Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-bt4hw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T18:13:04.885Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Inside and Outside Aspects of Consciousness: Complementary Approaches to the Study of Animal Emotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

F Wemelsfelder
F Wemelsfelder*
Affiliation:
Animal Biology Division, Scottish Agricultural College, Bush Estate, Penicuik EH26 0PH, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper reviews the debate that is currently taking place in the field of philosophy of mind on different conceptual models of consciousness. More and more philosophers argue that the explanation of subjective phenomena requires two complementary perspectives of understanding, known as the first- and third-person perspectives. The third-person perspective (ie conventional objectivity) accounts for the physical, functional aspects of consciousness, while the first-person perspective addresses the subjective, experiential aspects of consciousness. It is suggested that each of these conceptual perspectives may facilitate a different type of research in the study of animal emotion. Within the conventional, third-person perspective, a growing enthusiasm for issues of animal consciousness has led to sophisticated physical and cognitive models of animal emotion. The potential of the firstperson perspective, however, to provide a basis for models of animal subjective experience has remained largely unexplored. The paper concludes with a brief review of the author's recent experimental work on concepts of animal behavioural expression. The high reliability and repeatability of such concepts indicates that the first-person perspective may provide a valid research perspective in its own right.

Keywords

animal consciousnessanimal welfarecognitionemotionfirst-person perspectivesubjective experience

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 10 , Issue S1: Consciousness, Cognition and Animal Welfare: Proceedings of the UFAW Symposium, Zoological Society of London, 11-12 May 2000 , February 2001 , pp. S129 - S139
Copyright
© 2001 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abram, D 1996 The Spell of the Sensuous. Random House: New York, USAGoogle Scholar
Beattie, V E, Walker, N and Sneddon, I A 1998 Preference testing of substrates by growing pigs. Animal Welfare 7: 27–34Google Scholar
Bekoff, M 1998 Deep ethology, animal rights, and the great ape/animal project: resisting speciesism and expanding the community of equals. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 10: 269–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broom, D M 1988 The scientific assessment of animal welfare. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 20: 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burman, O H P and Mendl, M 2000 Short-term social memory in the laboratory rat: its susceptibility to disturbance. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 67: 241–254CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carruthers, P 1996 Language, Thought and Consciousness. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UKCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalmers, D J 1996 The Conscious Mind. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UKGoogle Scholar
Crist, E 1996 Naturalists’ portrayals of animal life: engaging the verstehen approach. Social Studies of Science 26: 799–838CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crist, E 1998 The ethological constitution of animals as natural objects: the technical writings of Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen. Biology and Philosophy 13: 61–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damasio, A R 1996 Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Macmillen Publishers: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Darwin, C 1998 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 3rd edition, with an introduction, afterword and commentaries by Paul Ekman. HarperCollins: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, M S 1980 Animal Suffering. The Science of Animal Welfare. Chapman and Hall: London, UKCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, M S 1990 From an animal's point of view: motivation, fitness, and animal welfare. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 1–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, M S 1993 Through Our Eyes Only? The Search for Animal Consciousness. Spektrum/Freeman: Oxford, UKGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D C 1991 Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Co: Boston, USAGoogle Scholar
Duncan, I J H 1996 Animal welfare defined in terms of feelings. Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica Section A, Animal Science Supplementum 27: 29–35Google Scholar
Duncan, I J H and Fraser, D 1997 Understanding animal welfare. In: Appleby M C and Hughes B 0 (eds) Animal Welfare pp 19–31. CAB International: Wallingford, UKGoogle Scholar
Duncan, I J H and Petherick, C J 1991 The implications of cognitive processes for animal welfare. Journal of Animal Science 69: 5017–5022CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fisher, J A 1991 Disambiguating anthropomorphism: an interdisciplinary review. In: Bateson, PPG and Klopfer, P H (eds) Perspectives in Ethology, Volume 9 pp 49–85. Plenum Press: New York, USAGoogle Scholar
Foley, J P 1935 Judgement of facial expression of emotion in the chimpanzee. Journal of Social Psychology 6: 31–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodall, J 1986 Chimpanzees of Gombe. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, USAGoogle Scholar
Goodall, J 1990 Through a Window. Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe. Phoenix: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, B 1999 Reclaiming a life of quality. Journal of Consciousness Studies 6: 29–235Google Scholar
Hacker, P M S 1993 Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind. Part 1, Essays. Blackwell: Oxford, UKGoogle Scholar
Haskell, M, Coerse, N and Forkman, B 2000 Frustration-induced aggression in the domestic hen: the effect of thwarting access to food and water on aggressive responses and subsequent approach tendencies. Behaviour 137: 531–546Google Scholar
Hearne, V 1986 Adam ‘s Task. Calling Animals by Name. Heinemann: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Hebb, D O 1946 Emotion in man and animal: an analysis of the intuitive processes of recognition. Psychological Review 53: 88–106CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Held, S, Mendl, M, Devereux, C and Byrne, R W 2000 Social tactics of pigs in a competitive foraging task: the ‘informed forager’ paradigm. Animal Behaviour 59: 569–576CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphrey, N 2000 How to solve the mind-body problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7: 5–20Google Scholar
Kendrick, K M 1997 Animal awareness. British Society for Animal Science Occasional Publication 20: 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, J S 1992 The New Anthropomorphism. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UKCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiley-Worthington, M 1987 The Behaviour of Horses in Relation to Management and Training. J A Allan and Co Ltd: London, UKGoogle Scholar
King, J E 1999 Personality and the happiness of the chimpanzee. In: Dolins, F (ed) Attitudes to Animals: Views in Animal Welfare pp 101–113. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UKCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladewig, J and Matthews, L R 1996 The role of operant conditioning in animal welfare research. Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section A - Animal Science S27: 64–68Google Scholar
Lazarus, R S 1966 Psychological Stress and the Coping Process. McGraw-Hill: New York, USAGoogle Scholar
Lorenz, K 1975 Year of the Greylag Goose. Eyre Methuen: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Mendl, M and Deag, J M 1995 How useful are the concepts of alternative strategy and coping strategy in applied studies of social behaviour? Applied Animal Behaviour Science 44: 119–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendl, M, Laughlin, K and Hitchcock, D 1997 Pigs in space: spatial memory and its susceptibility to interference. Animal Behaviour 54: 1491–1508CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merleau-Ponty, M 1962 Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Midgley, M 1998 One world, but a big one. In: Rose, S (ed) From Brains to Consciousness? Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind pp 246–270. Penguin Books: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, R W and Hamm, M 1997 The interpretation of animal psychology: anthropomorphism or behavior reading? Behaviour 134: 173–204Google Scholar
Moss, C 1988 Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family. William Morrow: New York, USAGoogle Scholar
Mounce, H O 1992 Discussion: on Nagel and consciousness. Philosophical Investigations 15: 178–190CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, T 1974 What is it like to be a bat? Psychological Review 83: 435–451Google Scholar
Nagel, T 1986 The View from Nowhere. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UKGoogle Scholar
Nicol, C J 1996 Farm animal cognition. Animal Science 62: 375–391CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oreskovich, D C, Klein, B P and Sutherland, J W 1991 Procrustes Analysis and its applications to free-choice and other sensory profiling. In: Lawless, H T and Klein, B P (eds) Sensory Science: Theory and Applications in Foods pp 353–393. Marcel Dekker: New York, USAGoogle Scholar
Pagel, M and Dawkins, M S 1997 Peck orders and group size in laying hens: ‘future contracts’ for nonaggression. Behavioural Processes 40: 13–25CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Panksepp, J 1992 A critical role for affective neuroscience in resolving what is basic about basic emotions. Psychological Review 99: 554–560CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rose, H 1999 Changing constructions of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 6: 251–258Google Scholar
Rudd, A J 1998 What it's like and what's really wrong with physicalism: a Wittgensteinean perspective. Journal of Consciousness Studies 5: 454–463Google Scholar
Sanders, C R 1993 Understanding dogs: caretakers’ attributions of mindedness in canine-human relationships. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 22: 205–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J R 1992 The Rediscovery of Mind. MIT Press: Cambridge, USACrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheets-Johnstone, M 1999 Emotion and movement: a beginning empirical-phenomenological analysis of their relationship. Journal of Consciousness Studies 6: 259–277Google Scholar
Ursin, H, Baade, E and Levine, S 1978 Psychobiology of Stress: a Study of Coping Men. Academic Press: New York, USAGoogle Scholar
Van der Weerd, H A, Van Loo, P L P, Van Zutphen, L F M, Koolhaas, J M and Baumans, V 1998 Preferences for nest boxes as environmental enrichment for laboratory mice. Animal Welfare 7: 11–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velmans, M 1991 Is human information-processing conscious? Brain and Behavioural Sciences 14: 651 -668CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wemelsfelder, F 1993a Animal Boredom: Towards an Empirical Approach of Animal Subjectivity. PhD Thesis, University of Leiden. Elinkwijk: Utrecht, The NetherlandsGoogle Scholar
Wemelsfelder, F 1993b The concept of animal boredom and its relationship to stereotyped behaviour. In: Lawrence, A B and Rushen, J (eds) Stereotypic Animal Behaviour: Fundamentals and Applications to Animal Welfare pp 65–97. CAB International: Wallingford, UKGoogle Scholar
Wemelsfelder, F 1997 Investigating the animal's point of view; an inquiry into a subject-based method of measurement in the field of animal welfare. In: Dol, M, Kasanmoentalib, S, Lijmbach, S, Rivas, E and van den Bos, R (eds) Animal Consciouness and Animal Ethics: Perspectives from the Netherlands pp 73–89. Van Gorcum: Assen, The NetherlandsGoogle Scholar
Wemelsfelder, F 1999 The problem of animal consciousness and its consequences for the measurement of animal suffering. In: Dolins, F (ed) Attitudes to Animals: Views in Animal Welfare pp 37–53. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UKCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wemelsfelder, F, Hunter, E A, Mendl, M T and Lawrence, A B 2000 The spontaneous qualitative assessment of behavioural expressions in pigs: first explorations of a novel methodology for integrative animal welfare measurement. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 67: 193–215CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wieder, D L 1980 Behavioristic operationalism and the life-world: chimpanzees and chimpanzee researchers in face-to-face interaction. Sociological Inquiry 50: 75–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar