Phenomenology and the Problem of Animal Minds

Environmental Values 18 (1):33 - 49 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Attempts to determine whether nonhuman animals have minds are often thought to raise a particular sceptical concern; I call it the problem of animal minds. If there are such things as animal minds, the sceptic reasons, they will be private realms to which we humans do not have direct epistemological access. So how could one ever know for certain that animals are not mindless mechanisms? In this paper I use a phenomenological approach to show that this familiar sceptical problem presupposes an account of our relations with others which is both too individualistic and too 'mentalistic' to shed interpretative light on our relations with animals. I conclude that although inquiries into how animals experience the world raise a host of difficult problems, they do not raise one big problem, the problem of animal minds, which must be solved before any such inquiries can get off the ground

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 99,462

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

How Prejudice Affects the Study of Animal Minds.Keefner Ashley - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Waterloo
Descartes on the Animal Within, and the Animals Without.Evan Thomas - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (8):999-1014.
Empathy and animal ethics.Richard Holton & Rae Langton - 1999 - In Dale Jamieson (ed.), Singer and His Critics. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
There is an epistemic problem in animal consciousness research.Aida Roige - 2023 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1.
The problem of other minds: Wittgenstein's phenomenological perspective.Søren Overgaard - 2006 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 5 (1):53-73.
Animal Minds.Fred Dretske - 2001 - Philosophic Exchange 31 (1).

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-09-29

Downloads
70 (#251,885)

6 months
10 (#288,628)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Simon Paul James
Durham University

Citations of this work

Animal Relations.Emily Brady - 2009 - Environmental Values 18 (1):1-4.
Heidegger and the human.Ingo Farin & Jeff Malpas (eds.) - 2022 - Albany: State University of New York Press.

Add more citations

References found in this work

What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1974 - Philosophical Review 83 (4):435-50.
What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1979 - In Mortal questions. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 435 - 450.
Of spirit: Heidegger and the question.Jacques Derrida - 1989 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Of Spirit.Jacques Derrida - 1989 - Critical Inquiry 15 (2):457-474.

View all 13 references / Add more references