Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Animal-Human Encounters

by Julie Smith (Editor), Robert Mitchell (Editor)

Overview

In these multidisciplinary essays, academic scholars and animal experts explore the nature of animal minds and the methods humans conventionally and unconventionally use to understand them. The collection features chapters by scholars working in psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, literary studies, and art, as well as chapters by and about people who live and work with animals, including the founder of a sanctuary for chickens, a fur trapper, a popular canine psychologist, a horse trainer, and an art photographer who captures everyday contact between humans and their animal companions.

Divided into five sections, the collection first considers the ways that humans live with animals and the influence of cohabitation on their perceptions of animals' minds. It follows with an examination of anthropomorphism as both a guide and hindrance to mapping animal consciousness. Chapters next examine the effects of embodiment on animals' minds and the role of animal-human interembodiment on humans' understandings of animals' minds. Final sections identify historical representations of difference between human and animal consciousness and their relevance to pre-established cultural attitudes, as well as the ways that representations of animals' minds target particular audiences and sometimes produce problematic outcomes. The editors conclude with a discussion of the relationship between the book's chapters and two pressing themes: the connection between human beliefs about animals' minds and human ethical behavior, and the challenges and conditions for knowing the minds of animals. By inviting readers to compare and contrast multiple, uncommon points of view, this collection offers a unique encounter with the diverse perspectives and theories now shaping animal studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231161510
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/27/2012
Series:	Critical Perspectives on Animals: Theory, Culture, Science, and Law
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Julie A. Smith is associate professor emeritus of the Department of Languages and Literatures at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. Her published articles concern early English book illustrations, representations of animals' minds in literary works, and human understandings of rabbits' minds. She is active in animal rescue and animal rights and regularly writes for the House Rabbit Journal.

Robert W. Mitchell is Foundation Professor in the Department of Psychology and coordinator of the animal studies program at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the editor of Pretending and Imagination in Animals and Children and coeditor of Spatial Cognition, Spatial Perception: Mapping the Self and Space; The Mentalities of Gorillas and Orangutans: Comparative Perspectives; Self-Awareness in Animals and Humans: Developmental Perspectives; Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals; and Deception: Perspectives on Human and Nonhuman Deceit.

Table of Contents

Engaging Animal Minds: Matters of Perspective, by Robert W. Mitchell and Julie A. Smith
Part I. Living with Animals
1. The Mental Life of Chickens as Observed Through Their Social Relationships, by Karen Davis
2. Tangible Affiliations: Photographic Representations of Touch Between Human and Animal Companions, by Julia Schlosser
3. Beaver Voices: Grey Owl and Interspecies Communication, by Albert Braz
Part II. Anthropomorphisms
4. The Historical Animal Mind: "Sagacity" in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Rob Boddice
5. Science of the Monkey Mind: Primate Penchants and Human Pursuits, by Sara Waller
6. Can Animals Make "Art"? Popular and Scientific Discourses About Expressivity and Cognition in Primates, by Jane C. Desmond
Part III. by Embodiments and Interembodiments
7. Toward a Privileging of the Nonverbal: Communication, Corporeal Synchronicity, and Transcendence in Humans and Horses, by Gala Argent
8. Thinking Like a Whale: Interdisciplinary Methods for the Study of Human-Animal Interactions, by Traci Warkentin
9. The Meaning of "Energy" in Cesar Millan's Discourse on Dogs, by Julie A. Smith
10. Inner Experience as Perception(like) with Attitude, by Robert W. Mitchell
11. The Voice of the Living: Becoming-Artistic and the Creaturely Refrain in D. H. Lawrence's "Tortoise Shout", by Carrie Rohman
12. Unique Attributes of the Elephant Mind: Perspectives on the Human Mind, by Benjamin L. Hart and Lynette A. Hart
13. Brains, Bodies, and Minds: Against a Hierarchy of Animal Faculties, by David Dillard-Wright
Part IV. Animal Versus Human Consciousness
14. Rethinking the Cognitive Abilities of Animals, by Gary Steiner
15. Assessing Evidence for Animal Consciousness: The Question of Episodic Memory, by Paula Droege
16. What Are Animals Conscious Of?, by Alain Morin
Part V. Tailoring Representations to Audiences
17. Chimpanzees Attribute Beliefs? A New Approach to Answering an Old Nettled Question, by Robert W. Lurz
18. Minding the Animal in Contemporary Art, by Jessica Ullrich
19. Popular Beliefs and Understanding of the Dolphin Mind", by "Jessica Sickler, John Fraser, and Diana Reiss
20. Perceiving the Minds of Animals: Sociological Warfare, the Social Imaginary, and Mediated Representations of Animals Shaping Human Understandings of Animals, by Brian M. Lowe
Part VI. Synthesis
21. Animal Ethics and Animals' Minds: Reflections, by Julie A. Smith and Robert W. Mitchell
Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Margo DeMello

[The book] draws from a remarkable variety of perspectives - biologists, animal activists, artists, literary scholars, veterinarians, philosophers, and more, and still feels surprisingly cohesive.

Hal Herzog

In Experiencing Animal Minds, Julie Smith and Robert Mitchell bring together a stellar group of scholars ranging, literally, from A (art historians) to Z (zoologists), all of whom are concerned with our ability to understand the minds of other species. Readers will contemplate topics such as whether apes make art, dolphins as cultural icons, Caesar Milan's view of dog psychology, the neural basis of elephant sociality, and the animal mind/animal body connection. The result is a wonderfully eclectic intellectual ride held together by the authors' perspectives on the question "What is it like to be a____________ ?" (Insert the species of your choice.)

— Hal Herzog, Western Carolina University

Editorial Reviews

[The book] draws from a remarkable variety of perspectives - biologists, animal activists, artists, literary scholars, veterinarians, philosophers, and more, and still feels surprisingly cohesive.

Margo DeMello