Understanding Animals

Philosophy for Dog and Cat Lovers

Lars Svendsen

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781789141597
• eBook ISBN: 9781789141870
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

How do animals perceive the world? What does it really feel like to be a cat or a dog? In Understanding Animals, Lars Svendsen investigates how humans can attempt to understand the lives of other animals. The book delves into animal communication, intelligence, self-awareness, loneliness, and grief, but most fundamentally how humans and animals can cohabit and build a form of friendship. Svendsen provides examples from many different animal species—from chimpanzees to octopus—but his main focus is on cats and dogs: the animals that many of us are closest to in our daily lives. Drawing upon both philosophical analysis and the latest scientific discoveries, Svendsen argues that the knowledge we glean from our relationships with our pets is as valid and insightful as any scientific study of human-animal relations. With this entertaining and thought-provoking book, animal lovers and pet owners will gain a deeper understanding of what it is like to be an animal—and in turn, a human.

References

Introduction

1 Stephen Jay Gould, Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History (Cambridge, MA, 1998), p. 376.

2 Martin Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), pp. 409f.

3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch (Oxford, 1998), p. 24.

1 Wittgenstein’s Lion and Kafka’s Ape

1 Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1986), p. 223.

2 For a good account of these signs, see Genevieve von Petzinger, The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World’s Oldest Symbols (New York and London, 2016).

3 Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 206.

4 Ibid., p. 223.

5 Franz Kafka, ‘A Report to an Academy’, in The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York, 1995).

6 Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Robert B. Louden (Cambridge, 2006), p. 233n.

7 Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Machine Man and Other Writings, trans. Ann Thomson (Cambridge and New York, 1996), pp. 11f.

2 Language

1 For a good, summarized overview and discussion around the research into the language of apes, see John Dupré, ‘Conversations with Apes’, in Humans and Other Animals (Oxford, 2006), chap. 11.

2 Cf. Kevin N. Laland, Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, 2017), p. 178.

3 Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky and W. T. Fitch, ‘The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?’, Science, 298 (2002).

4 Cf. Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (New Haven, CT, 1944).

5 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions, 1912–1951 (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge, 1993), p. 394.

6 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1986), § 206.

7 Wittgenstein, Zettel, Werkausgabe, vol. VIII (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), § 567.

3 Seeing Animal Consciousness

1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1986), p. 178.

2 Ibid., § 357.

3 Cf. ibid., p. 223.

4 Ibid., p. 213.

5 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (London, 1984), p. 316.

6 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 647.

7 Cf. ibid., § 580.

8 Wittgenstein, Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie ii, Werkausgabe, vol. VII (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), § 570. Cf. Wittgenstein, Zettel, Werkausgabe, vol. VIII (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), § 225.

9 Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 303.

10 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London, 1962), p. 184.

11 Wittgenstein, Zettel, § 526.

12 Wittgenstein, Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie II, § 328.

13 Wittgenstein, Zettel, § 520.

14 Gregory Berns, What It’s Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience (New York, 2017).

15 Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain ( New York, 2011), p. 190.

16 Adam P. Steiner and A. David Redish, ‘Behavioral and Neurophysiological Correlates of Regret in Rat Decision-making on a Neuroeconomic Task’, Nature Neuroscience, 17 (2014).

4 A Human Form

1 Conwy Lloyd Morgan, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (London, 1894), p. 53.

2 Conwy Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence (London, 1890–91), pp. 398f.

3 Frans B. M. de Waal, ‘Anthropomorphism and Anthropodenial: Consistency in Our Thinking about Humans and Other Animals’, Philosophical Topics, XXVII/1 (1999).

4 Zana Bahl...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• ONE Wittgenstein’s Lion and Kafka’s Ape
• TWO Language
• THREE Seeing Animal Consciousness
• FOUR A Human Form
• FIVE Mind-reading
• SIX Intelligence
• SEVEN For Now We See through a Mirror, Darkly
• EIGHT Time
• NINE Can Animals Be Understood?
• TEN Surroundings
• ELEVEN To Be an Animal
• TWELVE The Dog
• THIRTEEN The Cat
• FOURTEEN The Octopus
• FIFTEEN Loneliness and Grief
• SIXTEEN Do Animals Have Morals?
• SEVENTEEN Humans and Other Animals
• EIGHTEEN Friendship
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS