Tactful animals: How the study of touch can inform the animal morality debate

Monsó, Susana; Wrage, Birte

doi:10.1080/09515089.2020.1859100

Cited by 22 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 101 publications

(73 reference statements)

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“…For the case of social mammals, we know that parental care also has a strong effect on social development, and the embodied nature of parental care is key for this (Harlow 1958;Harlow et al 1965). In fact, the effects of parental touch on development seem to generalize across mammal species in two major regards, as Monsó and Wrage (2021) point out: Firstly, parental touch has an influence on emotional selfregulation. It has an immediate soothing effect as well as a long-term effect on stress response, i.e.…”

Section: Parental Care As Moral Care In Nonhuman Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is the crucial element that creates and maintains the bond between infant and primary caregiver, which, in turn, sets the stage for the capacity to form attachments more generally, and thus informs the occurrence and quality of future relationships (Feldman 2011;Hertenstein et al 2006). Parental care thus shapes two capacities that are highly relevant for an individual's social life (see Monsó & Wrage 2021).…”

Section: Parental Care As Moral Care In Nonhuman Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This influence of parental care on emotional self-regulation and on the capacity to form attachments causally connects parental care to capacities of empathic care in social animals. To be able to care for another in these terms, one needs to be able to overcome a purely egoistical perspective, which requires the capacity to self-regulate (Monsó & Wrage 2021). Being overwhelmed by distress is counterproductive to empathic caring, because it prevents the individual from being able to pay attention to others and empathize with them, as demonstrated in rats by Ben-Ami , and in dogs by Sanford et al (2018).…”

Section: Parental Care As Moral Care In Nonhuman Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some headway has been made towards acknowledging morality in nonhuman animals by scientists and philosophers who argue for the de-intellectualization of these traditional Western notions of morality (e.g. Waller 1997; Bekoff & Pierce 2009;Rowlands 2012;Monsó 2015;Monsó et al 2018;Rutledge-Prior 2019;Behdadi 2021;Monsó & Wrage 2021). They argue for minimal accounts of moral agency that do not require moral judgement as metarepresentational scrutiny of reasons for action.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Caring animals and care ethics

Wrage¹

2022

Biol Philos

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Are there nonhuman animals who behave morally? In this paper I answer this question in the affirmative by applying the framework of care ethics to the animal morality debate. According to care ethics, empathic care is the wellspring of morality in humans. While there have been several suggestive analyses of nonhuman animals as empathic, much of the literature within the animal morality debate has marginalized analyses from the perspective of care ethics. In this paper I examine care ethics to extract its core commitments to what is required for moral care: emotional motivation that enables the intentional meeting of another’s needs, and forward-looking responsibility in particular relationships. What is not required, I argue, are metarepresentational capacities or the ability to scrutinize one’s reasons for action, and thus being retrospectively accountable. This minimal account of moral care is illustrated by moral practices of parental care seen in many nonhuman animal species. In response to the worry that parental care in nonhuman animals lacks all evaluation and is therefore nonmoral I point to cultural differences in human parenting and to normativity in nonhuman animals.

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Section: Parental Care As Moral Care In Nonhuman Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Parental Care As Moral Care In Nonhuman Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Parental Care As Moral Care In Nonhuman Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Caring animals and care ethics

Wrage¹

2022

Biol Philos

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“…Moreover, and likely due to the focus on visual pathways for information transmission in studies of animal social learning, most research has overlooked the importance of tactile interactions [164]. However, as Monsó and Wrage [165] note, given the universality of touch across social animals "discriminative touch thus likely constitutes the very first source of social information" (p. 9). Therefore, when applying social learning to behavioral management practices, the information should be provided in ways that are relevant and accessible to the animals themselves.…”

Section: Learning Modalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leveraging Social Learning to Enhance Captive Animal Care and Welfare

Hopper

2021

JZBG

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From ants to zebras, animals are influenced by the behavior of others. At the simplest level, social support can reduce neophobia, increasing animals’ exploration of novel spaces, foods, and other environmental stimuli. Animals can also learn new skills more quickly and more readily after observing others perform them. How then can we apply animals’ proclivity to socially learn to enhance their care and welfare in captive settings? Here, I review the ways in which animals (selectively) use social information, and propose tactics for leveraging that to refine the behavioral management of captive animals: to enhance socialization techniques, enrichment strategies, and training outcomes. It is also important to consider, however, that social learning does not always promote the uniform expression of new behaviors. There are differences in animals’ likelihood to seek out or use socially provided information, driven by characteristics such as species, rank, age, and personality. Additionally, social learning can result in inexact transmission or the transmission of undesirable behaviors. Thus, understanding when, how, and why animals use social information is key to developing effective strategies to improve how we care for animals across settings and, ultimately, enhance captive animal welfare.

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Caring animals and the ways we wrong them

Benz-Schwarzburg

Wrage

2023

Biol Philos

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Many nonhuman animals have the emotional capacities to form caring relationships that matter to them, and for their immediate welfare. Drawing from care ethics, we argue that these relationships also matter as objectively valuable states of affairs. They are part of what is good in this world. However, the value of care is precarious in human-animal interactions. Be it in farming, research, wildlife ‘management’, zoos, or pet-keeping, the prevention, disruption, manipulation, and instrumentalization of care in animals by humans is ubiquitous. We criticize a narrow conception of welfare that, in practice, tends to overlook non-experiential forms of harm that occur when we interfere with caring animals. Additionally, we point out wrongs against caring animals that are not just unaccounted for but denied by even an expansive welfare perspective: The instrumentalization of care and caring animals in systems of use can occur as a harmless wrong that an approach purely focused on welfare may, in fact, condone. We should therefore adopt an ethical perspective that goes beyond welfare in our dealings with caring animals.

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Tactful animals: How the study of touch can inform the animal morality debate

Cited by 22 publications

References 101 publications

Caring animals and care ethics

Caring animals and care ethics

Leveraging Social Learning to Enhance Captive Animal Care and Welfare

Caring animals and the ways we wrong them

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