwhelming benefits of having access to and input from the knowledge and wisdom of the broader interested public. <br><br> Put in somewhat different terms but with essentially the same meaning—it’s the taxpayer’s money and they have the right to participate in overseeing how it is spent. Having “open” access to government’s data/information gives citizens the tools to exercise that right. (Gurstein, 2011)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Interestingly, for Gurstein, a much clearer understanding is needed than has been displayed by many open data/open government advocates to date of what exactly is meant by openness, and of where arguments in favour of open access, open information and open data are likely to lead us in the not too distant future. With this in mind, we could endeavour to put some flesh on the bones of Gurstein’s sketch of the politics of openness and suggest that, from a liberal perspective, freeing publicly funded and acquired information and data – whether it is gathered directly in the process of census collection, or indirectly as part of other activities (crime, healthcare, transport, schools and accident statistics) – is seen as helping society to perform more efficiently. For liberals, openness is said to play a key role in increasing citizen trust, participation and involvement in democracy, and indeed government, as access to information – such as that needed to intervene in public policy – is no longer restricted either to the state or to those corporations, institutions, organizations and individuals who have sufficient money and power to acquire it for themselves. <br><br> Such liberal beliefs find support in the idea that making information and data freely and transparently available goes along with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states that everyone has the right [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’]. Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, put forward a similar vision when, at the beginning of 2010, she said of her country that ‘[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full We stand for a single internet] where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas’, and against the authoritarian censorship and suppression of free speech and online search facilities like Google in countries such as China and Iran. Clinton declared: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Even in authoritarian countries], information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. <br><br> During his visit to China in November [2009], President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today. (Clinton, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
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This political sentiment was shared by Jeff Jarvis, author of ''What Would Google Do?'', when, in support of Google’s decision to stop self-filtering search results in China, he argued in March 2010 for a bill of rights for cyberspace: ‘[http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/27/a-bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace/ to claim and secure our freedom] to connect, speak, assemble, and act online; to each control our identities and data; to speak our languages; to protect what is public and private; and to assure openness’ (Jarvis, 2010: 4). Yet are Clinton and Jarvis not both guilty here of overlooking (or should that be conveniently forgetting or even denying) the way liberal ideas of freedom and openness (and, indeed, of the human) have long been used in the service of colonialism and neoliberal globalisation? Does freedom for the latter not primarily mean economic freedom, i.e., freedom of the market, freedom of the consumer to choose what to consume – not only in terms of goods, but also lifestyles and ways of being? <br><br> Even if it was before the widespread use of networked computers, it is interesting that ‘fifteen years after the Freedom of Information Act law was passed’ in the US in 1966, ‘the General Accounting Office reported that 82 percent of requests [for information] came from business, nine percent from the press, and only 1 percent from individuals or public interest groups’ (Fung et al, 2007: 27-28). Certainly, in the UK today, the 'truth is that the [UK] FOI Act [2000] isn't used, for the most part, by “the people”’, as Tony Blair acknowledged in his recent memoir. ‘It's used by journalists’ (Blair, 2010) – and by businesses, one might add. In view of this, it is no surprise to find that neoliberals also support the making of government data freely and openly available to businesses and the public. They do so on the grounds that it provides a means of achieving the best possible ‘input/output ratio’ for society (Lyotard, 1986: 54). This way of thinking is of a piece with the emphasis placed by neoliberalism’s audit culture on accountability, transparency, evaluation, measurement and centralised data management: for example, in the context of UK higher education, it is evident in the emphasis placed on measuring the impact of research on society and the economy, teaching standards, contact hours, as well as student drop-out rates, future employment destinations and earning prospects. From this perspective, such openness and communicative transparency is perceived as ensuring greater value for (taxpayers’) money, supposedly helping to eliminate corruption, enabling costs to be distributed more effectively, and increasing choice, innovation, enterprise, creativity, competiveness and accountability. <br><br> Meanwhile, some libertarians have gone so far as to argue that there is no need to make difficult policy decisions about what data and what information it is right to publish online and what to keep secret at all. Instead, we should work toward the kind of situation the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling proposes. In ''Shaping Things'', his non-fiction book on the future of design, Sterling advocates retaining all data and information, ‘the known, the unknown known, and the unknown unknown’, in large archives and databases equipped with the necessary bandwidth, processing speed and storage capacity, and simply devising search tools and metadata that are accurate, fast and powerful enough to find and access it (Sterling, 2005: 47). <br><br> Yet to have participated in the shift away from questions of truth, justice and especially what, in ''The Inhuman'', Lyotard places under the headings of ‘heterogeneity, dissensus, event…the unharmonizable’ (1991: 4), and ''toward'' a concern with performativity, measurement and optimising the relation between input and output, one does not need to be a practicing [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/09/canada-open-data data journalist], or to have actively contributed to the movements for open access, open data, open science or open government. If you are one of the 1.3 million plus people who have purchased a Kindle, and helped the sale of digital books outpace those of hardbacks on Amazon’s US website, then you have already signed a license agreement allowing the online book retailer - but not academic researchers or the public - to collect, store, mine, analyse and extract economic value from data concerning your personal reading habits for free. Similarly, if you are one of the over 687 million worldwide who use the Facebook social network, then you are already voluntarily giving your time and labour for free, not only to help its owners, their investors, and other companies make a reputed $1 billion a year from demographically targeted advertising, but to supply governments and law enforcement agencies such as the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK with profile data relating to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues and peers that they can [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement use in investigations] (Hoffman, 2010). Even if you have done neither, you will in all probability have provided the Google technology company with a host of network data and digital traces it can both monetize and give to the police as a result of having mapped your home, digitized your book, or supplied you with free music videos to enjoy via Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and YouTube, which Google also owns. Lest this shift from open access to Google should seem somewhat farfetched, it is worth recalling that ‘[http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf Google has moved to establish, embellish, or replace many core university services] such as library databases, search interfaces, and e-mail servers’ (Vaidhyanathan, 2009: 65-66); and that academia in fact gave birth to Google, Google’s PageRank algorithm being little more [http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 ‘than an expansion of what is known as citation analysis’] (Knouf, 2010). <br><br> <youtube>R7yfV6RzE30</youtube> <br><br> Obviously, no matter how exciting and enjoyable such activities may be, you don't ''have'' to buy that e-book reader, join that social network or display your personal metrics online, from sexual activity to food consumption, in an attempt to identify patterns in your life – what is called life-tracking or self-tracking. (Although, actually, a lot of people are quite happy to keep contributing to the networked communities reached by Facebook and YouTube, even though they realise they are being used as free labour and that, in the case of the former, much of what they do cannot be accessed by search engines and web browsers. They just see this as being part of the deal and a reasonable trade-off for the services and experiences that are provided by these companies.) Nevertheless, refusing to take part in this transformation of knowledge and learning into quantities of data, and shift ''away'' from critical questions of what is just and right ''toward'' a concern with optimizing the system’s performance is not an option for most of us. It is not something that can be opted out of by simply declining to take out a Tesco Club Card or use cash-points, refusing to look for research using Google Scholar, or committing social networking [http://www.suicidemachine.org/ ‘suicide’] and reading print-on-paper books instead. <br><br> For one thing, the process of capturing data by means not just of the internet, but a myriad of cameras, sensors and robotic devices, is now so ubiquitous and all pervasive it is impossible to avoid being caught up in it, no matter how rich, knowledgeable and technologically proficient you are. The latest research indicates there are approximately 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 32 people. Yet no one really knows how many CCTV cameras are actually in operation in Britain today - and that’s without even mentioning other means of gathering data that are reputed to be more intrusive still, such as mobile phone GPS location and automatic vehicle number plate recognition (ANPR). <br><br> For another, and as the example of CCTV illustrates, it’s not necessarily a question of actively doing something in this respect: of positively contributing free labour to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, for instance, or of refusing to do so. Nor is it merely a case of the separation between work and non-work being harder to maintain nowadays. (Is it work, leisure or play when you are writing a status update on Facebook, posting a photograph, ‘friending’ someone, interacting, detailing your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ regarding the places you eat, the films you watch, the books you read?) As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out some time ago, ‘surplus labor no longer requires labor... one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work’, or anything that even remotely resembles work for that matter, at least as it is most commonly understood: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>In these new conditions, it remains true that all labour involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized ‘machinic enslavement’, such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling – every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequalled point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. ((Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 492)</blockquote> <br />
<br>'''Transparency?''' <br><br> Before going any further, I should perhaps confess that I am a staunch advocate of open access in the humanities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be raised with regard to making research and data openly available online for free. <br><br> The first point to make in this respect is that, far from revealing any hitherto unknown, hidden or secret knowledge, such discourses of openness and transparency are themselves often not very open or transparent. Staying with the relationship between politics and science, let us take as an example the response of Ed Miliband, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy 'Climategate']controversy, in which climate skeptics alleged that emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that scientists have tampered with the data in order to support the theory that global warming is man-made. Miliband’s answer was to advocate ‘[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame maximum transparency]– let’s get the data out there’, he urged. ‘The people who believe that climate change is happening and is man-made have nothing to fear from transparency’ (Miliband, quoted in Westcott, 2009: 7; cited by Birchall,&nbsp;2011b). Yet, actually, complete transparency is impossible. This is because, as Clare Birchall has shown, there is an aporia at the heart of any claim to transparency. ‘For transparency to be known as transparency, there must be some agency (such as the media [or politicians, or government]) that legitimizes it as transparent, and because there is a legitimizing agent which does not itself have to be transparent, there is a limit to transparency’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). In fact, the more transparency is claimed, the more the violence of the mediating agency of this transparency is concealed, forgotten or obscured. Birchall offers the example of ‘The Daily Telegraph and its exposure of MPs’ expenses during the summer of 2009. While appearing to act on the side of transparency, as a commercial enterprise the paper itself has in the past been subject to secret takeover bids and its former owner, Lord Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstructing justice’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). To paraphrase a question from Lyotard I am going to return to at more length: Who decides what transparency is, and who knows what needs to be transparent (1986: 9)? <br><br> Furthermore, merely making such information and data available to the public online will not in itself necessarily change anything. In fact, such processes have often been adopted precisely as a means of avoiding change. Aaron Swartz provides the example of Watergate: ‘[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency after Watergate], people were upset about politicians receiving millions of dollars from large corporations. But, on the other hand, corporations seem to like paying off politicians. So instead of banning the practice, Congress simply required that politicians keep track of everyone who gives them money and file a report on it for public inspection’ (Swartz, 2010). <br><br> '''Openness?''' <br><br> Much the same can be said for the idea that making research and data accessible to the public supposedly helps to make society more open and free. Take the belief we saw expressed above by Hilary Clinton: that people in the United States have free access to the internet while those in China and Iran do not. Those of us who live and work in the West do indeed have a certain freedom to publish and search online. Yet none of this rhetoric about freedom and transparency prevented the Obama government from condemning Wikileaks in November 2010 as [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security ‘reckless and dangerous’], after it opened up access to hundreds of thousands of classified State Department documents (Gibbs, 2010); nor from putting pressure on Amazon and other companies to stop hosting the whistle-blowing website, an action which had echoes of the dispute over censorship between Google and the Chinese government earlier in 2010. (Significantly, the Obama administration has also recently withdrawn the bulk of funding from the United States open government website www.data.gov, which served as an influential precursor to the previously mentioned [http://www.data.gov.uk www.data.gov.uk] website in the UK.) Furthermore, unless you are a large political or economic actor, or one of the lucky few, the statistics show that what you publish online is unlikely to receive much attention. Just ‘three companies – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – handle 95 percent of all search queries’; while ‘for searches containing the name of a specific political organisation, Yahoo! and Google agree on the top result 90 percent of the time’ (Hindman, 2009: 59, 79). Meanwhile, one company, Google, reportedly has 65&nbsp;% of the world’s search market, ‘72 per cent share of the US search market, and almost 90 per cent in the UK’ – a degree of domination that has led the European Union to investigate Google for abusing its power to favour its own products while suppressing those of rivals (Arthur, 2010: 3). <br><br> But it is not just that Google’s algorithms are ranking some websites on the first page of its results and others on page 42 (which means, in effect, that the latter are rarely going to be accessed, since very few people read beyond the first page of Google’s results). It is that conventional search engines are reaching only an extremely small percentage of the total number of available web pages. Ten years ago Michael K. Bergman was already placing the figure at 0.03%, or [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104 ‘one in 3,000’], with ‘public information on the deep Web’ even then being ‘400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web’. Consequently, while according to Bergman as much as ‘ninety-five per cent of the deep Web’ may be ‘publicly accessible information – not subject to fees or subscriptions’ – by far the vast majority of it is left untouched (Bergman, 2001). And that is before we even begin to address the issue of how the recent rise of the app, and use of the password protected Facebook for search purposes, may today be [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ annihilating the very idea of the openly searchable Web]. <br><br> We can therefore see that it is not enough simply to [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ ‘Free Our Data’], as the Guardian has it; or to operate on the basis that ‘information wants to be free’ (Wark, 2004) (although doing so of course may be a start, especially in an era when notions of the open web and net neutrality are under severe threat). We can put ever more research and data online; we can make it freely available to both other researchers and the public under open access, open data, open science and open government conditions; we can even integrate, index and link it using the appropriate metadata to enable it to be searched and harvested with relative ease. But none of this means this research and data is going to be found. Ideas of this kind ignore the fact that all information and data is ordered, structured, selected and framed in a particular way. This is what metadata is for, after all. Metadata is information or data that describes, links to, or is otherwise used to control, find, select, filter, classify and present other data. One example would be the information provided at the front of a book detailing its publisher, date and place of publication, ISBN number, and so on. However, the term ‘metadata’ is most commonly associated with the language of computing. There, metadata is what enables computers to access files and documents, not just in their own hard drives, but potentially across a range of different platforms, servers, websites and databases. Yet for all its associations with computer science, metadata is never neutral or objective. Although the term ‘data’ comes from the Latin word datum, meaning [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=-1&text=datum ‘something given’], data is not simply objectively out there in the world already provided for us. The specific ways in which metadata is created, organized and presented helps to produce (rather than merely passively reflect) what is classified as data and information – and what is not. <br><br> Clearly, then, it is not just a question of free and open access to the research and data; nor of providing support, education and training on how to understand, interpret, use and apply it effectively, as [http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ Gurstein] has argued (2010). It is also a question of who (and what) makes decisions regarding the data and metadata, and thus gets to exercise control over it, and on what basis such decisions are made. To paraphrase Lyotard once more: who decides what data and metadata is, and who knows what needs to be decided?’ (1986: 9). Who gets to legislate? And who legitimates the legislators (1986: 8)? Will the ‘ruling class’ – top civil servants and consulting firms full of people with MBAs, ‘corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organizations’, including those behind Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, JISC, AHRC, OAI, SPARC, COASP – continue to operate as the class of interpreters, gatekeepers and ‘decision makers,’ not just with regard to having ‘access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made’, but with regard to creating and controlling the data and metadata, too (1986: 14)? <br><br>'''On Data-Intensive Scholarship''' <br><br> If, as demonstrated above, discourses of openness and transparency are themselves not very open or transparent at all, much of the current emphasis on making the research and data open and free is also lacking in self-reflectivity and meaningful critique. We can see this not just in those discourses associated with open access, open data, open science and open government that are explicitly emphasizing the importance of transparency, performativity and efficiency. This lack of criticality is apparent in much of what goes under the name of ‘digital humanities’, too, especially those elements associated with the ‘computational turn’. <br><br> We tend to think of the humanities as being self-reflexive per se, and as frequently asking questions capable of troubling culture and society. Yet after decades when humanities scholarship made active use of a variety of critical theories – Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-colonialist, post-Marxist – it seems somewhat surprising that many advocates of this current turn to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities find it difficult to understand computing and the digital as much more than tools, techniques and resources. As a result, much of the scholarship that is currently occurring under the ‘digital humanities’ agenda is uncritical, naive and at times even banal ([http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities Liu], 2011; [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ Higgen], 2010). <br><br> Witness the current emphasis on making the data not only visible but also visual. Stefanie Posavec’s frequently referred to [http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/literary-organism/ Literary Organism], which visualises the structure of Part One of Kerouac’s ''On the Road'' as a tree, provides one example; those cited earlier courtesy of Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative offer another. Now, there is a long history of critical engagement within the humanities with ideas of the visual, the image, the spectacle, the spectator and so on: not just in critical theory, but also in cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, film and television studies. Such a history of critical engagement stretches back to Guy Debord’s influential 1967 work, ''The Society of the Spectacle'', and beyond. For example, in his introduction to a 1995 book edited with Lynn Cooke, ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'', Peter Wollen writes that an excess of visual display within culture has 'the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images that might best be understood, not simply detached from a real world of things, as Debord implied, but as effacing any trace of the symbolic, condemning the viewer to a world in which we can see everything but understand nothing—allowing us viewer-victims, in Debord’s phrase, only "a random choice of ephemera"’ (1995: 9). It can come as something of a surprise, then, to discover that this humanities tradition in which ideas of the visual are engaged critically appears to have had comparatively little impact on the current enthusiasm for data visualisation that is so prominent an aspect of the turn toward data-intensive scholarship. <br><br> Of course, this (at times explicit) repudiation of criticality could be precisely what makes certain aspects of the digital humanities so seductive for many at the moment. Exponents of the computational turn can be said to be endeavouring to avoid conforming to accepted (and often moralistic) conceptions of politics that have been decided in advance, including those that see it only in terms of power, ideology, race, gender, class, sexuality, ecology, affect etc. Refusing to [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html ‘go through the motions of a critical avant-garde’], to borrow the words of Bruno Latour (2004), they often position themselves as responding to what is perceived as a fundamentally new cultural situation, and to the challenge it represents to our traditional methods of studying culture, by avoiding conventional theoretical manoeuvres and by experimenting with the development of fresh methods and approaches for the humanities instead. <br><br> Manovich, for instance, sees the sheer scale and dynamics of the contemporary new media landscape as presenting the usually accepted means of studying culture that were dominant for so much of the 20th century – the kinds of theories, concepts and methods appropriate to producing close readings of a relatively small number of texts – with a significant practical and conceptual challenge. In the past, ‘[http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories] based on small data sets (for instance, “classical Hollywood cinema”, “Italian Renaissance”, etc.) But how can we track “global digital cultures”, with their billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors’, he asks (Manovich, 2010)? Three years ago Manovich was already describing the ‘numbers of people participating in social networks, sharing media, and creating user-generated content’ as simply ‘astonishing’: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html MySpace, for example,] claims 300 million users. Cyworld, a Korean site similar to MySpace, claims 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of that country's total population (as of 2006) use it. Hi5, a leading social media site in Central America has 100 million users and Facebook, 14 million photo uploads daily. The number of new videos uploaded to YouTube every twenty-four hours (as of July 2006): 65,000. (Manovich in Franklin &amp; Rodriguez’G, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br> The solution Manovich proposes to this ‘data deluge’ is to turn to the very computers, databases, software and vast amounts of born-digital networked cultural content that are causing the problem in the first place, and to use them to help develop new methods and approaches adequate to the task at hand. This is where what he calls Cultural Analytics comes in. [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘The key idea of Cultural Analytics] is the use of computers to automatically analyze cultural artefacts in visual media, extracting large numbers of features that characterize their structure and content’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009); and what is more, to do so not just with regard to the culture of the past, but also with that of the present. To this end, Manovich (not unlike the Google technology company) calls for as much of culture as possible to be made available in external, digital form: [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘not only the exceptional but also the typical]; not only the few cultural sentences spoken by a few "great man" [sic] but the patterns in all cultural sentences spoken by everybody else’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009). <br><br> In a series of posts on his Found History blog, Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, positions such developments in terms of a shift from a concern with theory and ideology to a [http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ concern with methodology] (2008). In this respect there may well be a degree of [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ ‘relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s’] – for those in the US especially – as a result of this move ‘into the space of methodological work’ (Croxall, 2010) and what Scheinfeldt reportedly dubs [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘the post-theoretical age’] (cited in P. Cohen, 2010). The problem, though, is that without such reflexive critical thinking and theories many of those whose work forms part of this computational turn find it difficult to articulate exactly what the point of what they are doing is, as Scheinfeldt readily acknowledges (2010a). <br><br> Take one of the projects mentioned earlier: the attempt by [http://victorianbooks.org Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs] to text-mine all the books published in English in the Victorian age (or at least those digitized by Google). Among other things, this allows Cohen and Gibbs to show that use of the word ‘revolution’ in book titles of the period spiked around [http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ‘the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848’] (D. Cohen, 2010). But what argument are they trying to make with this calculation? What is it we are able to learn as a result of this use of computational power on their part that we did not know already and could not have discovered without it ([http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/ Scheinfeldt], 2008)? <br><br> In an explicit response to Cohen and Gibbs’s project, Scheinfeldt suggests that the problem of theory, or the lack of it, may actually be a question of scale: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It expects something of the scale of humanities scholarship] which I’m not sure is true anymore: that a single scholar—nay, every scholar—working alone will, over the course of his or her lifetime ... make a fundamental theoretical advance to the field. <br><br> Increasingly, this expectation is something peculiar to the humanities. ...it required the work of a generation of mathematicians and observational astronomers, gainfully employed, to enable the eventual “discovery” of Neptune... Since the scientific revolution, most theoretical advances play out over generations, not single careers. (Scheinfeldt, 2010b)</blockquote> <br />
<br>Now, it is absolutely important that we as scholars experiment with the new tools, methods and materials that digital media technologies create and make possible, in order to bring into play new forms of Foucauldian ''dispositifs'', or what Bernard Stiegler calls ''hypomnemata'', or what I am trying to think in terms of [http://garyhall.info media gifts]. I would include in this 'experimentation imperative’ techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science and other related fields, such as information visualisation, data mining and so forth. Nevertheless, there is something troubling about this kind of deferral of critical and self-reflexive theoretical questions to an unknown point in time, still possibly a generation away. After all, the frequent suggestion is that now is not the right time to be making any such decision or judgement, since we cannot yet know how humanists will eventually come to use these tools and data, and thus what data-driven scholarship may or may not turn out to be capable of, critically, politically, theoretically. One of the consequences of this deferral, however, is that it makes it extremely difficult to judge whether this postponement is indeed acting as a responsible, political and ethical opening to the (heterogeneity and incalculability of the) future, including the future of the humanities; or whether it is serving as an alibi for a naive and rather superficial form of scholarship instead ([https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/ Meeks], 2010). A form of scholarship moreover that, in uncritically and un-self-reflexively adopting techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science, can be seen as part of the larger shift in contemporary society which Lyotard associates with the widespread use of computers and databases, and with the exteriorization of knowledge in relation to the ‘knower’. As we have seen, it is a movement away from a concern with ideals, with what is right and just and true, and toward a concern to legitimate power by optimizing the system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. <br><br> All of this raises some rather significant and timely questions for the humanities. Is it merely a coincidence that such a turn toward science, computing and data-intensive research is gaining momentum at a time when the UK government is emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and withdrawing support and funding from the humanities? Or is one of the reasons all this is happening now due to the fact that the humanities, like the sciences themselves, are under pressure from government, business, management, industry and increasingly the media to prove they provide value for money in instrumental, functional, performative terms? Is the interest in computing a strategic decision on the part of some of those in the humanities? As the project of Cohen and Gibbs shows, one can get funding from the likes of Google (D. Cohen, 2010). In fact, in the summer of 2010 [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research’] (P. Cohen, 2010). To what extent is the take-up of practical techniques and approaches from computing science providing some areas of the humanities with a means of defending (and refreshing) themselves in an era of global economic crisis and severe cuts to higher education, through the transformation of their knowledge and learning into quantities of information –- so-called ‘deliverables’? Can we even position the ‘computational turn’ as an event created to justify such a move on the part of certain elements within the humanities ([http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/ Frabetti], 2010)? <br><br> Where does all this leave us as far as this Living Book on open science is concerned? As the argument above hopefully demonstrates, it is clearly not enough just to attempt to reveal or recover the scientific truth about, say, the environment, to counter the disinformation of others involved in the likes of the Climategate controversy. Nor is it enough merely to make the scientific research openly accessible to the public. Equally, it is not satisfactory simply to make the information, data, and associated tools, techniques and resources freely available to those in the humanities, so they can collectively and collaboratively search, mine, map, graph, model, visualize, analyse and interpret it in new ways – including some that may make it less abstract and easier for the majority of those in society to understand and follow – and, in doing so, help bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’. It is not so much that there is a lack of information, or access to the right kind of information, or information presented in the right kind of way to ensure that the message of the scientific research and data comes across effectively and efficiently. It is not even that there is too much information, too much white noise, as ‘Bifo’ et al call it (2009: 141-142). To be sure, as a [http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/reports/display/id=479774 2010 Mintel report] showed – to stay with the example of climate change – most people in the UK already know what is happening to the environment. They are just suffering from Green Fatigue, they are bored with thinking about it and thus enacting a backlash against what they perceive as ‘extreme’ pressure from environmentalist groups. This is perhaps one reason why [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html ‘the number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009’] (Shields, 2010: 30). Yet to argue there is too much information rather risks implying that there is a proper amount of information, and what would that be?<br><br> So we might not want to go along with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they contend that ‘we do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it’. But we might nevertheless agree when they argue that what we actually lack is creation: ‘We lack resistance to the present’ (1994: 108). In this respect, it is not just a case of supplying more scientific research and data; nor of making the research and data that has otherwise been closed, hidden, denied or suppressed openly available for free – by opening the already existing memory and databanks to the people, for example (which is what Lyotard ended by suggesting we do). It is also a case of creating work around the research and data that does not simply go along with the shift in the status and nature of knowledge that is currently taking place. As we have seen, it is a shift toward STEM subjects and away from the humanities; toward a concern with optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms, and away from a concern with questions of what is just and right; and toward an emphasis on openness, freedom and transparency, and away from what is capable of disrupting and disturbing society, and what, in remaining resistant to a culture of measurement and calculation, maintains a much needed element of inaccessibility, inefficiency, delay, error, antagonism, heterogeneity and dissensus within the system. <br><br> Can this Living Book on open science be considered one such a creation? And can this series of Living Books about Life be considered another? Are they instances of a resistance to the present? Or just more white noise? <br><br> <br> (The above is based on a paper presented at the Data Landscapes, AHRC network event, held in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey at the University of Westminster, London, December 15, 2010. An earlier version of some of the material provided above appeared in Hall [2010]) <br><br> '''References''' <br><br> Arthur, C. (2010), ‘Will Brussels Curb Google Guys’, ''The Guardian'', December 6. <br><br> 'Bifo' Berardi, F., Jacquemet, M. and Vitali, G. (2009), ''Ethereal Shadows: Communications and Power in Contemporary Italy''. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. <br><br> Bergman, M. K. (2001), ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’, ''JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing'', vol.7, no.1, August. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104.&nbsp;<br><br> Birchall, C. (2011) 'There's Been Too Much Secrecy in this City": The False Choice Between Secrecy and Transparency in US Politics,' ''Cultural Politics''&nbsp;7(1), March: 133-156.<br><br>Birchall, C (2011b forthcoming) ‘Transparency, Interrupted: Secrets of the Left’, Between Transparency and Secrecy', Annual Review, ''Theory, Culture and Society, ''December.<br><br> Blair, T. (2010), ''A Journey''. London: Hutchinson. <br><br> Clinton, H. (2010), ‘Internet Freedom: The Prepared Text of U.S. of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech, delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., January 21. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full <br><br> Cohen, D. (2010), ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen'', October 4. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Cohen, P. (2010) ‘Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches’, ''The New York Times'', November 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all. <br><br> Croxall, B. (2010) response to Tanner Higgen, ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. September 10. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1988) ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. London: Athlone. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1994), ''What is Philosophy?''. New York: Columbia University Press. <br><br> Fung, A., Graham, M., Weil, D. (2007), ''Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br><br> Frabetti, F. (2010) ‘Digital Again? The Humanities Between the Computational Turn and Originary Technicity’, talk given to the Open Media Group, Coventry School of Art and Design. November 9. http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/. <br><br> Franklin, K. D. and Rodriguez’G, K. (2008) ‘The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics’,''HPC Wire''. July 29. http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html. <br><br> Gibbs, R. (2010), Presidential press secretary, cited in ‘White House condemns WikiLeaks' release’, ''MCNBC.com News'', November 28. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010a), ‘Open Data: Empowering the Empowered or Effective Data Use for Everyone?’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 2. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010b), ‘Open Data (2): Effective Data Use’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 9. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/open-data-2-effective-data-use/ <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2011), ‘Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide’, posting to the nettime mailing list, July, 5. <br><br> Hall, G. (2010), 'We Can Know It For You: The Secret Life of Metadata', ''How We Became Metadata''. London: Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster. <br><br> Higgen, T. (2010) ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. May 25. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Hindman, M. (2009), ''The Myth of Digital Democracy''. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. <br><br> Hoffman, M. (2010), ‘EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites’, ''Electronic Frontier Foundation''. March 16. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement. <br><br> Houghton, J. (2009) ‘Open Access - What are the Economic Benefits?: A Comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark’, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne. http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf. <br><br> Jarvis, J. (2010), ‘Time For Citizens of the Internet to Stand Up’, ''The Guardian: MediaGuardian'', March 29. <br><br> JISC (2009), ‘Press Release: Open Science - the future for research?, posting to the BOAI list, November 16. 2009. <br><br> Kerssens, N. and Dekker A. (2009), ‘Interview with Lev Manovich for Archive 2020’, ''Virtueel_ Platform''. http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/#2595. <br><br> Knouf, N. (2010), ‘The JJPS Extension: Presenting Academic Performance Information’, ''Journal of Journal Performance Studies'', Vol 1, No 1. Available at http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6. Accessed 20 June, 2010. <br><br> Latour, B (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”’, ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 30, Number 2. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html. <br><br> Liu, A. (2011) ‘Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities’. Paper presented at the panel on ‘The History and Future of the Digital Humanities’” Modern Language Association convention, Los Angeles, January 7. http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities. <br><br> Lyotard, J-F. (1986), ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. <br><br> Lyotard, J.-F. (1991) ''The Inhuman: Reflections on Time''. Cambridge: Polity. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2010a) ‘Cultural Analytics Lectures by Manovich in UK (London and Swansea), March 8-9, 2010’, ''Software Studies Initiative''. March 8. http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2011) ‘Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data’,''Lev Manovich'', April 28: http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf. <br><br> Meeks, E. (2010), ‘The Digital Humanities as Imagined Community’, ''Digital Humanities Specialist''. September 14. https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/. <br><br> Mintel report, ‘Energy Efficiency in the Home - UK - July 2010’. <br><br> Murray, S. Choi, S., Hoey, J., Kendall, C., Maskalyk, J., and Palepu, A. (2008), ‘Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software at ''Open Medicine''’, ''Open Medicine'', 2(1): e1–e3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/?tool=pmcentrez http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/pdf/OpenMed-02-e1.pdf??tool=pmcentrez <br><br> Patterson, M. (2009), ‘Article-Level Metrics at PloS – Addition of Usage Data’, ''PLoS: Public Library of Science''. September 16. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/. <br><br> Pubget (2010), ‘[BOAI] PLoS Launches Fast (Open) PDF Access with Pubget’, posted on the BOAI list by Peter Suber, March 8. <br><br> Poynder, R. (2010), ‘Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley: The Impact of Open Notebook Science’, ''Information Today'', September. http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2008), ‘Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010a) ‘Where’s the Beef?: Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010b) response to Dan Cohen, ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen''. October 5. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Shields, R. (2010), ‘Green Fatigue Hits Campaign to Reduce Carbon Footprint’, ''The Independent'', October 10. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html. <br><br> Sterling, B. (2005), ''Shaping Things''. Massachussetts: MIT. <br><br> Stolberg, S. G. (2009), ‘On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone’”, ''The New York Times''. January 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html. <br><br> Swan, A. (2009), ‘Open Access and Open Data’, ''2nd NERC Data Management Workshop'', Oxford. February 17-18. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/. <br><br> Swartz, A. (2010), ‘When is Transparency Useful?’ ''Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought blog'', February 11. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency. <br><br> Vaidhyanathan, S. (2009), ‘The Googlization of Universities’, ''The NEA 2009 Almanac of Higher Education''. http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf <br><br> Wark, M. (2004), ''A Hacker Manifesto''. Harvard: Harvard University Press. <br><br> Westcott, S. (2009) ‘Global Warming: Brits Deny Humans are to Blame,’ ''The Express'', December 7. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame <br><br> The White House (2009), ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open Government’. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ <br><br> Wollen, P. and Cooke, L. eds (1995), ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances''. Seattle: Bay Press.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_science/Introduction&diff=5677Open science/Introduction2014-06-10T11:01:48Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Digitize_Me,_Visualize_Me,_Search_Me Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
= '''White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix)''' =<br />
<br />
= Gary Hall =<br />
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<br><br> <youtube>PH54cp2ggFk</youtube> <br><br> <br />
One of the explicit aims of the Living Books About Life series is to provide a&nbsp; point of interrogation and contestation, as well as connection and translation, between the humanities and the sciences (partly to avoid slipping into 'scientism'). Accordingly, this introduction to ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' takes as its starting point the so-called ‘computational turn’ to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities. <br><br> The phrase ‘[http://www.thecomputationalturn.com/ the computational turn]’ has been adopted to refer to the process whereby techniques and methodologies drawn from (in this case) ''computer science'' and related fields – including science visualization, interactive information visualization, image processing, network analysis, statistical data analysis, and the management, manipulation and mining of data – are being used to produce new ways of approaching and understanding texts in the humanities; what is sometimes thought of as ‘the digital humanities’. The concern in the main has been with either digitizing ‘born analog’ humanities texts and artifacts (e.g. making annotated editions of the art and writing of [http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ William Blake] available to scholars and researchers online), or gathering together ‘born digital’ humanities texts and artifacts (videos, websites, games, photography, sound recordings, 3D data), and then taking complex and often extremely large-scale data analysis techniques from computing science and related fields and applying them to these humanities texts and artifacts - to this ‘big data’, as it has been called. Witness Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative’s use of ‘[http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf digital image analysis and new visualization techniques]’ to study ‘20,000 pages of Science and Popular Science magazines… published between 1872-1922, 780 paintings by van Gogh, 4535 covers of Time magazine (1923-2009) and one million manga pages’ (Manovich, 2011), and Dan Cohen and Fred Gibb’s text mining of ‘[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader the 1,681,161 books that were published in English in the UK in the long nineteenth century]’ (Cohen, 2010). <br><br> ''What Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' endeavours to show is that such data-focused transformations in research can be seen as part of a major alteration in the status and nature of knowledge. It is an alteration that, according to the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, has been taking place since at least the 1950s, and involves nothing less than a shift away from a concern with questions of what is right and just, and toward a concern with legitimating power by optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. This shift has significant consequences for our idea of knowledge. Indeed, for Lyotard: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these language whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as ‘knowledge’ statements. (1986: 4)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> In particular, ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' suggests that the turn in the humanities toward data-driven scholarship, science visualization, statistical data analysis, etc. can be placed alongside all those discourses that are being put forward at the moment - in both the academy and society - in the name of greater openness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. <br><br> <br><br> '''Open Access ''' <br><br> The open access movement provides a case in point. Witness [http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf John Houghton’s] 2009 comparison of the benefits of OA for the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, which claims to show that the open access academic publishing model, in which peer reviewed scholarly research and publications are made available for free online to all those who are able to access the Internet, is actually the most cost effective mechanism for scholarly publishing. Others meanwhile have detailed the increases open access publishing enables in the amount of material that can be published, searched and stored, in the number of people who can access it, in the impact of that material, the range of its distribution, and in the speed and ease of reporting and information retrieval. The following announcement, posted on the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) list in March 2010, is fairly typical in this respect: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Today PLoS released Pubget links across its journal sites. Now, when users are browsing thousands of reference citations on PLoS journals they will be able to get to the full text article faster than ever before. <br><br> Specifically, when readers encounter citations to articles as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will also appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. <br><br> On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said: ‘Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.’ (Pubget, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> '''Open Data ''' <br><br> Yet it is not just the research literature that is positioned as being rendered more accessible by scientists. Even the data created in the course of scientific research is promoted as being made freely and openly available for others to use, analyse and build upon.This includes data sets that are too large to be included in any resulting peer-reviewed publications. Known as open data, or data-sharing, this initiative is motivated by the idea that publishing data online on an open basis bestows it with a [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/1/Swan_-_NERC_09.pptx ‘vastly increased utility’]. Digital data sets are said to be ‘easily passed around’; they are seemingly ‘more easily reused’, reanalysed and checked for accuracy and validity; and they supposedly contain more ‘opportunities for educational and commercial exploitation’ (Swan, 2009). <br><br> Interestingly, certain academic publishers are already viewing the linking of their journals to the underlying data as another of the ‘value-added’ services they can offer, to set alongside automatic alerting and sophisticated citation, indexing, searching and linking facilities (and to no doubt help ward off the threat of disintermediation posed by the development of digital technology, which enables academics to take over the means of dissemination and publish their work for and by themselves cheaply and easily). Significantly, a [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx 2009 JISC report] also identified ‘open-ness, predictive science based on massive data volumes and citizen involvement as [all] being important features of tomorrow’s research practice’. <br><br> In a further move in this direction, all Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are now providing a broad range of article-level metrics and indicators relating to usage data on an open basis. No longer withheld as trade secrets, these metrics reveal which articles are attracting the most views, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, coverage in the media, comments, responses, ‘star’ ratings, blog coverage, and so on. PLoS has positioned this programme as enabling science scholars to assess [http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/ ‘research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published’], and they encourage readers to carry out their own analyses of this open data (Patterson, 2009). Yet it is difficult not to perceive such article-level metrics and management tools as also being part of the wider process of transforming knowledge and learning into ‘quantities of information’ (Lyotard, 1986: 4); quantities, furthermore, that are produced more to be exchanged, marketed and sold (1986: 4) – for example, by individual academics to their departments, institutions, funders and governments in the form of indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ (1986: 5). <br><br> <br><br> '''From Open Science to Open Government ''' <br><br> Such developments around open access and open data are themselves part of the larger trend or phenomenon that is coming to be known as ‘open science’. As Murray et al put it: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Open science is emerging as a collaborative and transparent approach to research. It is the idea that all data (both published and unpublished) should be freely available, and that private interests should not stymie its use by means of copyright, intellectual property rights and patents. It also embraces open access publishing and open source software… (Murray et al, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> One of the most interesting and well known examples of how such open science may work is provided by the Open Notebook Science of the organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. ‘[I]in the interests of openness’, Bradley is making the [http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml ‘details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web']. This ‘includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments’. What is more, he is doing so in ‘real time’, ‘within hours of production, not after the months or years involved in peer review’ (Poynder, 2010). Again, we can see how emphasis is being placed on the amount of research that can be shared, and the speed with which this can be achieved. This openness on Bradley’s part is also positioned as a means of achieving usefulness and impact, as is evident from the very title of one of his Open Notebook Science projects, [http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/ UsefulChem]. <br><br> To be fair, however, such discourses around openness, transparency, efficiency and utility are not confined to the sciences – or even the university, for that matter. There are also wider political initiatives, dubbed ‘Open Government’, or ‘Government 2.0’, with both the Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administrations in the UK making a great display of freeing government information. The Labour government implemented the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000, and then proceeded to launch a [http://www.data.gov.uk website] expressly dedicated to the release of governmental data sets in January 2010. It is a website that the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government continues to make extensive use of. In a similar vein, the [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Guardian] newspaper has campaigned for the UK government to relinquish its copyright on all local, regional and national data collected with taxpayers’ money and to make such data freely and openly available to the public by publishing it online, where it can be collectively and collaboratively scrutinized, searched, mined, mapped, graphed, cross-tabulated, visualized, audited and interpreted using software tools. <br><br> Nor is this phenomenon confined to the UK. In the United States Barack Obama promised throughout his election campaign to make government more open. He followed this up by issuing a memorandum on transparency the very first day after he became President, vowing to make openness one of [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html ‘the touchstones of this presidency’”] (Obama, cited in Stolberg, 2009): ‘[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration] is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (The White House, 2009). <br><br><br> '''The Politics of Openness''' <br><br> The connection I am making here between the movements for open access, open data, open science and open government is one that has to a certain extent already been pointed to by Michael Gurstein in his reflections on the experience of attending the 2011 conference of the [http://okfn.org/ Open Knowledge Foundation]. For Gurstein: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emerging-data-divide/ the ‘open data/open government’ movement] begins from a profoundly political perspective that government is largely ineffective and inefficient (and possibly corrupt) and that it hides that ineffectiveness and inefficiency (and possible corruption) from public scrutiny through lack of transparency in its operations and particularly in denying to the public access to information (data) about its operations. And further that this access once available would give citizens the means to hold bureaucrats (and their political masters) accountable for their actions. In doing so it would give these self-same citizens a platform on which to undertake (or at least collaborate with) these bureaucrats in certain key and significant activities—planning, analyzing, budgeting that sort of thing. Moreover through the implementation of processes of crowdsourcing this would also provide the bureaucrats with the overwhelming benefits of having access to and input from the knowledge and wisdom of the broader interested public. <br><br> Put in somewhat different terms but with essentially the same meaning—it’s the taxpayer’s money and they have the right to participate in overseeing how it is spent. Having “open” access to government’s data/information gives citizens the tools to exercise that right. (Gurstein, 2011)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> Interestingly, for Gurstein, a much clearer understanding is needed than has been displayed by many open data/open government advocates to date of what exactly is meant by openness, and of where arguments in favour of open access, open information and open data are likely to lead us in the not too distant future. With this in mind, we could endeavour to put some flesh on the bones of Gurstein’s sketch of the politics of openness and suggest that, from a liberal perspective, freeing publicly funded and acquired information and data – whether it is gathered directly in the process of census collection, or indirectly as part of other activities (crime, healthcare, transport, schools and accident statistics) – is seen as helping society to perform more efficiently. For liberals, openness is said to play a key role in increasing citizen trust, participation and involvement in democracy, and indeed government, as access to information – such as that needed to intervene in public policy – is no longer restricted either to the state or to those corporations, institutions, organizations and individuals who have sufficient money and power to acquire it for themselves. <br><br> Such liberal beliefs find support in the idea that making information and data freely and transparently available goes along with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states that everyone has the right [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’]. Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, put forward a similar vision when, at the beginning of 2010, she said of her country that ‘[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full We stand for a single internet] where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas’, and against the authoritarian censorship and suppression of free speech and online search facilities like Google in countries such as China and Iran. Clinton declared: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Even in authoritarian countries], information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. <br><br> During his visit to China in November [2009], President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today. (Clinton, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br><br />
This political sentiment was shared by Jeff Jarvis, author of ''What Would Google Do?'', when, in support of Google’s decision to stop self-filtering search results in China, he argued in March 2010 for a bill of rights for cyberspace: ‘[http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/27/a-bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace/ to claim and secure our freedom] to connect, speak, assemble, and act online; to each control our identities and data; to speak our languages; to protect what is public and private; and to assure openness’ (Jarvis, 2010: 4). Yet are Clinton and Jarvis not both guilty here of overlooking (or should that be conveniently forgetting or even denying) the way liberal ideas of freedom and openness (and, indeed, of the human) have long been used in the service of colonialism and neoliberal globalisation? Does freedom for the latter not primarily mean economic freedom, i.e., freedom of the market, freedom of the consumer to choose what to consume – not only in terms of goods, but also lifestyles and ways of being? <br><br> Even if it was before the widespread use of networked computers, it is interesting that ‘fifteen years after the Freedom of Information Act law was passed’ in the US in 1966, ‘the General Accounting Office reported that 82 percent of requests [for information] came from business, nine percent from the press, and only 1 percent from individuals or public interest groups’ (Fung et al, 2007: 27-28). Certainly, in the UK today, the 'truth is that the [UK] FOI Act [2000] isn't used, for the most part, by “the people”’, as Tony Blair acknowledged in his recent memoir. ‘It's used by journalists’ (Blair, 2010) – and by businesses, one might add. In view of this, it is no surprise to find that neoliberals also support the making of government data freely and openly available to businesses and the public. They do so on the grounds that it provides a means of achieving the best possible ‘input/output ratio’ for society (Lyotard, 1986: 54). This way of thinking is of a piece with the emphasis placed by neoliberalism’s audit culture on accountability, transparency, evaluation, measurement and centralised data management: for example, in the context of UK higher education, it is evident in the emphasis placed on measuring the impact of research on society and the economy, teaching standards, contact hours, as well as student drop-out rates, future employment destinations and earning prospects. From this perspective, such openness and communicative transparency is perceived as ensuring greater value for (taxpayers’) money, supposedly helping to eliminate corruption, enabling costs to be distributed more effectively, and increasing choice, innovation, enterprise, creativity, competiveness and accountability. <br><br> Meanwhile, some libertarians have gone so far as to argue that there is no need to make difficult policy decisions about what data and what information it is right to publish online and what to keep secret at all. Instead, we should work toward the kind of situation the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling proposes. In ''Shaping Things'', his non-fiction book on the future of design, Sterling advocates retaining all data and information, ‘the known, the unknown known, and the unknown unknown’, in large archives and databases equipped with the necessary bandwidth, processing speed and storage capacity, and simply devising search tools and metadata that are accurate, fast and powerful enough to find and access it (Sterling, 2005: 47). <br><br> Yet to have participated in the shift away from questions of truth, justice and especially what, in ''The Inhuman'', Lyotard places under the headings of ‘heterogeneity, dissensus, event…the unharmonizable’ (1991: 4), and ''toward'' a concern with performativity, measurement and optimising the relation between input and output, one does not need to be a practicing [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/09/canada-open-data data journalist], or to have actively contributed to the movements for open access, open data, open science or open government. If you are one of the 1.3 million plus people who have purchased a Kindle, and helped the sale of digital books outpace those of hardbacks on Amazon’s US website, then you have already signed a license agreement allowing the online book retailer - but not academic researchers or the public - to collect, store, mine, analyse and extract economic value from data concerning your personal reading habits for free. Similarly, if you are one of the over 687 million worldwide who use the Facebook social network, then you are already voluntarily giving your time and labour for free, not only to help its owners, their investors, and other companies make a reputed $1 billion a year from demographically targeted advertising, but to supply governments and law enforcement agencies such as the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK with profile data relating to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues and peers that they can [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement use in investigations] (Hoffman, 2010). Even if you have done neither, you will in all probability have provided the Google technology company with a host of network data and digital traces it can both monetize and give to the police as a result of having mapped your home, digitized your book, or supplied you with free music videos to enjoy via Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and YouTube, which Google also owns. Lest this shift from open access to Google should seem somewhat farfetched, it is worth recalling that ‘[http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf Google has moved to establish, embellish, or replace many core university services] such as library databases, search interfaces, and e-mail servers’ (Vaidhyanathan, 2009: 65-66); and that academia in fact gave birth to Google, Google’s PageRank algorithm being little more [http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 ‘than an expansion of what is known as citation analysis’] (Knouf, 2010). <br><br> <youtube>R7yfV6RzE30</youtube> <br><br><br />
Obviously, no matter how exciting and enjoyable such activities may be, you don't ''have'' to buy that e-book reader, join that social network or display your personal metrics online, from sexual activity to food consumption, in an attempt to identify patterns in your life – what is called life-tracking or self-tracking. (Although, actually, a lot of people are quite happy to keep contributing to the networked communities reached by Facebook and YouTube, even though they realise they are being used as free labour and that, in the case of the former, much of what they do cannot be accessed by search engines and web browsers. They just see this as being part of the deal and a reasonable trade-off for the services and experiences that are provided by these companies.) Nevertheless, refusing to take part in this transformation of knowledge and learning into quantities of data, and shift ''away'' from critical questions of what is just and right ''toward'' a concern with optimizing the system’s performance is not an option for most of us. It is not something that can be opted out of by simply declining to take out a Tesco Club Card or use cash-points, refusing to look for research using Google Scholar, or committing social networking [http://www.suicidemachine.org/ ‘suicide’] and reading print-on-paper books instead. <br><br> For one thing, the process of capturing data by means not just of the internet, but a myriad of cameras, sensors and robotic devices, is now so ubiquitous and all pervasive it is impossible to avoid being caught up in it, no matter how rich, knowledgeable and technologically proficient you are. The latest research indicates there are approximately 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 32 people. Yet no one really knows how many CCTV cameras are actually in operation in Britain today - and that’s without even mentioning other means of gathering data that are reputed to be more intrusive still, such as mobile phone GPS location and automatic vehicle number plate recognition (ANPR). <br><br> For another, and as the example of CCTV illustrates, it’s not necessarily a question of actively doing something in this respect: of positively contributing free labour to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, for instance, or of refusing to do so. Nor is it merely a case of the separation between work and non-work being harder to maintain nowadays. (Is it work, leisure or play when you are writing a status update on Facebook, posting a photograph, ‘friending’ someone, interacting, detailing your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ regarding the places you eat, the films you watch, the books you read?) As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out some time ago, ‘surplus labor no longer requires labor... one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work’, or anything that even remotely resembles work for that matter, at least as it is most commonly understood: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>In these new conditions, it remains true that all labour involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized ‘machinic enslavement’, such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling – every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequalled point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. ((Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 492)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> <br><br> '''Transparency?''' <br><br> Before going any further, I should perhaps confess that I am a staunch advocate of open access in the humanities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be raised with regard to making research and data openly available online for free. <br><br> The first point to make in this respect is that, far from revealing any hitherto unknown, hidden or secret knowledge, such discourses of openness and transparency are themselves often not very open or transparent. Staying with the relationship between politics and science, let us take as an example the response of Ed Miliband, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy 'Climategate']controversy, in which climate skeptics alleged that emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that scientists have tampered with the data in order to support the theory that global warming is man-made. Miliband’s answer was to advocate ‘[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame maximum transparency]– let’s get the data out there’, he urged. ‘The people who believe that climate change is happening and is man-made have nothing to fear from transparency’ (Miliband, quoted in Westcott, 2009: 7; cited by Birchall,&nbsp;2011b). Yet, actually, complete transparency is impossible. This is because, as Clare Birchall has shown, there is an aporia at the heart of any claim to transparency. ‘For transparency to be known as transparency, there must be some agency (such as the media [or politicians, or government]) that legitimizes it as transparent, and because there is a legitimizing agent which does not itself have to be transparent, there is a limit to transparency’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). In fact, the more transparency is claimed, the more the violence of the mediating agency of this transparency is concealed, forgotten or obscured. Birchall offers the example of ‘The Daily Telegraph and its exposure of MPs’ expenses during the summer of 2009. While appearing to act on the side of transparency, as a commercial enterprise the paper itself has in the past been subject to secret takeover bids and its former owner, Lord Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstructing justice’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). To paraphrase a question from Lyotard I am going to return to at more length: Who decides what transparency is, and who knows what needs to be transparent (1986: 9)? <br><br> Furthermore, merely making such information and data available to the public online will not in itself necessarily change anything. In fact, such processes have often been adopted precisely as a means of avoiding change. Aaron Swartz provides the example of Watergate: ‘[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency after Watergate], people were upset about politicians receiving millions of dollars from large corporations. But, on the other hand, corporations seem to like paying off politicians. So instead of banning the practice, Congress simply required that politicians keep track of everyone who gives them money and file a report on it for public inspection’ (Swartz, 2010). <br><br> <br><br> '''Openness?''' <br><br> Much the same can be said for the idea that making research and data accessible to the public supposedly helps to make society more open and free. Take the belief we saw expressed above by Hilary Clinton: that people in the United States have free access to the internet while those in China and Iran do not. Those of us who live and work in the West do indeed have a certain freedom to publish and search online. Yet none of this rhetoric about freedom and transparency prevented the Obama government from condemning Wikileaks in November 2010 as [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security ‘reckless and dangerous’], after it opened up access to hundreds of thousands of classified State Department documents (Gibbs, 2010); nor from putting pressure on Amazon and other companies to stop hosting the whistle-blowing website, an action which had echoes of the dispute over censorship between Google and the Chinese government earlier in 2010. (Significantly, the Obama administration has also recently withdrawn the bulk of funding from the United States open government website www.data.gov, which served as an influential precursor to the previously mentioned [http://www.data.gov.uk www.data.gov.uk] website in the UK.) Furthermore, unless you are a large political or economic actor, or one of the lucky few, the statistics show that what you publish online is unlikely to receive much attention. Just ‘three companies – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – handle 95 percent of all search queries’; while ‘for searches containing the name of a specific political organisation, Yahoo! and Google agree on the top result 90 percent of the time’ (Hindman, 2009: 59, 79). Meanwhile, one company, Google, reportedly has 65&nbsp;% of the world’s search market, ‘72 per cent share of the US search market, and almost 90 per cent in the UK’ – a degree of domination that has led the European Union to investigate Google for abusing its power to favour its own products while suppressing those of rivals (Arthur, 2010: 3). <br><br> But it is not just that Google’s algorithms are ranking some websites on the first page of its results and others on page 42 (which means, in effect, that the latter are rarely going to be accessed, since very few people read beyond the first page of Google’s results). It is that conventional search engines are reaching only an extremely small percentage of the total number of available web pages. Ten years ago Michael K. Bergman was already placing the figure at 0.03%, or [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104 ‘one in 3,000’], with ‘public information on the deep Web’ even then being ‘400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web’. Consequently, while according to Bergman as much as ‘ninety-five per cent of the deep Web’ may be ‘publicly accessible information – not subject to fees or subscriptions’ – by far the vast majority of it is left untouched (Bergman, 2001). And that is before we even begin to address the issue of how the recent rise of the app, and use of the password protected Facebook for search purposes, may today be [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ annihilating the very idea of the openly searchable Web]. <br><br> We can therefore see that it is not enough simply to [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ ‘Free Our Data’], as the Guardian has it; or to operate on the basis that ‘information wants to be free’ (Wark, 2004) (although doing so of course may be a start, especially in an era when notions of the open web and net neutrality are under severe threat). We can put ever more research and data online; we can make it freely available to both other researchers and the public under open access, open data, open science and open government conditions; we can even integrate, index and link it using the appropriate metadata to enable it to be searched and harvested with relative ease. But none of this means this research and data is going to be found. Ideas of this kind ignore the fact that all information and data is ordered, structured, selected and framed in a particular way. This is what metadata is for, after all. Metadata is information or data that describes, links to, or is otherwise used to control, find, select, filter, classify and present other data. One example would be the information provided at the front of a book detailing its publisher, date and place of publication, ISBN number, and so on. However, the term ‘metadata’ is most commonly associated with the language of computing. There, metadata is what enables computers to access files and documents, not just in their own hard drives, but potentially across a range of different platforms, servers, websites and databases. Yet for all its associations with computer science, metadata is never neutral or objective. Although the term ‘data’ comes from the Latin word datum, meaning [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=-1&text=datum ‘something given’], data is not simply objectively out there in the world already provided for us. The specific ways in which metadata is created, organized and presented helps to produce (rather than merely passively reflect) what is classified as data and information – and what is not. <br><br> Clearly, then, it is not just a question of free and open access to the research and data; nor of providing support, education and training on how to understand, interpret, use and apply it effectively, as [http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ Gurstein] has argued (2010). It is also a question of who (and what) makes decisions regarding the data and metadata, and thus gets to exercise control over it, and on what basis such decisions are made. To paraphrase Lyotard once more: who decides what data and metadata is, and who knows what needs to be decided?’ (1986: 9). Who gets to legislate? And who legitimates the legislators (1986: 8)? Will the ‘ruling class’ – top civil servants and consulting firms full of people with MBAs, ‘corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organizations’, including those behind Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, JISC, AHRC, OAI, SPARC, COASP – continue to operate as the class of interpreters, gatekeepers and ‘decision makers,’ not just with regard to having ‘access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made’, but with regard to creating and controlling the data and metadata, too (1986: 14)? <br><br><br> '''On Data-Intensive Scholarship''' <br><br> If, as demonstrated above, discourses of openness and transparency are themselves not very open or transparent at all, much of the current emphasis on making the research and data open and free is also lacking in self-reflectivity and meaningful critique. We can see this not just in those discourses associated with open access, open data, open science and open government that are explicitly emphasizing the importance of transparency, performativity and efficiency. This lack of criticality is apparent in much of what goes under the name of ‘digital humanities’, too, especially those elements associated with the ‘computational turn’. <br><br> We tend to think of the humanities as being self-reflexive per se, and as frequently asking questions capable of troubling culture and society. Yet after decades when humanities scholarship made active use of a variety of critical theories – Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-colonialist, post-Marxist – it seems somewhat surprising that many advocates of this current turn to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities find it difficult to understand computing and the digital as much more than tools, techniques and resources. As a result, much of the scholarship that is currently occurring under the ‘digital humanities’ agenda is uncritical, naive and at times even banal ([http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities Liu], 2011; [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ Higgen], 2010). <br><br> Witness the current emphasis on making the data not only visible but also visual. Stefanie Posavec’s frequently referred to [http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/literary-organism/ Literary Organism], which visualises the structure of Part One of Kerouac’s ''On the Road'' as a tree, provides one example; those cited earlier courtesy of Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative offer another. Now, there is a long history of critical engagement within the humanities with ideas of the visual, the image, the spectacle, the spectator and so on: not just in critical theory, but also in cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, film and television studies. Such a history of critical engagement stretches back to Guy Debord’s influential 1967 work, ''The Society of the Spectacle'', and beyond. For example, in his introduction to a 1995 book edited with Lynn Cooke, ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'', Peter Wollen writes that an excess of visual display within culture has 'the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images that might best be understood, not simply detached from a real world of things, as Debord implied, but as effacing any trace of the symbolic, condemning the viewer to a world in which we can see everything but understand nothing—allowing us viewer-victims, in Debord’s phrase, only "a random choice of ephemera"’ (1995: 9). It can come as something of a surprise, then, to discover that this humanities tradition in which ideas of the visual are engaged critically appears to have had comparatively little impact on the current enthusiasm for data visualisation that is so prominent an aspect of the turn toward data-intensive scholarship. <br><br> Of course, this (at times explicit) repudiation of criticality could be precisely what makes certain aspects of the digital humanities so seductive for many at the moment. Exponents of the computational turn can be said to be endeavouring to avoid conforming to accepted (and often moralistic) conceptions of politics that have been decided in advance, including those that see it only in terms of power, ideology, race, gender, class, sexuality, ecology, affect etc. Refusing to [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html ‘go through the motions of a critical avant-garde’], to borrow the words of Bruno Latour (2004), they often position themselves as responding to what is perceived as a fundamentally new cultural situation, and to the challenge it represents to our traditional methods of studying culture, by avoiding conventional theoretical manoeuvres and by experimenting with the development of fresh methods and approaches for the humanities instead. <br><br> Manovich, for instance, sees the sheer scale and dynamics of the contemporary new media landscape as presenting the usually accepted means of studying culture that were dominant for so much of the 20th century – the kinds of theories, concepts and methods appropriate to producing close readings of a relatively small number of texts – with a significant practical and conceptual challenge. In the past, ‘[http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories] based on small data sets (for instance, “classical Hollywood cinema”, “Italian Renaissance”, etc.) But how can we track “global digital cultures”, with their billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors’, he asks (Manovich, 2010)? Three years ago Manovich was already describing the ‘numbers of people participating in social networks, sharing media, and creating user-generated content’ as simply ‘astonishing’: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html MySpace, for example,] claims 300 million users. Cyworld, a Korean site similar to MySpace, claims 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of that country's total population (as of 2006) use it. Hi5, a leading social media site in Central America has 100 million users and Facebook, 14 million photo uploads daily. The number of new videos uploaded to YouTube every twenty-four hours (as of July 2006): 65,000. (Manovich in Franklin &amp; Rodriguez’G, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> The solution Manovich proposes to this ‘data deluge’ is to turn to the very computers, databases, software and vast amounts of born-digital networked cultural content that are causing the problem in the first place, and to use them to help develop new methods and approaches adequate to the task at hand. This is where what he calls Cultural Analytics comes in. [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘The key idea of Cultural Analytics] is the use of computers to automatically analyze cultural artefacts in visual media, extracting large numbers of features that characterize their structure and content’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009); and what is more, to do so not just with regard to the culture of the past, but also with that of the present. To this end, Manovich (not unlike the Google technology company) calls for as much of culture as possible to be made available in external, digital form: [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘not only the exceptional but also the typical]; not only the few cultural sentences spoken by a few "great man" [sic] but the patterns in all cultural sentences spoken by everybody else’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009). <br><br> In a series of posts on his Found History blog, Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, positions such developments in terms of a shift from a concern with theory and ideology to a [http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ concern with methodology] (2008). In this respect there may well be a degree of [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ ‘relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s’] – for those in the US especially – as a result of this move ‘into the space of methodological work’ (Croxall, 2010) and what Scheinfeldt reportedly dubs [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘the post-theoretical age’] (cited in P. Cohen, 2010). The problem, though, is that without such reflexive critical thinking and theories many of those whose work forms part of this computational turn find it difficult to articulate exactly what the point of what they are doing is, as Scheinfeldt readily acknowledges (2010a). <br><br> Take one of the projects mentioned earlier: the attempt by [http://victorianbooks.org Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs] to text-mine all the books published in English in the Victorian age (or at least those digitized by Google). Among other things, this allows Cohen and Gibbs to show that use of the word ‘revolution’ in book titles of the period spiked around [http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ‘the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848’] (D. Cohen, 2010). But what argument are they trying to make with this calculation? What is it we are able to learn as a result of this use of computational power on their part that we did not know already and could not have discovered without it ([http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/ Scheinfeldt], 2008)? <br><br> In an explicit response to Cohen and Gibbs’s project, Scheinfeldt suggests that the problem of theory, or the lack of it, may actually be a question of scale: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It expects something of the scale of humanities scholarship] which I’m not sure is true anymore: that a single scholar—nay, every scholar—working alone will, over the course of his or her lifetime ... make a fundamental theoretical advance to the field. <br><br> Increasingly, this expectation is something peculiar to the humanities. ...it required the work of a generation of mathematicians and observational astronomers, gainfully employed, to enable the eventual “discovery” of Neptune... Since the scientific revolution, most theoretical advances play out over generations, not single careers. (Scheinfeldt, 2010b)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> Now, it is absolutely important that we as scholars experiment with the new tools, methods and materials that digital media technologies create and make possible, in order to bring into play new forms of Foucauldian ''dispositifs'', or what Bernard Stiegler calls ''hypomnemata'', or what I am trying to think in terms of [http://garyhall.info media gifts]. I would include in this 'experimentation imperative’ techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science and other related fields, such as information visualisation, data mining and so forth. Nevertheless, there is something troubling about this kind of deferral of critical and self-reflexive theoretical questions to an unknown point in time, still possibly a generation away. After all, the frequent suggestion is that now is not the right time to be making any such decision or judgement, since we cannot yet know how humanists will eventually come to use these tools and data, and thus what data-driven scholarship may or may not turn out to be capable of, critically, politically, theoretically. One of the consequences of this deferral, however, is that it makes it extremely difficult to judge whether this postponement is indeed acting as a responsible, political and ethical opening to the (heterogeneity and incalculability of the) future, including the future of the humanities; or whether it is serving as an alibi for a naive and rather superficial form of scholarship instead ([https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/ Meeks], 2010). A form of scholarship moreover that, in uncritically and un-self-reflexively adopting techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science, can be seen as part of the larger shift in contemporary society which Lyotard associates with the widespread use of computers and databases, and with the exteriorization of knowledge in relation to the ‘knower’. As we have seen, it is a movement away from a concern with ideals, with what is right and just and true, and toward a concern to legitimate power by optimizing the system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. <br><br> All of this raises some rather significant and timely questions for the humanities. Is it merely a coincidence that such a turn toward science, computing and data-intensive research is gaining momentum at a time when the UK government is emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and withdrawing support and funding from the humanities? Or is one of the reasons all this is happening now due to the fact that the humanities, like the sciences themselves, are under pressure from government, business, management, industry and increasingly the media to prove they provide value for money in instrumental, functional, performative terms? Is the interest in computing a strategic decision on the part of some of those in the humanities? As the project of Cohen and Gibbs shows, one can get funding from the likes of Google (D. Cohen, 2010). In fact, in the summer of 2010 [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research’] (P. Cohen, 2010). To what extent is the take-up of practical techniques and approaches from computing science providing some areas of the humanities with a means of defending (and refreshing) themselves in an era of global economic crisis and severe cuts to higher education, through the transformation of their knowledge and learning into quantities of information –- so-called ‘deliverables’? Can we even position the ‘computational turn’ as an event created to justify such a move on the part of certain elements within the humanities ([http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/ Frabetti], 2010)? <br><br> Where does all this leave us as far as this Living Book on open science is concerned? As the argument above hopefully demonstrates, it is clearly not enough just to attempt to reveal or recover the scientific truth about, say, the environment, to counter the disinformation of others involved in the likes of the Climategate controversy. Nor is it enough merely to make the scientific research openly accessible to the public. Equally, it is not satisfactory simply to make the information, data, and associated tools, techniques and resources freely available to those in the humanities, so they can collectively and collaboratively search, mine, map, graph, model, visualize, analyse and interpret it in new ways – including some that may make it less abstract and easier for the majority of those in society to understand and follow – and, in doing so, help bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’. It is not so much that there is a lack of information, or access to the right kind of information, or information presented in the right kind of way to ensure that the message of the scientific research and data comes across effectively and efficiently. It is not even that there is too much information, too much white noise, as ‘Bifo’ et al call it (2009: 141-142). To be sure, as a [http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/reports/display/id=479774 2010 Mintel report] showed – to stay with the example of climate change – most people in the UK already know what is happening to the environment. They are just suffering from Green Fatigue, they are bored with thinking about it and thus enacting a backlash against what they perceive as ‘extreme’ pressure from environmentalist groups. This is perhaps one reason why [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html ‘the number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009’] (Shields, 2010: 30). Yet to argue there is too much information rather risks implying that there is a proper amount of information, and what would that be?<br><br> So we might not want to go along with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they contend that ‘we do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it’. But we might nevertheless agree when they argue that what we actually lack is creation: ‘We lack resistance to the present’ (1994: 108). In this respect, it is not just a case of supplying more scientific research and data; nor of making the research and data that has otherwise been closed, hidden, denied or suppressed openly available for free – by opening the already existing memory and databanks to the people, for example (which is what Lyotard ended by suggesting we do). It is also a case of creating work around the research and data that does not simply go along with the shift in the status and nature of knowledge that is currently taking place. As we have seen, it is a shift toward STEM subjects and away from the humanities; toward a concern with optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms, and away from a concern with questions of what is just and right; and toward an emphasis on openness, freedom and transparency, and away from what is capable of disrupting and disturbing society, and what, in remaining resistant to a culture of measurement and calculation, maintains a much needed element of inaccessibility, inefficiency, delay, error, antagonism, heterogeneity and dissensus within the system. <br><br> Can this Living Book on open science be considered one such a creation? And can this series of Living Books about Life be considered another? Are they instances of a resistance to the present? Or just more white noise? <br><br> <br><br> (The above is based on a paper presented at the Data Landscapes, AHRC network event, held in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey at the University of Westminster, London, December 15, 2010. An earlier version of some of the material provided above appeared in Hall [2010]) <br><br> '''References''' <br><br> Arthur, C. (2010), ‘Will Brussels Curb Google Guys’, ''The Guardian'', December 6. <br><br> 'Bifo' Berardi, F., Jacquemet, M. and Vitali, G. (2009), ''Ethereal Shadows: Communications and Power in Contemporary Italy''. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. <br><br> Bergman, M. K. (2001), ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’, ''JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing'', vol.7, no.1, August. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104.&nbsp;<br><br> Birchall, C. (2011) 'There's Been Too Much Secrecy in this City": The False Choice Between Secrecy and Transparency in US Politics,' ''Cultural Politics''&nbsp;7(1), March: 133-156.<br><br>Birchall, C (2011b forthcoming) ‘Transparency, Interrupted: Secrets of the Left’, Between Transparency and Secrecy', Annual Review, ''Theory, Culture and Society, ''December.<br><br> Blair, T. (2010), ''A Journey''. London: Hutchinson. <br><br> Clinton, H. (2010), ‘Internet Freedom: The Prepared Text of U.S. of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech, delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., January 21. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full <br><br> Cohen, D. (2010), ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen'', October 4. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Cohen, P. (2010) ‘Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches’, ''The New York Times'', November 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all. <br><br> Croxall, B. (2010) response to Tanner Higgen, ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. September 10. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1988) ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. London: Athlone. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1994), ''What is Philosophy?''. New York: Columbia University Press. <br><br> Fung, A., Graham, M., Weil, D. (2007), ''Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br><br> Frabetti, F. (2010) ‘Digital Again? The Humanities Between the Computational Turn and Originary Technicity’, talk given to the Open Media Group, Coventry School of Art and Design. November 9. http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/. <br><br> Franklin, K. D. and Rodriguez’G, K. (2008) ‘The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics’,''HPC Wire''. July 29. http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html. <br><br> Gibbs, R. (2010), Presidential press secretary, cited in ‘White House condemns WikiLeaks' release’, ''MCNBC.com News'', November 28. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010a), ‘Open Data: Empowering the Empowered or Effective Data Use for Everyone?’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 2. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010b), ‘Open Data (2): Effective Data Use’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 9. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/open-data-2-effective-data-use/ <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2011), ‘Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide’, posting to the nettime mailing list, July, 5. <br><br> Hall, G. (2010), 'We Can Know It For You: The Secret Life of Metadata', ''How We Became Metadata''. London: Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster. <br><br> Higgen, T. (2010) ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. May 25. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Hindman, M. (2009), ''The Myth of Digital Democracy''. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. <br><br> Hoffman, M. (2010), ‘EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites’, ''Electronic Frontier Foundation''. March 16. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement. <br><br> Houghton, J. (2009) ‘Open Access - What are the Economic Benefits?: A Comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark’, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne. http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf. <br><br> Jarvis, J. (2010), ‘Time For Citizens of the Internet to Stand Up’, ''The Guardian: MediaGuardian'', March 29. <br><br> JISC (2009), ‘Press Release: Open Science - the future for research?, posting to the BOAI list, November 16. 2009. <br><br> Kerssens, N. and Dekker A. (2009), ‘Interview with Lev Manovich for Archive 2020’, ''Virtueel_ Platform''. http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/#2595. <br><br> Knouf, N. (2010), ‘The JJPS Extension: Presenting Academic Performance Information’, ''Journal of Journal Performance Studies'', Vol 1, No 1. Available at http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6. Accessed 20 June, 2010. <br><br> Latour, B (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”’, ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 30, Number 2. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html. <br><br> Liu, A. (2011) ‘Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities’. Paper presented at the panel on ‘The History and Future of the Digital Humanities’” Modern Language Association convention, Los Angeles, January 7. http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities. <br><br> Lyotard, J-F. (1986), ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. <br><br> Lyotard, J.-F. (1991) ''The Inhuman: Reflections on Time''. Cambridge: Polity. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2010a) ‘Cultural Analytics Lectures by Manovich in UK (London and Swansea), March 8-9, 2010’, ''Software Studies Initiative''. March 8. http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2011) ‘Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data’,''Lev Manovich'', April 28: http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf. <br><br> Meeks, E. (2010), ‘The Digital Humanities as Imagined Community’, ''Digital Humanities Specialist''. September 14. https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/. <br><br> Mintel report, ‘Energy Efficiency in the Home - UK - July 2010’. <br><br> Murray, S. Choi, S., Hoey, J., Kendall, C., Maskalyk, J., and Palepu, A. (2008), ‘Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software at ''Open Medicine''’, ''Open Medicine'', 2(1): e1–e3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/?tool=pmcentrez http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/pdf/OpenMed-02-e1.pdf??tool=pmcentrez <br><br> Patterson, M. (2009), ‘Article-Level Metrics at PloS – Addition of Usage Data’, ''PLoS: Public Library of Science''. September 16. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/. <br><br> Pubget (2010), ‘[BOAI] PLoS Launches Fast (Open) PDF Access with Pubget’, posted on the BOAI list by Peter Suber, March 8. <br><br> Poynder, R. (2010), ‘Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley: The Impact of Open Notebook Science’, ''Information Today'', September. http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2008), ‘Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010a) ‘Where’s the Beef?: Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010b) response to Dan Cohen, ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen''. October 5. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Shields, R. (2010), ‘Green Fatigue Hits Campaign to Reduce Carbon Footprint’, ''The Independent'', October 10. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html. <br><br> Sterling, B. (2005), ''Shaping Things''. Massachussetts: MIT. <br><br> Stolberg, S. G. (2009), ‘On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone’”, ''The New York Times''. January 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html. <br><br> Swan, A. (2009), ‘Open Access and Open Data’, ''2nd NERC Data Management Workshop'', Oxford. February 17-18. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/. <br><br> Swartz, A. (2010), ‘When is Transparency Useful?’ ''Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought blog'', February 11. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency. <br><br> Vaidhyanathan, S. (2009), ‘The Googlization of Universities’, ''The NEA 2009 Almanac of Higher Education''. http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf <br><br> Wark, M. (2004), ''A Hacker Manifesto''. Harvard: Harvard University Press. <br><br> Westcott, S. (2009) ‘Global Warming: Brits Deny Humans are to Blame,’ ''The Express'', December 7. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame <br><br> The White House (2009), ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open Government’. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ <br><br> Wollen, P. and Cooke, L. eds (1995), ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances''. Seattle: Bay Press.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_science/Introduction&diff=5676Open science/Introduction2014-06-10T11:00:21Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Digitize_Me,_Visualize_Me,_Search_Me Back to the book] <br> <br />
<br />
= '''White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix)''' =<br />
<br />
= Gary Hall =<br />
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<br><br> <youtube>PH54cp2ggFk</youtube> <br><br> <br />
One of the explicit aims of the Living Books About Life series is to provide a&nbsp; point of interrogation and contestation, as well as connection and translation, between the humanities and the sciences (partly to avoid slipping into 'scientism'). Accordingly, this introduction to ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' takes as its starting point the so-called ‘computational turn’ to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities. <br><br> The phrase ‘[http://www.thecomputationalturn.com/ the computational turn]’ has been adopted to refer to the process whereby techniques and methodologies drawn from (in this case) ''computer science'' and related fields – including science visualization, interactive information visualization, image processing, network analysis, statistical data analysis, and the management, manipulation and mining of data – are being used to produce new ways of approaching and understanding texts in the humanities; what is sometimes thought of as ‘the digital humanities’. The concern in the main has been with either digitizing ‘born analog’ humanities texts and artifacts (e.g. making annotated editions of the art and writing of [http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ William Blake] available to scholars and researchers online), or gathering together ‘born digital’ humanities texts and artifacts (videos, websites, games, photography, sound recordings, 3D data), and then taking complex and often extremely large-scale data analysis techniques from computing science and related fields and applying them to these humanities texts and artifacts - to this ‘big data’, as it has been called. Witness Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative’s use of ‘[http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf digital image analysis and new visualization techniques]’ to study ‘20,000 pages of Science and Popular Science magazines… published between 1872-1922, 780 paintings by van Gogh, 4535 covers of Time magazine (1923-2009) and one million manga pages’ (Manovich, 2011), and Dan Cohen and Fred Gibb’s text mining of ‘[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader the 1,681,161 books that were published in English in the UK in the long nineteenth century]’ (Cohen, 2010). <br><br> ''What Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' endeavours to show is that such data-focused transformations in research can be seen as part of a major alteration in the status and nature of knowledge. It is an alteration that, according to the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, has been taking place since at least the 1950s, and involves nothing less than a shift away from a concern with questions of what is right and just, and toward a concern with legitimating power by optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. This shift has significant consequences for our idea of knowledge. Indeed, for Lyotard: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these language whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as ‘knowledge’ statements. (1986: 4)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> In particular, ''Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me'' suggests that the turn in the humanities toward data-driven scholarship, science visualization, statistical data analysis, etc. can be placed alongside all those discourses that are being put forward at the moment - in both the academy and society - in the name of greater openness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. <br><br> <br><br> '''Open Access ''' <br><br> The open access movement provides a case in point. Witness [http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf John Houghton’s] 2009 comparison of the benefits of OA for the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, which claims to show that the open access academic publishing model, in which peer reviewed scholarly research and publications are made available for free online to all those who are able to access the Internet, is actually the most cost effective mechanism for scholarly publishing. Others meanwhile have detailed the increases open access publishing enables in the amount of material that can be published, searched and stored, in the number of people who can access it, in the impact of that material, the range of its distribution, and in the speed and ease of reporting and information retrieval. The following announcement, posted on the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) list in March 2010, is fairly typical in this respect: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Today PLoS released Pubget links across its journal sites. Now, when users are browsing thousands of reference citations on PLoS journals they will be able to get to the full text article faster than ever before. <br><br> Specifically, when readers encounter citations to articles as recorded by CrossRef (which are accessed via the ‘CrossRef’ link in the ‘Cited in’ section of any article’s Metrics tab), a PDF icon will also appear if it is freely available via Pubget. Clicking on the icon will take you directly to the PDF. <br><br> On launching this new functionality, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE and the Community Journals said: ‘Any service, like Pubget, that makes it easier for authors to quickly find the information they need is a welcome addition to our articles. We like how Pubget helps to break down content walls in science, letting users get instantly to the article-level detail that they seek.’ (Pubget, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> '''Open Data ''' <br><br> Yet it is not just the research literature that is positioned as being rendered more accessible by scientists. Even the data created in the course of scientific research is promoted as being made freely and openly available for others to use, analyse and build upon.This includes data sets that are too large to be included in any resulting peer-reviewed publications. Known as open data, or data-sharing, this initiative is motivated by the idea that publishing data online on an open basis bestows it with a [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/1/Swan_-_NERC_09.pptx ‘vastly increased utility’]. Digital data sets are said to be ‘easily passed around’; they are seemingly ‘more easily reused’, reanalysed and checked for accuracy and validity; and they supposedly contain more ‘opportunities for educational and commercial exploitation’ (Swan, 2009). <br><br> Interestingly, certain academic publishers are already viewing the linking of their journals to the underlying data as another of the ‘value-added’ services they can offer, to set alongside automatic alerting and sophisticated citation, indexing, searching and linking facilities (and to no doubt help ward off the threat of disintermediation posed by the development of digital technology, which enables academics to take over the means of dissemination and publish their work for and by themselves cheaply and easily). Significantly, a [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx 2009 JISC report] also identified ‘open-ness, predictive science based on massive data volumes and citizen involvement as [all] being important features of tomorrow’s research practice’. <br><br> In a further move in this direction, all Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are now providing a broad range of article-level metrics and indicators relating to usage data on an open basis. No longer withheld as trade secrets, these metrics reveal which articles are attracting the most views, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, coverage in the media, comments, responses, ‘star’ ratings, blog coverage, and so on. PLoS has positioned this programme as enabling science scholars to assess [http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/ ‘research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published’], and they encourage readers to carry out their own analyses of this open data (Patterson, 2009). Yet it is difficult not to perceive such article-level metrics and management tools as also being part of the wider process of transforming knowledge and learning into ‘quantities of information’ (Lyotard, 1986: 4); quantities, furthermore, that are produced more to be exchanged, marketed and sold (1986: 4) – for example, by individual academics to their departments, institutions, funders and governments in the form of indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ (1986: 5). <br><br> <br><br> '''From Open Science to Open Government ''' <br><br> Such developments around open access and open data are themselves part of the larger trend or phenomenon that is coming to be known as ‘open science’. As Murray et al put it: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>Open science is emerging as a collaborative and transparent approach to research. It is the idea that all data (both published and unpublished) should be freely available, and that private interests should not stymie its use by means of copyright, intellectual property rights and patents. It also embraces open access publishing and open source software… (Murray et al, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> One of the most interesting and well known examples of how such open science may work is provided by the Open Notebook Science of the organic chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. ‘[I]in the interests of openness’, Bradley is making the [http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml ‘details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web']. This ‘includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments’. What is more, he is doing so in ‘real time’, ‘within hours of production, not after the months or years involved in peer review’ (Poynder, 2010). Again, we can see how emphasis is being placed on the amount of research that can be shared, and the speed with which this can be achieved. This openness on Bradley’s part is also positioned as a means of achieving usefulness and impact, as is evident from the very title of one of his Open Notebook Science projects, [http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/ UsefulChem]. <br><br> To be fair, however, such discourses around openness, transparency, efficiency and utility are not confined to the sciences – or even the university, for that matter. There are also wider political initiatives, dubbed ‘Open Government’, or ‘Government 2.0’, with both the Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administrations in the UK making a great display of freeing government information. The Labour government implemented the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000, and then proceeded to launch a [http://www.data.gov.uk website] expressly dedicated to the release of governmental data sets in January 2010. It is a website that the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government continues to make extensive use of. In a similar vein, the [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Guardian] newspaper has campaigned for the UK government to relinquish its copyright on all local, regional and national data collected with taxpayers’ money and to make such data freely and openly available to the public by publishing it online, where it can be collectively and collaboratively scrutinized, searched, mined, mapped, graphed, cross-tabulated, visualized, audited and interpreted using software tools. <br><br> Nor is this phenomenon confined to the UK. In the United States Barack Obama promised throughout his election campaign to make government more open. He followed this up by issuing a memorandum on transparency the very first day after he became President, vowing to make openness one of [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html ‘the touchstones of this presidency’”] (Obama, cited in Stolberg, 2009): ‘[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration] is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (The White House, 2009). <br><br><br> '''The Politics of Openness''' <br><br> The connection I am making here between the movements for open access, open data, open science and open government is one that has to a certain extent already been pointed to by Michael Gurstein in his reflections on the experience of attending the 2011 conference of the [http://okfn.org/ Open Knowledge Foundation]. For Gurstein: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emerging-data-divide/ the ‘open data/open government’ movement] begins from a profoundly political perspective that government is largely ineffective and inefficient (and possibly corrupt) and that it hides that ineffectiveness and inefficiency (and possible corruption) from public scrutiny through lack of transparency in its operations and particularly in denying to the public access to information (data) about its operations. And further that this access once available would give citizens the means to hold bureaucrats (and their political masters) accountable for their actions. In doing so it would give these self-same citizens a platform on which to undertake (or at least collaborate with) these bureaucrats in certain key and significant activities—planning, analyzing, budgeting that sort of thing. Moreover through the implementation of processes of crowdsourcing this would also provide the bureaucrats with the overwhelming benefits of having access to and input from the knowledge and wisdom of the broader interested public. <br><br> Put in somewhat different terms but with essentially the same meaning—it’s the taxpayer’s money and they have the right to participate in overseeing how it is spent. Having “open” access to government’s data/information gives citizens the tools to exercise that right. (Gurstein, 2011)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> Interestingly, for Gurstein, a much clearer understanding is needed than has been displayed by many open data/open government advocates to date of what exactly is meant by openness, and of where arguments in favour of open access, open information and open data are likely to lead us in the not too distant future. With this in mind, we could endeavour to put some flesh on the bones of Gurstein’s sketch of the politics of openness and suggest that, from a liberal perspective, freeing publicly funded and acquired information and data – whether it is gathered directly in the process of census collection, or indirectly as part of other activities (crime, healthcare, transport, schools and accident statistics) – is seen as helping society to perform more efficiently. For liberals, openness is said to play a key role in increasing citizen trust, participation and involvement in democracy, and indeed government, as access to information – such as that needed to intervene in public policy – is no longer restricted either to the state or to those corporations, institutions, organizations and individuals who have sufficient money and power to acquire it for themselves. <br><br> Such liberal beliefs find support in the idea that making information and data freely and transparently available goes along with Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states that everyone has the right [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’]. Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, put forward a similar vision when, at the beginning of 2010, she said of her country that ‘[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full We stand for a single internet] where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas’, and against the authoritarian censorship and suppression of free speech and online search facilities like Google in countries such as China and Iran. Clinton declared: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Even in authoritarian countries], information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. <br><br> During his visit to China in November [2009], President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today. (Clinton, 2010)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> This political sentiment was shared by Jeff Jarvis, author of ''What Would Google Do?'', when, in support of Google’s decision to stop self-filtering search results in China, he argued in March 2010 for a bill of rights for cyberspace: ‘[http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/27/a-bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace/ to claim and secure our freedom] to connect, speak, assemble, and act online; to each control our identities and data; to speak our languages; to protect what is public and private; and to assure openness’ (Jarvis, 2010: 4). Yet are Clinton and Jarvis not both guilty here of overlooking (or should that be conveniently forgetting or even denying) the way liberal ideas of freedom and openness (and, indeed, of the human) have long been used in the service of colonialism and neoliberal globalisation? Does freedom for the latter not primarily mean economic freedom, i.e., freedom of the market, freedom of the consumer to choose what to consume – not only in terms of goods, but also lifestyles and ways of being? <br><br> Even if it was before the widespread use of networked computers, it is interesting that ‘fifteen years after the Freedom of Information Act law was passed’ in the US in 1966, ‘the General Accounting Office reported that 82 percent of requests [for information] came from business, nine percent from the press, and only 1 percent from individuals or public interest groups’ (Fung et al, 2007: 27-28). Certainly, in the UK today, the 'truth is that the [UK] FOI Act [2000] isn't used, for the most part, by “the people”’, as Tony Blair acknowledged in his recent memoir. ‘It's used by journalists’ (Blair, 2010) – and by businesses, one might add. In view of this, it is no surprise to find that neoliberals also support the making of government data freely and openly available to businesses and the public. They do so on the grounds that it provides a means of achieving the best possible ‘input/output ratio’ for society (Lyotard, 1986: 54). This way of thinking is of a piece with the emphasis placed by neoliberalism’s audit culture on accountability, transparency, evaluation, measurement and centralised data management: for example, in the context of UK higher education, it is evident in the emphasis placed on measuring the impact of research on society and the economy, teaching standards, contact hours, as well as student drop-out rates, future employment destinations and earning prospects. From this perspective, such openness and communicative transparency is perceived as ensuring greater value for (taxpayers’) money, supposedly helping to eliminate corruption, enabling costs to be distributed more effectively, and increasing choice, innovation, enterprise, creativity, competiveness and accountability. <br><br> Meanwhile, some libertarians have gone so far as to argue that there is no need to make difficult policy decisions about what data and what information it is right to publish online and what to keep secret at all. Instead, we should work toward the kind of situation the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling proposes. In ''Shaping Things'', his non-fiction book on the future of design, Sterling advocates retaining all data and information, ‘the known, the unknown known, and the unknown unknown’, in large archives and databases equipped with the necessary bandwidth, processing speed and storage capacity, and simply devising search tools and metadata that are accurate, fast and powerful enough to find and access it (Sterling, 2005: 47). <br><br> Yet to have participated in the shift away from questions of truth, justice and especially what, in ''The Inhuman'', Lyotard places under the headings of ‘heterogeneity, dissensus, event…the unharmonizable’ (1991: 4), and ''toward'' a concern with performativity, measurement and optimising the relation between input and output, one does not need to be a practicing [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/09/canada-open-data data journalist], or to have actively contributed to the movements for open access, open data, open science or open government. If you are one of the 1.3 million plus people who have purchased a Kindle, and helped the sale of digital books outpace those of hardbacks on Amazon’s US website, then you have already signed a license agreement allowing the online book retailer - but not academic researchers or the public - to collect, store, mine, analyse and extract economic value from data concerning your personal reading habits for free. Similarly, if you are one of the over 687 million worldwide who use the Facebook social network, then you are already voluntarily giving your time and labour for free, not only to help its owners, their investors, and other companies make a reputed $1 billion a year from demographically targeted advertising, but to supply governments and law enforcement agencies such as the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK with profile data relating to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues and peers that they can [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement use in investigations] (Hoffman, 2010). Even if you have done neither, you will in all probability have provided the Google technology company with a host of network data and digital traces it can both monetize and give to the police as a result of having mapped your home, digitized your book, or supplied you with free music videos to enjoy via Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and YouTube, which Google also owns. Lest this shift from open access to Google should seem somewhat farfetched, it is worth recalling that ‘[http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf Google has moved to establish, embellish, or replace many core university services] such as library databases, search interfaces, and e-mail servers’ (Vaidhyanathan, 2009: 65-66); and that academia in fact gave birth to Google, Google’s PageRank algorithm being little more [http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 ‘than an expansion of what is known as citation analysis’] (Knouf, 2010). <br><br> <youtube>R7yfV6RzE30</youtube> <br><br> Obviously, no matter how exciting and enjoyable such activities may be, you don't ''have'' to buy that e-book reader, join that social network or display your personal metrics online, from sexual activity to food consumption, in an attempt to identify patterns in your life – what is called life-tracking or self-tracking. (Although, actually, a lot of people are quite happy to keep contributing to the networked communities reached by Facebook and YouTube, even though they realise they are being used as free labour and that, in the case of the former, much of what they do cannot be accessed by search engines and web browsers. They just see this as being part of the deal and a reasonable trade-off for the services and experiences that are provided by these companies.) Nevertheless, refusing to take part in this transformation of knowledge and learning into quantities of data, and shift ''away'' from critical questions of what is just and right ''toward'' a concern with optimizing the system’s performance is not an option for most of us. It is not something that can be opted out of by simply declining to take out a Tesco Club Card or use cash-points, refusing to look for research using Google Scholar, or committing social networking [http://www.suicidemachine.org/ ‘suicide’] and reading print-on-paper books instead. <br><br> For one thing, the process of capturing data by means not just of the internet, but a myriad of cameras, sensors and robotic devices, is now so ubiquitous and all pervasive it is impossible to avoid being caught up in it, no matter how rich, knowledgeable and technologically proficient you are. The latest research indicates there are approximately 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 32 people. Yet no one really knows how many CCTV cameras are actually in operation in Britain today - and that’s without even mentioning other means of gathering data that are reputed to be more intrusive still, such as mobile phone GPS location and automatic vehicle number plate recognition (ANPR). <br><br> For another, and as the example of CCTV illustrates, it’s not necessarily a question of actively doing something in this respect: of positively contributing free labour to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, for instance, or of refusing to do so. Nor is it merely a case of the separation between work and non-work being harder to maintain nowadays. (Is it work, leisure or play when you are writing a status update on Facebook, posting a photograph, ‘friending’ someone, interacting, detailing your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ regarding the places you eat, the films you watch, the books you read?) As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out some time ago, ‘surplus labor no longer requires labor... one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work’, or anything that even remotely resembles work for that matter, at least as it is most commonly understood: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>In these new conditions, it remains true that all labour involves surplus labor; but surplus labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized ‘machinic enslavement’, such that one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work (children, the retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not only does the user as such tend to become an employee, but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of transportation, urban models, the media, the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling – every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequalled point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which the destiny of human beings is recast. ((Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 492)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> <br><br> '''Transparency?''' <br><br> Before going any further, I should perhaps confess that I am a staunch advocate of open access in the humanities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be raised with regard to making research and data openly available online for free. <br><br> The first point to make in this respect is that, far from revealing any hitherto unknown, hidden or secret knowledge, such discourses of openness and transparency are themselves often not very open or transparent. Staying with the relationship between politics and science, let us take as an example the response of Ed Miliband, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy 'Climategate']controversy, in which climate skeptics alleged that emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that scientists have tampered with the data in order to support the theory that global warming is man-made. Miliband’s answer was to advocate ‘[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame maximum transparency]– let’s get the data out there’, he urged. ‘The people who believe that climate change is happening and is man-made have nothing to fear from transparency’ (Miliband, quoted in Westcott, 2009: 7; cited by Birchall,&nbsp;2011b). Yet, actually, complete transparency is impossible. This is because, as Clare Birchall has shown, there is an aporia at the heart of any claim to transparency. ‘For transparency to be known as transparency, there must be some agency (such as the media [or politicians, or government]) that legitimizes it as transparent, and because there is a legitimizing agent which does not itself have to be transparent, there is a limit to transparency’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). In fact, the more transparency is claimed, the more the violence of the mediating agency of this transparency is concealed, forgotten or obscured. Birchall offers the example of ‘The Daily Telegraph and its exposure of MPs’ expenses during the summer of 2009. While appearing to act on the side of transparency, as a commercial enterprise the paper itself has in the past been subject to secret takeover bids and its former owner, Lord Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstructing justice’ (Birchall,&nbsp;2011a: 142). To paraphrase a question from Lyotard I am going to return to at more length: Who decides what transparency is, and who knows what needs to be transparent (1986: 9)? <br><br> Furthermore, merely making such information and data available to the public online will not in itself necessarily change anything. In fact, such processes have often been adopted precisely as a means of avoiding change. Aaron Swartz provides the example of Watergate: ‘[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency after Watergate], people were upset about politicians receiving millions of dollars from large corporations. But, on the other hand, corporations seem to like paying off politicians. So instead of banning the practice, Congress simply required that politicians keep track of everyone who gives them money and file a report on it for public inspection’ (Swartz, 2010). <br><br> <br><br> '''Openness?''' <br><br> Much the same can be said for the idea that making research and data accessible to the public supposedly helps to make society more open and free. Take the belief we saw expressed above by Hilary Clinton: that people in the United States have free access to the internet while those in China and Iran do not. Those of us who live and work in the West do indeed have a certain freedom to publish and search online. Yet none of this rhetoric about freedom and transparency prevented the Obama government from condemning Wikileaks in November 2010 as [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security ‘reckless and dangerous’], after it opened up access to hundreds of thousands of classified State Department documents (Gibbs, 2010); nor from putting pressure on Amazon and other companies to stop hosting the whistle-blowing website, an action which had echoes of the dispute over censorship between Google and the Chinese government earlier in 2010. (Significantly, the Obama administration has also recently withdrawn the bulk of funding from the United States open government website www.data.gov, which served as an influential precursor to the previously mentioned [http://www.data.gov.uk www.data.gov.uk] website in the UK.) Furthermore, unless you are a large political or economic actor, or one of the lucky few, the statistics show that what you publish online is unlikely to receive much attention. Just ‘three companies – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – handle 95 percent of all search queries’; while ‘for searches containing the name of a specific political organisation, Yahoo! and Google agree on the top result 90 percent of the time’ (Hindman, 2009: 59, 79). Meanwhile, one company, Google, reportedly has 65&nbsp;% of the world’s search market, ‘72 per cent share of the US search market, and almost 90 per cent in the UK’ – a degree of domination that has led the European Union to investigate Google for abusing its power to favour its own products while suppressing those of rivals (Arthur, 2010: 3). <br><br> But it is not just that Google’s algorithms are ranking some websites on the first page of its results and others on page 42 (which means, in effect, that the latter are rarely going to be accessed, since very few people read beyond the first page of Google’s results). It is that conventional search engines are reaching only an extremely small percentage of the total number of available web pages. Ten years ago Michael K. Bergman was already placing the figure at 0.03%, or [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104 ‘one in 3,000’], with ‘public information on the deep Web’ even then being ‘400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web’. Consequently, while according to Bergman as much as ‘ninety-five per cent of the deep Web’ may be ‘publicly accessible information – not subject to fees or subscriptions’ – by far the vast majority of it is left untouched (Bergman, 2001). And that is before we even begin to address the issue of how the recent rise of the app, and use of the password protected Facebook for search purposes, may today be [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ annihilating the very idea of the openly searchable Web]. <br><br> We can therefore see that it is not enough simply to [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ ‘Free Our Data’], as the Guardian has it; or to operate on the basis that ‘information wants to be free’ (Wark, 2004) (although doing so of course may be a start, especially in an era when notions of the open web and net neutrality are under severe threat). We can put ever more research and data online; we can make it freely available to both other researchers and the public under open access, open data, open science and open government conditions; we can even integrate, index and link it using the appropriate metadata to enable it to be searched and harvested with relative ease. But none of this means this research and data is going to be found. Ideas of this kind ignore the fact that all information and data is ordered, structured, selected and framed in a particular way. This is what metadata is for, after all. Metadata is information or data that describes, links to, or is otherwise used to control, find, select, filter, classify and present other data. One example would be the information provided at the front of a book detailing its publisher, date and place of publication, ISBN number, and so on. However, the term ‘metadata’ is most commonly associated with the language of computing. There, metadata is what enables computers to access files and documents, not just in their own hard drives, but potentially across a range of different platforms, servers, websites and databases. Yet for all its associations with computer science, metadata is never neutral or objective. Although the term ‘data’ comes from the Latin word datum, meaning [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=-1&text=datum ‘something given’], data is not simply objectively out there in the world already provided for us. The specific ways in which metadata is created, organized and presented helps to produce (rather than merely passively reflect) what is classified as data and information – and what is not. <br><br> Clearly, then, it is not just a question of free and open access to the research and data; nor of providing support, education and training on how to understand, interpret, use and apply it effectively, as [http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ Gurstein] has argued (2010). It is also a question of who (and what) makes decisions regarding the data and metadata, and thus gets to exercise control over it, and on what basis such decisions are made. To paraphrase Lyotard once more: who decides what data and metadata is, and who knows what needs to be decided?’ (1986: 9). Who gets to legislate? And who legitimates the legislators (1986: 8)? Will the ‘ruling class’ – top civil servants and consulting firms full of people with MBAs, ‘corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organizations’, including those behind Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, JISC, AHRC, OAI, SPARC, COASP – continue to operate as the class of interpreters, gatekeepers and ‘decision makers,’ not just with regard to having ‘access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made’, but with regard to creating and controlling the data and metadata, too (1986: 14)? <br><br><br> '''On Data-Intensive Scholarship''' <br><br> If, as demonstrated above, discourses of openness and transparency are themselves not very open or transparent at all, much of the current emphasis on making the research and data open and free is also lacking in self-reflectivity and meaningful critique. We can see this not just in those discourses associated with open access, open data, open science and open government that are explicitly emphasizing the importance of transparency, performativity and efficiency. This lack of criticality is apparent in much of what goes under the name of ‘digital humanities’, too, especially those elements associated with the ‘computational turn’. <br><br> We tend to think of the humanities as being self-reflexive per se, and as frequently asking questions capable of troubling culture and society. Yet after decades when humanities scholarship made active use of a variety of critical theories – Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-colonialist, post-Marxist – it seems somewhat surprising that many advocates of this current turn to data-intensive scholarship in the humanities find it difficult to understand computing and the digital as much more than tools, techniques and resources. As a result, much of the scholarship that is currently occurring under the ‘digital humanities’ agenda is uncritical, naive and at times even banal ([http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities Liu], 2011; [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ Higgen], 2010). <br><br> Witness the current emphasis on making the data not only visible but also visual. Stefanie Posavec’s frequently referred to [http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/literary-organism/ Literary Organism], which visualises the structure of Part One of Kerouac’s ''On the Road'' as a tree, provides one example; those cited earlier courtesy of Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative offer another. Now, there is a long history of critical engagement within the humanities with ideas of the visual, the image, the spectacle, the spectator and so on: not just in critical theory, but also in cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, film and television studies. Such a history of critical engagement stretches back to Guy Debord’s influential 1967 work, ''The Society of the Spectacle'', and beyond. For example, in his introduction to a 1995 book edited with Lynn Cooke, ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances'', Peter Wollen writes that an excess of visual display within culture has 'the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images that might best be understood, not simply detached from a real world of things, as Debord implied, but as effacing any trace of the symbolic, condemning the viewer to a world in which we can see everything but understand nothing—allowing us viewer-victims, in Debord’s phrase, only "a random choice of ephemera"’ (1995: 9). It can come as something of a surprise, then, to discover that this humanities tradition in which ideas of the visual are engaged critically appears to have had comparatively little impact on the current enthusiasm for data visualisation that is so prominent an aspect of the turn toward data-intensive scholarship. <br><br> Of course, this (at times explicit) repudiation of criticality could be precisely what makes certain aspects of the digital humanities so seductive for many at the moment. Exponents of the computational turn can be said to be endeavouring to avoid conforming to accepted (and often moralistic) conceptions of politics that have been decided in advance, including those that see it only in terms of power, ideology, race, gender, class, sexuality, ecology, affect etc. Refusing to [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html ‘go through the motions of a critical avant-garde’], to borrow the words of Bruno Latour (2004), they often position themselves as responding to what is perceived as a fundamentally new cultural situation, and to the challenge it represents to our traditional methods of studying culture, by avoiding conventional theoretical manoeuvres and by experimenting with the development of fresh methods and approaches for the humanities instead. <br><br> Manovich, for instance, sees the sheer scale and dynamics of the contemporary new media landscape as presenting the usually accepted means of studying culture that were dominant for so much of the 20th century – the kinds of theories, concepts and methods appropriate to producing close readings of a relatively small number of texts – with a significant practical and conceptual challenge. In the past, ‘[http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories] based on small data sets (for instance, “classical Hollywood cinema”, “Italian Renaissance”, etc.) But how can we track “global digital cultures”, with their billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors’, he asks (Manovich, 2010)? Three years ago Manovich was already describing the ‘numbers of people participating in social networks, sharing media, and creating user-generated content’ as simply ‘astonishing’: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html MySpace, for example,] claims 300 million users. Cyworld, a Korean site similar to MySpace, claims 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of that country's total population (as of 2006) use it. Hi5, a leading social media site in Central America has 100 million users and Facebook, 14 million photo uploads daily. The number of new videos uploaded to YouTube every twenty-four hours (as of July 2006): 65,000. (Manovich in Franklin &amp; Rodriguez’G, 2008)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> The solution Manovich proposes to this ‘data deluge’ is to turn to the very computers, databases, software and vast amounts of born-digital networked cultural content that are causing the problem in the first place, and to use them to help develop new methods and approaches adequate to the task at hand. This is where what he calls Cultural Analytics comes in. [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘The key idea of Cultural Analytics] is the use of computers to automatically analyze cultural artefacts in visual media, extracting large numbers of features that characterize their structure and content’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009); and what is more, to do so not just with regard to the culture of the past, but also with that of the present. To this end, Manovich (not unlike the Google technology company) calls for as much of culture as possible to be made available in external, digital form: [http://virtueelplatform.nl/kennis/analyzing-culture-in-the-21st-century/ ‘not only the exceptional but also the typical]; not only the few cultural sentences spoken by a few "great man" [sic] but the patterns in all cultural sentences spoken by everybody else’ (Manovich in Kerssens &amp; Dekker, 2009). <br><br> In a series of posts on his Found History blog, Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, positions such developments in terms of a shift from a concern with theory and ideology to a [http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ concern with methodology] (2008). In this respect there may well be a degree of [http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/ ‘relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s’] – for those in the US especially – as a result of this move ‘into the space of methodological work’ (Croxall, 2010) and what Scheinfeldt reportedly dubs [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘the post-theoretical age’] (cited in P. Cohen, 2010). The problem, though, is that without such reflexive critical thinking and theories many of those whose work forms part of this computational turn find it difficult to articulate exactly what the point of what they are doing is, as Scheinfeldt readily acknowledges (2010a). <br><br> Take one of the projects mentioned earlier: the attempt by [http://victorianbooks.org Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs] to text-mine all the books published in English in the Victorian age (or at least those digitized by Google). Among other things, this allows Cohen and Gibbs to show that use of the word ‘revolution’ in book titles of the period spiked around [http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ‘the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848’] (D. Cohen, 2010). But what argument are they trying to make with this calculation? What is it we are able to learn as a result of this use of computational power on their part that we did not know already and could not have discovered without it ([http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/ Scheinfeldt], 2008)? <br><br> In an explicit response to Cohen and Gibbs’s project, Scheinfeldt suggests that the problem of theory, or the lack of it, may actually be a question of scale: <br><br> <br />
<blockquote>[http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&utm_content=Google+Reader It expects something of the scale of humanities scholarship] which I’m not sure is true anymore: that a single scholar—nay, every scholar—working alone will, over the course of his or her lifetime ... make a fundamental theoretical advance to the field. <br><br> Increasingly, this expectation is something peculiar to the humanities. ...it required the work of a generation of mathematicians and observational astronomers, gainfully employed, to enable the eventual “discovery” of Neptune... Since the scientific revolution, most theoretical advances play out over generations, not single careers. (Scheinfeldt, 2010b)</blockquote> <br />
<br><br> Now, it is absolutely important that we as scholars experiment with the new tools, methods and materials that digital media technologies create and make possible, in order to bring into play new forms of Foucauldian ''dispositifs'', or what Bernard Stiegler calls ''hypomnemata'', or what I am trying to think in terms of [http://garyhall.info media gifts]. I would include in this 'experimentation imperative’ techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science and other related fields, such as information visualisation, data mining and so forth. Nevertheless, there is something troubling about this kind of deferral of critical and self-reflexive theoretical questions to an unknown point in time, still possibly a generation away. After all, the frequent suggestion is that now is not the right time to be making any such decision or judgement, since we cannot yet know how humanists will eventually come to use these tools and data, and thus what data-driven scholarship may or may not turn out to be capable of, critically, politically, theoretically. One of the consequences of this deferral, however, is that it makes it extremely difficult to judge whether this postponement is indeed acting as a responsible, political and ethical opening to the (heterogeneity and incalculability of the) future, including the future of the humanities; or whether it is serving as an alibi for a naive and rather superficial form of scholarship instead ([https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/ Meeks], 2010). A form of scholarship moreover that, in uncritically and un-self-reflexively adopting techniques and methodologies drawn from computer science, can be seen as part of the larger shift in contemporary society which Lyotard associates with the widespread use of computers and databases, and with the exteriorization of knowledge in relation to the ‘knower’. As we have seen, it is a movement away from a concern with ideals, with what is right and just and true, and toward a concern to legitimate power by optimizing the system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms. <br><br> All of this raises some rather significant and timely questions for the humanities. Is it merely a coincidence that such a turn toward science, computing and data-intensive research is gaining momentum at a time when the UK government is emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and medicine) and withdrawing support and funding from the humanities? Or is one of the reasons all this is happening now due to the fact that the humanities, like the sciences themselves, are under pressure from government, business, management, industry and increasingly the media to prove they provide value for money in instrumental, functional, performative terms? Is the interest in computing a strategic decision on the part of some of those in the humanities? As the project of Cohen and Gibbs shows, one can get funding from the likes of Google (D. Cohen, 2010). In fact, in the summer of 2010 [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all ‘Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research’] (P. Cohen, 2010). To what extent is the take-up of practical techniques and approaches from computing science providing some areas of the humanities with a means of defending (and refreshing) themselves in an era of global economic crisis and severe cuts to higher education, through the transformation of their knowledge and learning into quantities of information –- so-called ‘deliverables’? Can we even position the ‘computational turn’ as an event created to justify such a move on the part of certain elements within the humanities ([http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/ Frabetti], 2010)? <br><br> Where does all this leave us as far as this Living Book on open science is concerned? As the argument above hopefully demonstrates, it is clearly not enough just to attempt to reveal or recover the scientific truth about, say, the environment, to counter the disinformation of others involved in the likes of the Climategate controversy. Nor is it enough merely to make the scientific research openly accessible to the public. Equally, it is not satisfactory simply to make the information, data, and associated tools, techniques and resources freely available to those in the humanities, so they can collectively and collaboratively search, mine, map, graph, model, visualize, analyse and interpret it in new ways – including some that may make it less abstract and easier for the majority of those in society to understand and follow – and, in doing so, help bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’. It is not so much that there is a lack of information, or access to the right kind of information, or information presented in the right kind of way to ensure that the message of the scientific research and data comes across effectively and efficiently. It is not even that there is too much information, too much white noise, as ‘Bifo’ et al call it (2009: 141-142). To be sure, as a [http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/reports/display/id=479774 2010 Mintel report] showed – to stay with the example of climate change – most people in the UK already know what is happening to the environment. They are just suffering from Green Fatigue, they are bored with thinking about it and thus enacting a backlash against what they perceive as ‘extreme’ pressure from environmentalist groups. This is perhaps one reason why [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html ‘the number of cars on UK roads has risen from just over 26million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009’] (Shields, 2010: 30). Yet to argue there is too much information rather risks implying that there is a proper amount of information, and what would that be?<br><br> So we might not want to go along with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari when they contend that ‘we do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it’. But we might nevertheless agree when they argue that what we actually lack is creation: ‘We lack resistance to the present’ (1994: 108). In this respect, it is not just a case of supplying more scientific research and data; nor of making the research and data that has otherwise been closed, hidden, denied or suppressed openly available for free – by opening the already existing memory and databanks to the people, for example (which is what Lyotard ended by suggesting we do). It is also a case of creating work around the research and data that does not simply go along with the shift in the status and nature of knowledge that is currently taking place. As we have seen, it is a shift toward STEM subjects and away from the humanities; toward a concern with optimizing the social system’s performance in instrumental, functional terms, and away from a concern with questions of what is just and right; and toward an emphasis on openness, freedom and transparency, and away from what is capable of disrupting and disturbing society, and what, in remaining resistant to a culture of measurement and calculation, maintains a much needed element of inaccessibility, inefficiency, delay, error, antagonism, heterogeneity and dissensus within the system. <br><br> Can this Living Book on open science be considered one such a creation? And can this series of Living Books about Life be considered another? Are they instances of a resistance to the present? Or just more white noise? <br><br> <br><br> (The above is based on a paper presented at the Data Landscapes, AHRC network event, held in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey at the University of Westminster, London, December 15, 2010. An earlier version of some of the material provided above appeared in Hall [2010]) <br><br> '''References''' <br><br> Arthur, C. (2010), ‘Will Brussels Curb Google Guys’, ''The Guardian'', December 6. <br><br> 'Bifo' Berardi, F., Jacquemet, M. and Vitali, G. (2009), ''Ethereal Shadows: Communications and Power in Contemporary Italy''. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. <br><br> Bergman, M. K. (2001), ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’, ''JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing'', vol.7, no.1, August. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104.&nbsp;<br><br> Birchall, C. (2011) 'There's Been Too Much Secrecy in this City": The False Choice Between Secrecy and Transparency in US Politics,' ''Cultural Politics''&nbsp;7(1), March: 133-156.<br><br>Birchall, C (2011b forthcoming) ‘Transparency, Interrupted: Secrets of the Left’, Between Transparency and Secrecy', Annual Review, ''Theory, Culture and Society, ''December.<br><br> Blair, T. (2010), ''A Journey''. London: Hutchinson. <br><br> Clinton, H. (2010), ‘Internet Freedom: The Prepared Text of U.S. of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech, delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., January 21. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full <br><br> Cohen, D. (2010), ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen'', October 4. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Cohen, P. (2010) ‘Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches’, ''The New York Times'', November 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all. <br><br> Croxall, B. (2010) response to Tanner Higgen, ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. September 10. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1988) ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. London: Athlone. <br><br> Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (1994), ''What is Philosophy?''. New York: Columbia University Press. <br><br> Fung, A., Graham, M., Weil, D. (2007), ''Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br><br> Frabetti, F. (2010) ‘Digital Again? The Humanities Between the Computational Turn and Originary Technicity’, talk given to the Open Media Group, Coventry School of Art and Design. November 9. http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2010/11/09/open-software-and-digital-humanities-federica-frabetti/. <br><br> Franklin, K. D. and Rodriguez’G, K. (2008) ‘The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics’,''HPC Wire''. July 29. http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html. <br><br> Gibbs, R. (2010), Presidential press secretary, cited in ‘White House condemns WikiLeaks' release’, ''MCNBC.com News'', November 28. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40405589/ns/us_news-security. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010a), ‘Open Data: Empowering the Empowered or Effective Data Use for Everyone?’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 2. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/. <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2010b), ‘Open Data (2): Effective Data Use’, ''Gurstein’s Community Infomatics'', September, 9. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/open-data-2-effective-data-use/ <br><br> Gurstein, M. (2011), ‘Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide’, posting to the nettime mailing list, July, 5. <br><br> Hall, G. (2010), 'We Can Know It For You: The Secret Life of Metadata', ''How We Became Metadata''. London: Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster. <br><br> Higgen, T. (2010) ‘Cultural Politics, Critique, and the Digital Humanities’, ''Gaming the System''. May 25. http://www.tannerhiggin.com/2010/05/cultural-politics-critique-and-the-digital-humanities/. <br><br> Hindman, M. (2009), ''The Myth of Digital Democracy''. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. <br><br> Hoffman, M. (2010), ‘EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites’, ''Electronic Frontier Foundation''. March 16. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement. <br><br> Houghton, J. (2009) ‘Open Access - What are the Economic Benefits?: A Comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark’, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne. http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_comparison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf. <br><br> Jarvis, J. (2010), ‘Time For Citizens of the Internet to Stand Up’, ''The Guardian: MediaGuardian'', March 29. <br><br> JISC (2009), ‘Press Release: Open Science - the future for research?, posting to the BOAI list, November 16. 2009. <br><br> Kerssens, N. and Dekker A. (2009), ‘Interview with Lev Manovich for Archive 2020’, ''Virtueel_ Platform''. http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/#2595. <br><br> Knouf, N. (2010), ‘The JJPS Extension: Presenting Academic Performance Information’, ''Journal of Journal Performance Studies'', Vol 1, No 1. Available at http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6. Accessed 20 June, 2010. <br><br> Latour, B (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”’, ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 30, Number 2. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html. <br><br> Liu, A. (2011) ‘Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities’. Paper presented at the panel on ‘The History and Future of the Digital Humanities’” Modern Language Association convention, Los Angeles, January 7. http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities. <br><br> Lyotard, J-F. (1986), ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. <br><br> Lyotard, J.-F. (1991) ''The Inhuman: Reflections on Time''. Cambridge: Polity. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2010a) ‘Cultural Analytics Lectures by Manovich in UK (London and Swansea), March 8-9, 2010’, ''Software Studies Initiative''. March 8. http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/03/cultural-analytics-lecture-by-manovich.html. <br><br> Manovich, L. (2011) ‘Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data’,''Lev Manovich'', April 28: http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/Manovich_trending_paper.pdf. <br><br> Meeks, E. (2010), ‘The Digital Humanities as Imagined Community’, ''Digital Humanities Specialist''. September 14. https://dhs.stanford.edu/the-digital-humanities-as/the-digital-humanities-as-imagined-community/. <br><br> Mintel report, ‘Energy Efficiency in the Home - UK - July 2010’. <br><br> Murray, S. Choi, S., Hoey, J., Kendall, C., Maskalyk, J., and Palepu, A. (2008), ‘Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software at ''Open Medicine''’, ''Open Medicine'', 2(1): e1–e3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/?tool=pmcentrez http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091592/pdf/OpenMed-02-e1.pdf??tool=pmcentrez <br><br> Patterson, M. (2009), ‘Article-Level Metrics at PloS – Addition of Usage Data’, ''PLoS: Public Library of Science''. September 16. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2009/09/article-level-metrics-at-plos-addition-of-usage-data/. <br><br> Pubget (2010), ‘[BOAI] PLoS Launches Fast (Open) PDF Access with Pubget’, posted on the BOAI list by Peter Suber, March 8. <br><br> Poynder, R. (2010), ‘Interview With Jean-Claude Bradley: The Impact of Open Notebook Science’, ''Information Today'', September. http://www.infotoday.com/IT/sep10/Poynder.shtml. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2008), ‘Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2008/03/13/sunset-for-ideology-sunrise-for-methodology/ <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010a) ‘Where’s the Beef?: Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?’, ''Found History'', March 13. http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/05/12/wheres-the-beef-does-digital-humanities-have-to-answer-questions/. <br><br> Scheinfeldt, T. (2010b) response to Dan Cohen, ‘Searching for the Victorians’, ''Dan Cohen''. October 5. http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/04/searching-for-the-victorians/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanCohen+%28Dan+Cohen%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader. <br><br> Shields, R. (2010), ‘Green Fatigue Hits Campaign to Reduce Carbon Footprint’, ''The Independent'', October 10. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-hits-campaign-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-2102585.html. <br><br> Sterling, B. (2005), ''Shaping Things''. Massachussetts: MIT. <br><br> Stolberg, S. G. (2009), ‘On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone’”, ''The New York Times''. January 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html. <br><br> Swan, A. (2009), ‘Open Access and Open Data’, ''2nd NERC Data Management Workshop'', Oxford. February 17-18. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17424/. <br><br> Swartz, A. (2010), ‘When is Transparency Useful?’ ''Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought blog'', February 11. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/usefultransparency. <br><br> Vaidhyanathan, S. (2009), ‘The Googlization of Universities’, ''The NEA 2009 Almanac of Higher Education''. http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubAlmanac/ALM_09_06.pdf <br><br> Wark, M. (2004), ''A Hacker Manifesto''. Harvard: Harvard University Press. <br><br> Westcott, S. (2009) ‘Global Warming: Brits Deny Humans are to Blame,’ ''The Express'', December 7. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144551/Global-warming-Brits-deny-humans-are-to-blame <br><br> The White House (2009), ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open Government’. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ <br><br> Wollen, P. and Cooke, L. eds (1995), ''Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances''. Seattle: Bay Press.</div>Joannahttps://livingbooksaboutlife.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Experience/Introduction&diff=5675Animal Experience/Introduction2014-06-10T10:59:07Z<p>Joanna: </p>
<hr />
<div>== '''Introduction&nbsp;''' ==<br />
<br />
This “living” book about life explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, especially how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. By examining the emotional lives of animals and how they are communicated, we hope to re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures capable of experiencing emotional lives. <br />
<p><br />
The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful in understanding the development of our common ancestral brain-mind, that cognitive activity in which affective changes in the nervous systems of animals registers communication/expression, recognition of individuals, and decision-making. These traits, in turn, suggest that most philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) traditional moral boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals may require serious rethinking. We therefore hope to address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. <br />
<br />
A dominating component of this book is the presentation of scientific data which suggests that emotional communicative practices are fundamental and crucial modes of animal living. We chose to specifically focus on those communicative practices that serve as representational “broadcasts” of self-awareness; that is, of internal emotional experience in its cognitive dimensions. As such, our stance is framed by a phenomenalist theory of nonhuman awareness in which affective states point to the existence of animal “identity” or subjectivity. We refer to this internal realm of self-awareness and its communication as “animal experience.” This at once distances this volume from others in that no other volume addresses the emotional lives of animals specifically (or emotional life as it is found in biological life generally), or the broadcasting of that life to other creatures. However, discussing animal experience and the emotions does place this volume neatly within the scope of the series given that understanding the broadcasting of emotional life may be a key for understanding what “life” (in part) means. If we are to explore the nature of life then asking whether there is some core emotional aspect of living is paramount. If such a core exists, we may be compelled to further reflect on our ethical responses to animals in natural, scientific, and domestic habitats.<br> <br />
<br />
Our approach to the emotional lives of animals is scientifically and philosophically pluralistic. We have presented research from various scientific disciplines concerned with exploring the nature of nonhuman animal life (the biomedical sciences, pharmacological studies, neuroscience, zoology, etc.) but also human and animal sciences with regard to human and animal interaction (animal science and farming production, animal psychology, animal welfare studies, and ecological niche modeling). Philosophical analysis which speaks directly to questions about the nature of animal minds and experience (including historical texts, e.g. Darwin, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Aquinas) were reserved for the end of the book. There we have included references to primary and secondary source materials ranging from ancient through modern and contemporary periods in the history of western thought. This placement of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophical texts vis-à-vis scientific research serves to frame possible ontological frameworks for interpreting the research found in earlier sections of the book. For example, Darwin long ago theorized animal emotion and expression in his The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1852), and that selection may offer a theoretical direction for interpreting statistical data involving animal communication as a form of emotional expression (for example, “A Note on Acoustic Analysis of Dairy Calves Vocalizations at Day 1 After Separation” ''Italian Journal of Animal Science'' vol. 8, no. 33, 113-19, 2009). Even as early as the Presocratic Pythagoras, we see a strong defense of the ontological value of animal experience and its ontological implications, and so various permutations of this thesis are subsequently taken up in critical examination --denied, debated, or reformulated in subsequent thinkers ranging from Hegel to Locke, Whitehead and currently, Nussbaum and Cobb.<br> <br />
<br />
The question as to whether animals experience emotional lives in such a way that a unified subject of a life – a “personality” or mind – is constituted is important not only for the sciences but for the humanities as well, particularly within the domains of animal ethics and political ecology. Assessing the emotional lives of animals, and the cognitive expression of such lives, may be useful for improving human and nonhuman animal relations if it can be established that the personality and agency of animals (established through the exterior expression of interior “animal experience”) warrants more ethical, and even political, obligation on the part of human beings. This volume pushes these questions to their limits in that we are not only just interested to know if animals can “think” (covered in the ''Cognition and Decision'' volume of this series) but whether the communication of animal experience can in turn help humans to measure whether human and nonhuman interactions are to the benefit of more than one species only. <br> <br />
<br />
By exploring these questions within the domain of scientific research, or by drawing on scientific research in order to assess the validity of such questions, one may better understand how humans relate to other forms of life with substantive empirical data to corroborate practical ethical, political, and value claims of philosophical interest. What evidence do we have that suggests animals actually experience similar emotions to humans? Does this affect how we perceive animal welfare? How are we to best interpret this data in light of the current treatment of animals? The results of exploring such questions are of tremendous importance not only for human beings, but for those creatures who are fellow stakeholders in the global environment.<br> <br />
<br />
In what follows the editors would like to briefly look at the research presented in this volume and trace some of its implications. <br />
<br />
<br> '''1. The Emotional Lives of Animals''' <br />
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Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, or dogs happiness and rejection? "When we start to think of animals as individuals with personalities, with minds we also begin to think of them as feeling, sentient beings who experience a whole array of emotions ranging from joy to grief, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, resentment" states Marc Bekoff in an opening Podcast interview which sets the stage of this Living Book About Life. The interview is with leading cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, author of many books including''Minding Animals, Awareness, Emotions and Heart''. During the interview Bekoff provides insight into the principal concerns of this book: animal emotions, experience, and mind. Bekoff sees nonhuman (or "animal") emotion and human emotion forming a continuum, rather than being separated by an unbridgeable rift. As he says, "A Darwinian would say "Well of course they have feelings, humans can’t be the only species which emotions have evolved but that’s not to say that animal emotions are the same as ours." Your emotions aren’t the same as mine. But I ''wouldn’t'' say, "Well since they’re not the same I have them and you don’t."&nbsp; <br />
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In a review article of Bekoff's ''Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart'', we are told how it is Bekoff's principal aim to explore the expression of emotions in animals, the meaning of emotion in animals, and how emotion relates to cognitive mind. Bekoff's interdisciplinary research suggest that animals experience joy and happiness through play, and grief over loss or absence of loved ones. It is also possible, Bekoff's research suggests, that animals feel shame or embarrassment. While not exclusively speculative, Bekoff's research concludes that the best scientific way to study animal emotion is to spend considerable time with animals warning that nonhuman animals ought to be allowed to “speak” for themselves, specifically through the expressions of their emotions, and that human beings should be wary of importing anthropomorphic projections of human emotions to those beings whom they study.<br> <br />
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Jaak Panksepp in “Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans” shows that, when it comes to animal emotions, for all mammalian brains there is a bedrock of emotional feelings. These feelings are contained within the “evolved emotion action” apparatus of the brain. Emotional feelings and instinctual emotional behaviors thus form primary processes of a “core affective consciousness.” Panksepp states that for several reasons affective consciousness is “an intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species.” Core emotional feelings such as seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play are not only intrinsic but may be experientially refined through the interaction with other animals. Further, Panksepp believes it is not the case that secondary processes (e.g. awareness of feelings in the generation of behavioral choices) cannot be studied neuroscientifically. <br> <br />
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In “Attention in Emotion” Ram Vimal reports that the refinement of emotional experience is certainly “other directed” and his research on emotional recognition in the face of the other augments the idea that emotional life is thoroughly ecological – that is, situated within the environmental processes of creaturely relations. For as important as visual attention and its corresponding neural signals are for enhancing creaturely experience, emotion equally comes to factor into the “feedback” of experience, including where attention is initially directed (even beyond systems of reward). So called “targets” of attention (the face, for example) are in fact selectively ranked according to the recognition of a.) facial emotion in others and b.) the attentional signals feedback created by modulated neuronal associated with affective states related to the” subjective experience of” others’ emotions. In fact, the experience of and reaction to the facial emotion of others means that, at a very primal core level, creatures with the appropriate neural physiology link attention directly to the subjective experience of others’ emotions. Indeed, philosophically it would appear that phenomenological intentionality is guided by a more basic affective structure which is other-directed, most acutely through recognition of the affective state present in another’s facial expressions.<br> <br />
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The problem of measuring, or knowing, qualitatively different phenomenal experience from another species (for example as outlined in Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”) is comprehensively dealt with from a scientific viewpoint in the article “An Integrative and Functional Framework for the Study of Animal Emotion and Mood” by Mendl, Burman, and Paul. There it is argued that while conscious experience of emotion cannot be accessed directly, “neural, behavioral, and physiological indicators of emotion can be measured.” Dimensional approaches to emotion regarding “core affective characteristics” can provide a framework for meaningful research.<br> <br> <br />
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'''2. Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation: The Mental/Psychological Lives of Animals'''<br> <br />
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In a famous paper on the problem of consciousness, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” This deceptively simple question is key in theories which assert that the defining feature of consciousness is its “phenomenality:” that is in the various dimensions ''subjective experience''. Ned Block, a well-known philosopher of mind agrees that conscious states of mind are characterized by the experience that it is “something like” to be in those states. He distinguishes between phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness. The former, called “qualia,” exhibit “what it is to be a conscious creature” in that they are experienced as direct, unmediated qualities such as color, form, sensation, emotion, and movement.<br> <br />
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Access consciousness, not necessarily qualitative, describes functional states which make sensory information available for verbal expression, the control of behavior, discrimination, etc. Both qualia and access states raise important questions: for philosophy of mind are manifold: in what ways do these these “qualia” (qualities subjectively experienced), in conjunction with access states, causally effect the brain, or vice-versa? Do these states of consciousness “really exist” in either the mental or physical worlds, and do they offer any insight as to how the physical brain produces subjective experience?&nbsp; <br> <br />
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The articles in this chapter explore and offer empirical support for a model of animal consciousness which preserves the phenomenal, lived quality of mental states. In short, there is evidence for access states that may accompany phenomenal states. Phenomenal states, it is argued, includes complex emotional states.&nbsp; Specific emotional states, such as anger, grief, or depression, may be common to human and nonhuman animals.&nbsp; And it also seems that these emotional states may be necessary for animal survival.&nbsp; How could this be so?&nbsp; Jaak Panskepp in "Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression," argues that affective neuroscience has shown that animal emotional states are primary processes which have intrinsic states such as rage, fear, play, care, and surprisingly, grief. Such felt qualities provide necessary information about ranges of comfort levels in the “quest for survival.”&nbsp; <br />
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Rosati and Hare study the role of affective responses in chimps and bonobos in "Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes," finding a range of “complex emotional expressions” that form inherent links between complex cognitive functions such as decision-making to the experience of value.&nbsp; Certainly affective states and the emotions appear to be part of the decision making process, even for nonhumans.<br> <br />
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Thierry Steimer’s paper, "Animal models of anxiety disorders in rats and mice: some conceptual issues" follows with the call for exploring models of anxiety that yield deeper knowledge of underlying emotional pathologies. In addition to nonhuman primates, rats and mice show distinct behavioral responses (in coping strategies) linked to brain activity associated with experiencing states of danger and the threat to survival.&nbsp; The problem, pace Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is, "What is it like to think like a rat?"&nbsp; Are nonhuman models of anxiety comparable to human ones?&nbsp; Study of nonhuman phenomenal experience seems to suggest that nonhuman animals have complex psychological mental lives, including common states of anxiety.&nbsp; Those lives are motivated, entail decision making, and are of complex emotional values, values that stem from basic "core" emotional values (grief, panic, joy, fear. etc.) that human beings also share.<br> <br> <br />
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'''3. Broadcasting Consciousness in Animals: Cognition and Communication''' <br />
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Recent research into the nature of animal consciousness has tended towards either investigating animal species (notably nonhuman primates) as models for human consciousness, or investigating whether particular species have conscious experiences that can be characterized as subjective and intentional. These articles draw upon a more general principle in the study of consciousness- the “global workspace” approach first developed by Bernard Baars to explain consciousness in humans. Recent animal studies suggest that animal brains exhibit the abilities to relate specific sets of conscious and unconscious processes in encoding and distributing information matching psychological and neural phenomena. This body of research may shed light on specific ways in which access-consciousness not only conveys sensory information, but contains within itself or supports the qualitative properties of consciousness in general. These particular studies shed light on how the neural architectures of various nonhuman species allow for degrees of social experience in facial recognition, expression, vocal identity, pleasure, and pain. In doing so, they underscore Darwin’s intuition that due to a common early ancestor we might understand emotions in man as analogous to that in animals.<br> <br />
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Marian Dawkins argues in "Animal Minds and Animal Emotion" that our understanding need not be restricted, as it usually has been, to the search for higher cognitive abilities in animals. It could well be the case that research into how animals experience basic affective states, including the “negative and persistent” emotions associated with suffering, will support the thesis that animals indeed have conscious experience.<br> <br />
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Furthermore, the articles by Scheumann and Roser, et al, and Tate and Fischer, et. al respectively, explore the experience of a sense of identity in animal minds. In both studies, the vocal correlates of sender-identity in kittens and the processing of facial identity and facial expression in primates and ungulate species show strong correlations between specialized brain functions and various levels of subjective experience. Specifically, both studies have shown that vocalization between species can serve as a communicative "affect-intensity" where certain acoustic parameters encode indexical cues (arousal, etc.)&nbsp; Even monkeys and sheep have shown that facial cues can serve as emotional communicative cues, important in social formation.&nbsp; More importantly, these cues serve to indicate that deep emotional and complex cognitive work is occuring within nonhuman species.&nbsp; Interestingly, Tate and Fischer, et. al reveal that there could be "remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species."<br> <br />
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<br> '''4. The Impact of Animal Psychology on Our Understanding of Animal Welfare''' <br />
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Understanding the emotional lives of animals requires that one take into account the rich and complex nature of experience had by a diverse range of species. Part of this complex range of experience is “negative” emotional response and corresponding psychological stress. As Galhardo and Oliveira tell us in "Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish," “The ability to respond to stress is vital to the survival to any living organism, though sustained reactions can become detrimental to the health and welfare of animals.” Stress responses of vertebrates are known and generally accepted as contributing to detrimental psychological impact over sustained periods of time. In fish, physiological and psychological components of stress are just as apparent as they are in mammals, however the psychological component of fish-experience is not well studied. While it is true that some researchers deny complex mental experiences to fish on the basis that they lack a neocortex, recent studies have shown “neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes in fish that are not only equivalent to other vertebrates, but allow the inferring of some forms of mental representation." Thus, given that fish do possess emotional processes of some basic kind - evidenced by neuroendocrinal activity - a rethinking of the place of fish within the domain of animal ethics may be needed.&nbsp; (In other experiments it has been recently revealed that crabs and lobsters, denied mental representation on the same basis that fish have been, do feel pain and are capable of remembering and learning. See: Magee and Elwood, "Shock avoidance by discrimination learning in the shore crab (''Carcinus maenas'') is consistent with a key criterion for pain" in ''The Journal for Experimental Biology ''Vol. 216 (Feb. 2013): 353-58.) <br />
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It may seem fantastic that it is possible to determine the psychological states of animals, particularly with a focus on how disease, stress, and pain affect animal emotional states. However, as Brydges and Braithwaite tell us in "Measuring Animal Welfare: What Can Cognition Contribute?", through studies in the biological function and physiology of animals that correspond to the activity of cognitive states, as well through new methods in discerning what animals want or prefer within specific cognitive states, it is possible to “discover the mental or affective state of an animal (i.e. positive or negative affective states)” that reveal how negative impacts upon animal well being cause distress to the emotional life of the animal. They argue that, indeed, there is such a thing as “animal mental welfare,” and that studies in animal psychology can actually help to determine how an understanding of animal emotions can improve human and nonhuman animal interactions in the context of welfare. An excellent example of such research is found in Jeon, Song, and Kim “A note on acoustic analysis of dairy calves at 1 day of separation” where it is shown through vocalization analysis that dairy calves suffer measurable states of anxiety due to premature separation stress. <br />
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In David Fraser’s article, “Understanding Animal Welfare,” we learn about the impact of animal psychology on our understanding of animal welfare. Beyond freedom from disease and injury, Fraser emphasizes that part of the basic health of an animal is freedom from prolonged stress and negative affective states, states like pain or distress. Emotional health should contribute to what human beings perceive as living a reasonably “natural life.” The positive emotional health of animals may require a mandate, much like the sciences mandate food safety or environmental sustainability. In this way science can further proceed within a framework of values which recognizes not only the reality of animal emotional lives, but that prolonged negative affect upon the emotional lives of animals, including their corresponding psychological states, may cause undue harm.<br> <br> <br />
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'''5. The Ethics of Human Interrelations with Animals: What Do We Know Now and How Does it Affect Our Interactions with Animals?''' <br />
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Considering the emotional lives of aniamls certainly involves considering how human emotion figures into the treatment of animals, ethically. Whether to laboratories or zoos, or free range environments, human beings react to the environments of animals (and animal the lives had in those environments) with differing emotional responses. We would like to think that the generally positive (or ambivalent) human emotional response to the treatment of animals indicates that, in fact, animal welfare and corresponding animal emotional experience, is largely positive and "good."<br> <br />
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This section begins with Bekoff’s “’Good Welfare’ Isn’t ‘Good Enough" where Bekoff – a leading expert in animal emotion and intelligence - explores what we might mean by the phrase “animal welfare” in a broad and constructive sense. This involves “asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think ‘they’ are, what we think we know, and what we actually know.” For Bekoff, “good welfare” is not enough because existing laws still permit the pain, suffering, and death of billions of animals for research, education, and amusement, let alone for food or for clothing. He states that “the emotional lives are not at all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death.” Further, not enough human beings are affected enough to be disturbed by that pain, suffering, and death. We simply do not voice our emotions in a constructive enough way to the current treatment of animals. <br />
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Mikaela Ciprian, et. al. identifies emotional ethics as the prevalent ethical framework when compared utilitarianism, deontology, or relativism. Specifically, Ciprian analyzed which frameworks were most prevalent in discourse targeted at animal ethics, finding emotional language to be the most common. Likewise, Thomas Kelch in "The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights" analyzes the way that we look at animal rights issues, revealing that rights should be supported by a consideration of the emotions, especially where emotions are “essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives.” As he writes, "emotions are of relevance in determining who should be rightsholders” as “our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” <br />
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The last two articles (Kendal Shepherd's "The role of the companion animal veterinary surgeon in behavioural husbandry" and Agostino Sevi et al's "Factors of welfare reduction in dairy sheep and goats" provide illustrative examples of the above thinking, drawing on compassion by advocating companionship to nonhuman animals in stressful contexts. Specifically, Sheperd believes that human (or nonhuman) animal companionship can maximize the welfare of both humans and animals, especially during stressful times such as surgery where perhaps each species may need the other. From the approach of a vetinarian, Shepherd theorizes ways in which surgeons can offer companion-like relationships to their animals so as to proactively improve the behavioral, mental, and emotional needs of the animal. He concludes that emotional needs must be nurtured in the same way as physical needs. Along this line of thinking Sevi, Casamassima, Pulina, and Pazzona argue that among other factors causing the reduction in the well-being of sheep and goats is the emotional distress caused by lack of companionship. Generally, it is argued that companionship for many species of animals maintains positive mental and emotional health. <br />
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<br> '''6. Animal Emotion and Cognition: Philosophical Considerations ''' <br />
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In the preceding sections of this volume, we offer research from several related disciplines which informs the scientific study of animal emotion and cognition, specifically with respect to topics which support the thesis that animals do indeed, in varying degrees and kinds, have subjective lives which they are able to express. Taken as a whole, the research suggests that there are enough similarities in the evolutionary paths of human and nonhuman nervous systems to support the notion that animal consciousness ought to be understood in terms of a continuum of subjective experience. This necessitates that we broaden our method of study and turn towards the humanities, serving to deepen our engagement with animals understood as the bearers of emotional lives - lives that are capable of suffering pyschological stress as well as the joys of companionship. It is a new way of thinking to consider animals in this way. But this begs the question as to how animal lives, their interior subjective experiences, their emotions, their cognitive abilities, have been understood until now. Therefore, our final chapter offers a comprehensive survey of the major figures in the history of Western philosophy who have a impacted our thinking about the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of animal consciousness. The editors have chosen those “classics” which articulate and shape philosophical discourse on the subject. Topics and themes introduced even as early as the Pre-Socratic period continue to resonate and repeat in subsequent medieval, modern, and contemporary modes of thought. The entire discussion can be characterized by variations of two points of view. We align ourselves with those that support the existence of subjective experience, specifically expressed as cognition, emotion, and capabilities in animals. We thus provide a grounding for the call to improve animal welfare. The opposing position, represented by the minority of philosophers in this chapter, denies or at least largely calls into question the existence of truly subjective and irreducible properties of animal minds. <br />
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Violin’s piece on Pythagoras sets the stage, introducing his defense of “animal psyche” and the “call for the compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings” who function together in a unified and living cosmos. This idea is taken up and further developed in Plato’s dialogue ''Timaeus'', which at base portrays the cosmos as a “World Animal,” enlivened and made intelligent in all aspects by the creative activity of the Demi-Urge. In ''De Anima'', Aristotle follows with his own analysis of the basic element which animates organic life, the soul. That which distinguishes living beings from all others is the ability of a body to move itself. In Book II, Aristotle ascribes to animals “the faculties of discrimination,” thought and sense, and the origination of local movement. <br />
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What follows is Aquinas and the medieval development of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche/soul and its role in determining where animals fall in the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. Barad, in her article, points out the inconsistencies of Aquinas, who, according to tradition, has been grouped with Descartes in rejecting the felt qualities of animal minds. A more nuanced understanding of medieval ontology reveals that animals had to be “superior to vegetative life” and exhibiting degrees of voluntary action, but Aquinas forgets the ethical dimensions of his own position and ultimately denies freedom and full moral consideration for animals. <br />
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In ''The Discourse on Method'', Descartes his famous denial of animal minds, describing them as automata whose features can be fully explained by the mechanistic theories gaining ground in the scientific outlook of the time. John Locke, however, ascribes individuality to animals in that they are “thinking substances,” albeit without an immaterial soul. <br />
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The selections on Hegel examine how we are to understand animals in terms of Hegel’s general orientation to consciousness: consciousness is only truly present in reciprocal relations among self-conscious beings. While this led him to deny status to animals, interpretations of Hegel do not fully support his conclusions. <br />
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Whitehead’s philosophy, where ultimate value is present in all forms of life, was striking in its time in its rereading of process in Darwinism, specifically with respect to the possible continuities between lower and higher order forms of complexity of animal life. Finally, contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Philippe Descola address ontological and ethical considerations in the treatment of animals in their own unique way, drawing on connections between ontology and social and political philosophy and ecology. <br />
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<br></div>Joanna