The sentience shift in animal research

Browning, Heather; Veit, Walter

doi:10.1080/20502877.2022.2077681

Cited by 25 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 60 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…3 The debate covers familiar territory, given that the possession of sentience is widely accepted as a threshold capacity beyond which rights can legitimately be claimed. 4 Yet, for those of us working in the field of animal law, what was of note in discussions around LaMDA was not whether it had passed this threshold. Rather, we noted an uneasy disconnect between the ease with which commentators speculated about how AI sentience may affect our future legal relationships with artificial beings, although the same attention was not given to rights claims that could be made by the billions of biological beings we know to be sentient and with whom we share our planet here and now.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Legal Status of Human Cerebral Organoids: Lessons from Animal Law

Jowitt¹

2023

Camb Q Healthc Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper will ask whether the legal status presently afforded to nonhuman animals ought to influence regulatory debates concerning human cerebral organoids. The New York Courts recently refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus to Happy the Elephant as she was property rather than a legal person while at the same time accepting that she is a moral patient deserving of rights protection. An undesirable situation has therefore arisen in which the law holds a being with moral status to be incapable of benefitting from legal redress due to their legal status as property. The author argues that this is something that we ought to avoid when designing the regulatory framework which will govern the use of human cerebral organoids. Yet, a difference exists in that, whereas the judges already accept Happy is a moral patient, there is presently no consensus around the moral status of organoids. This paper will consider whether human cerebral organoids have passed the moral threshold of sentience. If they have, or are close to doing so, regulators ought to consider their legal status in advance so as to ensure that adequate limitations are placed on this usage so as to avoid unethical practices.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Legal Status of Human Cerebral Organoids: Lessons from Animal Law

Jowitt¹

2023

Camb Q Healthc Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…I criticize Tononi's integrated information theory of consciousness elsewhere in more detail(Veit 2022b). 5 This shift has admittedly also been motivated by ethical considerations(Browning and Veit 2022). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Origins of Consciousness or the War of the Five Dimensions

Veit¹

2023

A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The goal of this article is to break down the dimensions of consciousness, attempt to reverse engineer their evolutionary function, and make sense of the origins of consciousness by breaking off those dimensions that are more likely to have arisen later. A Darwinian approach will allow us to revise the philosopher's concept of consciousness away from a single "thing," an all-or-nothing quality, and towards a concept of phenomenological complexity that arose out of simple valenced states. Finally, I will offer support for an evaluation-first view of consciousness by drawing on recent work in experimental philosophy of mind. Keywords Animal minds; Sentience; Organisms; Phenomenological complexity; Origins of Consciousness[I]f we contemplate the subject, we shall find it difficult or impossible to imagine a form of consciousness, however dim, which does not present, in a correspondingly undeveloped condition, the capacity of preferring some of its states to others-that is, of feeling a distinction between quiescence and vague discomfort, which, with a larger accession of the mind-element, grows into the vivid contrast between a Pleasure and a Pain. I think, therefore, it is needless to say more in justification of the level on the diagram at which I have written these words.

show abstract

“…"Animal Sentience" 1 Browning and Veit 2022). As per the epigraph featured above, this article will try to help the realization of Griffin's vision of the "final, crowning chapter of the Darwinian revolution" by helping this burgeoning field to cast off the chains of a pre-Darwinian view of the mind in both philosophy and science and begin a transition towards a true Darwinian science of consciousness in which its evolutionary origin, function, and phylogenetic diversity are moved from the field's periphery to its very center.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Comparative Study of Animal Consciousness

Veit

2022

Biol Theory

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In order to develop a true biological science of consciousness, we have to remove humans from the center of reference and develop a bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, as Donald Griffin intended with his call for a “cognitive ethology.” In this article, I make use of the pathological complexity thesis (Veit 2022a, b, c) to show that we can firmly ground a comparative study of animal consciousness by drawing on the resources of state-based behavioral life history theory. By comparing the different life histories of gastropods and arthropods, we will be able to make better sense of the possible origins of consciousness and its function for organisms in their natural environments.

show abstract

The sentience shift in animal research

Cited by 25 publications

References 60 publications

On the Legal Status of Human Cerebral Organoids: Lessons from Animal Law

On the Legal Status of Human Cerebral Organoids: Lessons from Animal Law

The Origins of Consciousness or the War of the Five Dimensions

Towards a Comparative Study of Animal Consciousness

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About