Download or read book Animals Ethics and Trade written by Joyce D'Silva and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-16 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern urban life cuts us off from direct connection with the animal world, yet daily the lives of millions of animals are affected by what we consume and wear and what we trade in. The use of animals for food, labour and pleasure pursuits has long been justified with the assumption that unlike humans, animals aren't fully sentient beings. In recent years, however, science has revealed an astonishing array of complex animal behaviour, and scientists and policy makers now accept that the animals we make use of are indeed conscious, with preferences and intentions. The implications for our culture of factory farming, fast food and rainforest liquidation are staggering. In this powerful book, internationally renowned experts on animal behaviour and agriculture such as Jane Goodall, Tim Lang and Vandana Shiva are brought together with ethicists, religious scholars, international industry and regulators for the first time to debate these critical issues and tackle the profound implications of animal sentience. The first sections discuss scientific and ethical perspectives on the consciousness, emotions and mental abilities of animals. Later sections address how human activities such as science, law, religion, farming, food production, trade, development and education respect or ignore animals' sentience and welfare, and review the options for changes in our policies, our practices and our thinking. The result is nothing less than a stark and necessary look into the heart of humanity and the ethics that govern our animal powered society.

Download or read book Sentient written by Jackie Higgins and published by Picador. This book was released on 2022-05-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enthralling examination of some of the most remarkable creatures in the animal kingdom, and what they tell us about what it means to be human.

Download or read book Consciousness And Robot Sentience Second Edition written by Haikonen Pentti O A and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THIS BOOK is the fully revised and updated second edition of 'Consciousness and Robot Sentience'. With lots of new material, it will provide new insights into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine consciousness, beyond materials published in the first edition. The organization of this book has been streamlined for better clarity and continuity of the lines of arguments.The perspective of AI has been added to this edition. It is shown that contemporary AI has a hidden problem, which prevents it from becoming a true intelligent agent. A self-evident solution to this problem is given in this book.This solution is surprisingly connected with the concepts of qualia, the mind-body problem and consciousness. These are the hard problems of consciousness that so far have been without viable solution. Unfortunately, the solution to the hidden problem of AI cannot be satisfactorily implemented, unless the phenomena of qualia and consciousness are first understood. In this book an explanation of consciousness is presented, one that rejects material and immaterial substances, dualism, panpsychism, emergence and metaphysics. What remains is obvious. This explanation excludes consciousness in digital computers, but allows the artificial creation of consciousness in one natural-like way, by associative non-computational neural networks.The proof of a theory calls for empirical verification. In this case, the proof could be in the form of a sentient robot. This book describes a step towards this in the form of the author's small experimental robot XCR-1. This robot has evolved through the years, and has now new cognitive abilities, which are described.

Download or read book A Theory of Sentience written by Austen Clark and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the findings of neuroscience, this text proposes and defends the hypothesis that the various modalities of sensation share a generic form that the author, Austen Clark, calls feature-placing.

Download or read book Sentience and Animal Welfare written by Donald M Broom and published by CABI. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sentience – the ability to feel, perceive and experience – is central to the animal welfare debate as it raises the question of whether animals experience suffering in life and death. This book explores and answers these questions in an objective way, based on the latest research and empirical evidence. Beginning with an introduction to sentience, the book investigates why we are so interested in sentience, when, as a species, humans became sentient and how it has changed over time. The book defines aspects of sentience such as consciousness, memory and emotions, and discusses brain complexity in detail. Looking at sentience from a developmental perspective, it analyses when in an individual’s growth sentience can be said to appear and uses evidence from a range of studies investigating embryos, foetuses and young animals to form an enlightening overview of the subject. With a full chapter covering ethical decisions such as animal protection and experimentation, this book is not only an invaluable resource for researchers and students of animal welfare and biology, but also an engaging and informative read for veterinarians and the general public. Sentience – the ability to feel, perceive and experience – is central to the animal welfare debate as it raises the question of whether animals experience suffering in life and death. This book explores and answers these questions in an objective way, based on the latest research and empirical evidence. Beginning with an introduction to sentience, the book investigates why we are so interested in sentience, when, as a species, humans became sentient and how it has changed over time. The book defines aspects of sentience such as consciousness, memory and emotions, and discusses brain complexity in detail. Looking at sentience from a developmental perspective, it analyses when in an individual’s growth sentience can be said to appear and uses evidence from a range of studies investigating embryos, foetuses and young animals to form an enlightening overview of the subject. With a full chapter covering ethical decisions such as animal protection and experimentation, this book is not only an invaluable resource for researchers and students of animal welfare and biology, but also an engaging and informative read for veterinarians and the general public.

Download or read book The Sentient Machine written by Amir Husain and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores universal questions about humanity's capacity for living and thriving in the coming age of sentient machines and AI, examining debates from opposing perspectives while discussing emerging intellectual diversity and its potential role in enabling a positive life.

Download or read book Sentience written by Terry A. Adams and published by [New York] : Daw Books. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the prejudice against D'neeran telepaths, Lady Hanna is asked to be a crew member of the starship Endeavor on its mission of exploration

Download or read book Sentience written by Nicholas Humphrey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a quest to uncover the evolutionary history of consciousness from one of the world's leading theoretical psychologists. We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes in Sentience his quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind. The goal is to solve the hard problem: to explain the wondrous, eerie fact of “phenomenal consciousness”—the redness of a poppy, the sweetness of honey, the pain of a bee sting. What does this magical dimension of experience amount to? What is it for? And why has it evolved? Humphrey presents here his new solution. He proposes that phenomenal consciousness, far from being primitive, is a relatively late and sophisticated evolutionary development. The implications for the existence of sentience in nonhuman animals are startling and provocative.

Download or read book The Sentient written by Nadia Afifi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Afifi’s staggering and un-put-downable debut offers a fresh and feminist-forward take on cloning [...] This riveting debut is a must-have for any sci-fi fan."— Publishers Weekly starred review Included in Library Journal's "Rise of the Monsters: Top Horror Titles and Trends Coming This Season Amira Valdez is a brilliant neuroscientist trying to put her past on a religious compound behind her. But when she’s assigned to a controversial cloning project, her dreams of working in space are placed in jeopardy. Using her talents as a reader of memories, Amira uncovers a conspiracy to stop the creation of the first human clone – at all costs. As she unravels the mystery, Amira navigates a dangerous world populated by anti-cloning militants, scientists with hidden agendas, and a mysterious New Age movement. In the process, Amira uncovers an even darker secret, one that forces her to confront her own past. FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Download or read book Sentience written by Wallace I. Matson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine," Gilbert Ryle has said. "He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man." Wallace Matson has made the venture. Even though he finds no valid objection to the conception of mind as nothing over and above functioning of the nervous system, he argues that nevertheless no existing or imagined machine models the nature of that function. Sentience is not just reception of information, bit is what he calls "sizing up" -- picking out of a situation those features that are more important, apperceiving the whole which they compose, relating to this while to the creature's interest, and deciding what to do about it. Matson shows how sizing up makes possible free action in the positive sense of action to which conscious deliberation makes a difference. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

Download or read book A Networked Self and Human Augmentics Artificial Intelligence Sentience written by Zizi Papacharissi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every new technology invites its own sets of hopes and fears, and raises as many questions as it answers revolving around the same theme: Will technology fundamentally alter the essence of what it means to be human? This volume draws inspiration from the work of the many luminaries who approach augmented, alternative forms of intelligence and consciousness. Scholars contribute their thoughts on how human augmentic technologies and artificial or sentient forms of intelligence can be used to enable, reimagine, and reorganize how we understand our selves, how we conceive the meaning of "human", and how we define meaning in our lives.

Download or read book Beating Hearts written by Sherry F. Colb and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can someone who condemns hunting, animal farming, and animal experimentation also favor legal abortion, which is the deliberate destruction of a human fetus? The authors of Beating Hearts aim to reconcile this apparent conflict and examine the surprisingly similar strategic and tactical questions faced by activists in the pro-life and animal rights movements. Beating Hearts maintains that sentience, or the ability to have subjective experiences, grounds a being's entitlement to moral concern. The authors argue that nearly all human exploitation of animals is unjustified. Early abortions do not contradict the sentience principle because they precede fetal sentience, and Beating Hearts explains why the mere potential for sentience does not create moral entitlements. Late abortions do raise serious moral questions, but forcing a woman to carry a child to term is problematic as a form of gender-based exploitation. These ethical explorations lead to a wider discussion of the strategies deployed by the pro-life and animal rights movements. Should legal reforms precede or follow attitudinal changes? Do gory images win over or alienate supporters? Is violence ever principled? By probing the connections between debates about abortion and animal rights, Beating Hearts uses each highly contested set of questions to shed light on the other.

Download or read book Sentience written by Nicholas Humphrey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a quest to uncover the evolutionary history of consciousness from a leading theoretical psychologist. We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes in Sentience his quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind. The goal is to solve the hard problem: to explain the wondrous, eerie fact of “phenomenal consciousness”—the redness of a poppy, the sweetness of honey, the pain of a bee sting. What does this magical dimension of experience amount to? What is it for? And why has it evolved? Humphrey presents here his new solution. He proposes that phenomenal consciousness, far from being primitive, is a relatively late and sophisticated evolutionary development. The implications for the existence of sentience in nonhuman animals are startling and provocative.

Download or read book Sentient written by Jeff Lemire and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TKO Studios presents "Sentient" by Eisner Award-winners Jeff Lemire (Black Hammer) and Gabriel Walta (The Vision) From Eisner Award-winners Jeff Lemire (Black Hammer) and Gabriel Walta (The Vision). When an attack kills the adults on a colony ship, the on-board A.I. VALARIE must help the ship’s children survive the perils of space. Can Valarie rise to the task?

Download or read book Sentient Lands written by Piergiorgio Di Giminiani and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1990, when Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year military dictatorship ended, democratic rule returned to Chile. Since then, Indigenous organizations have mobilized to demand restitution of their ancestral territories seized over the past 150 years. Sentient Lands is a historically grounded ethnography of the Mapuche people’s engagement with state-run reconciliation and land-restitution efforts. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani analyzes environmental relations, property, state power, market forces, and indigeneity to illustrate how land connections are articulated, in both landscape experiences and land claims. Rather than viewing land claims as simply bureaucratic procedures imposed on local understandings and experiences of land connections, Di Giminiani reveals these processes to be disputed practices of world making. Ancestral land formation is set in motion by the entangled principles of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, two very different and sometimes conflicting processes. Indigenous land ontologies are based on a relation between two subjects—land and people—both endowed with sentient abilities. By contrast, legal land ontologies are founded on the principles of property theory, wherein land is an object of possession that can be standardized within a regime of value. Governments also use land claims to domesticate Indigenous geographies into spatial constructs consistent with political and market configurations. Exploring the unexpected effects on political activism and state reparation policies caused by this entanglement of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, Di Giminiani offers a new analytical angle on Indigenous land politics.

Download or read book The Art of Fugue written by Wallace I. Matson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-04-29 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine," Gilbert Ryle has said. "He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man." Wallace Matson has made the venture. Even though he finds no valid objection to the conception of mind as nothing over and above functioning of the nervous system, he argues that nevertheless no existing or imagined machine models the nature of that function. Sentience is not just reception of information, bit is what he calls "sizing up" -- picking out of a situation those features that are more important, apperceiving the whole which they compose, relating to this while to the creature's interest, and deciding what to do about it. Matson shows how sizing up makes possible free action in the positive sense of action to which conscious deliberation makes a difference. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

Download or read book Politics of Species written by Raymond Corbey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The assumption that humans are cognitively and morally superior to other animals is fundamental to social democracies and legal systems worldwide. It legitimises treating members of other animal species as inferior to humans. The last few decades have seen a growing awareness of this issue, as evidence continues to show that individuals of many other species have rich mental, emotional and social lives. Bringing together leading experts from a range of disciplines, this volume identifies the key barriers to a definition of moral respect that includes nonhuman animals. It sets out to increase concern, empathy and inclusiveness by developing strategies that can be used to protect other animals from exploitation in the wild and from suffering in captivity. The chapters link scientific data with normative and philosophical reflections, offering unique insight into controversial issues around the ethical, political and legal status of other species"--