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An Animal – Many Persons? Animal Personhood in Face of the Modularity of Mind

International Journal of Social Science Studies

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Title An Animal – Many Persons? Animal Personhood in Face of the Modularity of Mind
 
Creator Jürgens, Uta Maria
 
Description This essay analyzes how the Modularity of Mind impacts the anthrozoological argument that non-human animals are persons. Comparative research on human and animal minds suggests that human and other-than-human minds differ in their mental architecture such that animal cognition is largely modular whereas human thought fluidly integrates contents across modules. If animal minds are modular, then the idea of non-human personhood is challenged. Specifically, an animal with a modularized mind would not be one person facing the world and reflecting on itself in an integral manner, but would be an individual made of many persons: The animal would experience one reality and one self pertaining to each module (or partly-integrated domain of thought) and thus “be“ one distinct person in each of these worlds. Yet, within the framework of human-animal encounters, animal personhood can be meaningfully construed despite modularity of animal minds. On this account, animal personhood is conceived by virtue of the human ability to meta-integrate mental contents: The human mind meta-integrates the animal mind's modularized experience for the animal. Thus, in human-animal interactions, humans face the animal as a functional whole, as an integral animal person.
 
Publisher Redfame Publishing
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2016-07-20
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
—
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://redfame.com/journal/index.php/ijsss/article/view/1754
10.11114/ijsss.v4i9.1754
 
Source International Journal of Social Science Studies; Vol 4, No 9 (2016); 19-26
2324-8041
2324-8033
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://redfame.com/journal/index.php/ijsss/article/view/1754/1795