Many people in animal studies favor the use of gendered pronouns for nonhuman animals, even in cases where the animal’s sex is unknown. By contrast, many people in gender studies favor the use of the default singular they for humans. Our aim is to show that the most obvious ways of fitting these pronoun norm proposals together—a hybrid option (“he”/“she” for animals, “they” for humans) and a uniform one (i.e., default to the singular they when gender identity is unknown, regardless (...) of species)—have serious costs. Animal advocates will worry that the hybrid approach marks animals as fundamentally different from human beings, while advocates for gender justice will worry that preserving gendered pronouns for animals will also preserve gender essentialism. However, switching to a universal default singular they—that is, where we use “they” for all individuals, both human and nonhuman—may set back animals’ interest in being seen as sentient individuals. Our aim is not to defend a solution to this problem, but simply to argue that this is a problem that deserves consideration when assessing candidate pronoun norms. (shrink)

There were excellent reasons to reform intensive animal agriculture prior to COVID-19. Unfortunately, though, intensive animal agriculture has grown rapidly over the last century. All signs indicate that it will continue to grow in the future. This is bad news for billions of animals. It’s also bad news for those who want an animal-friendly food system. Because the public isn’t very concerned about the plight of animals—or is concerned, but has a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance—animal activists regularly engage in (...) indirect activism. Indirect activism involves arguing that some cause that’s indirectly related to the activist’s primary agenda provides reasons to act in ways that are congruent with that agenda. In this paper, we consider the two indirect arguments that animal activists advanced in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic: first, some used COVID-19 to criticize intensive animal agriculture—many of these had US-based audiences as their target; second, and more modestly, some activists used COVID-19 to condemn wet markets specifically. We contend that both arguments had the risk of backfiring: they risked promoting the very systems that are worst for animals. We then assess the moral significance of this risk, concluding that while it may have been permissible to advance these arguments, there were some serious moral considerations against doing so—ones that weren’t addressed by flagging animal activists’ concern for animals or any other stakeholder in the discussion. In both cases, we think there are plausible precautionary arguments against the strategies that these activists pursued. Additionally, in the case of arguments against wet markets specifically, we contend that the precautionary argument can be supplemented with a side constraint condition that, arguably, activists violated insofar as they were acting in ways that maintain a racist and xenophobic system. (shrink)

Birds are not commonly admired for emotional expression, and when they are, the focus is typically on negative states; yet vocal behavior is considered a direct reflection of an individual’s emotional state. Given that over 4000 species of songbird produce learned, complex, context-specific vocalizations, we make the case that songbirds are conspicuously broadcasting distinct positive emotional states and that hearing songs can also induce positive states in other birds. Studies are reviewed that demonstrate that that the production of sexually motivated (...) song reflects an emotional state of anticipatory reward-seeking (i.e., mate-seeking), while outside the mating context song in gregarious flocks reflects a state of intrinsic reward. Studies are also reviewed that demonstrate that hearing song induces states of positive anticipation and reward. This review brings together numerous studies that highlight a potentially important role for the songbird nucleus accumbens, a region nearly synonymous with reward in mammals, in positive emotional states that underlie singing behavior and responses to song. It is proposed that the nucleus accumbens is part of an evolutionarily conserved circuitry that contributes context-dependently to positive emotional states that motivate and reward singing behavior and responses to song. Neural mechanisms that underlie basic emotions appear to be conserved and similar across vertebrates. Thus, these findings in songbirds have the potential to provide insights into interventions that can restore positive social interactions disrupted by mental health disorders in humans. (shrink)

Šiame straipsnyje pirmosios pokomunistinės kartos (gim. 1991–2000) vertybių analizei 24-iose pokomunistinėse šalyse pasitelkiama Ronaldo Ingleharto materialistinių-postmaterialistinių vertybių kaitos teorija. 1990–1993 m., 1999–2004 m., 2008– 2014 m. ir 2017–2022 m. bangų Pasaulio ir Europos vertybių tyrimų duomenų analizė leidžia daryti išvadas, kad daugumoje pokomunistinių šalių postmaterialistinės vertybės pirmojoje pokomunistinėje kartoje, palyginti su vyresnėmis kartomis, sustiprėjo. Tokia tendencija ypač ryški ekonomiškai stipriose pokomunistinėse šalyse, tačiau matoma ir ekonomiškai nepasiturinčiose. Tik šešiose šalyse fiksuotas statistiškai reikšmingas ryšys tarp religijos svarbos žmogaus gyvenime ir materialistinių-postmaterialistinių (...) vertybių pirmojoje pokomunistinėje kartoje. Tyrimas taip pat atskleidė, kad šalyse, kuriose dominuoja Romos katalikų tikėjimas, postmaterialistinės vertybės yra labiau paplitusios nei stačiatikių ortodoksų ir islamo dominuojamose šalyse pirmojoje pokomunistinėje kartoje. (shrink)