Introduction and Methodology	1
0.A. Introduction	1
0.A.1. What this thesis is about	1
0.A.2. Why write about living things?	2
0.A.3. Why write about animals?	3
0.A.4. What are animals?	4
0.A.5. Why write about the moral entitlements of animals and other organisms?	5
0.B Methodological proposals for this thesis	7
0.B.1 What does it mean to be alive?	9
0.B.2 Mental states in animals	10
0.B.2(a) Is there a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for having a mind?	10
0.B.2(b) What is the relationship between being alive and having a mind?	11
0.B.2(c) What are the most primitive mental states?	12
0.B.2(d) How do we identify the occurrence of primitive mental states?	17
0.B.2(e) Emotions	19
0.B.2(f) Phenomenally conscious mental states	19
0.B.2(g) Higher-order mental states	20
0.B.2(h) Drawing the Line	21
0.B.2(i) How generous should we be in assessing claims for mental states?	22
0.B.2(j) Appropriate Sources of Evidence	23
0.B.2(j)(i) Singular versus replicable observations	23
0.B.2(j)(ii) Laboratory versus natural observations	24
0.B.3 Interests of Animals and Other Organisms	25
0.B.3(a) Is my methodology ethically biased?	26
0.B.3(b) What constraints should we impose on an ethical theory based on interests?	26
0.B.3(c) How do we define and identify interests?	26
0.B.3(d) The "is-ought" gap	27
0.B.3(e) How do we resolve conflicts of interests between organisms?	27
0.B.3(f) A general account of goodness	28
Chapter 1 - What does it mean to be alive?	28
1.A. An overview of attempts to define "life"	28
1.A.0 Chapter summary	28
1.A.1 Why does the distinction between living and non-living matter?	28
1.A.2 A "conceptual map" of some historical positions taken in the debate about life	31
1.A.3 Is there a crisis relating to the definition of "life"?	42
1.A.3.1 Problems associated with the quest for single-attribute definitions of life	43
1.A.3.2 Can cluster definitions work?	47
1.A.3.2(a) Short cluster definitions	49
1.A.3.2(b) Long cluster definitions	52
1.A.3.3 Is it too soon to formulate a good definition?	57
1.A.3.4 The new crisis regarding the definition of life	58
1.A.3.5 What is wrong with the foregoing definitions of life?	63
1.A.3.6 Is teleology redundant?	66
1.A.3.7 Are there any good methodological reasons for rejecting teleological accounts of life?	67
1.A.3.8 Is a teleological account of life intelligible?	68
1.B. A proposed solution to the "problem of life": a "science-friendly" teleological account	71
1.B.1 What distinguishes living things?	74
1.B.2 Empirical formal and finalistic criteria for being alive	81
1.B.3 Is my account of life reductionistic?	73B
1.B.4 Strong emergence, downward and backward causation	77B
1.B.5 Is the possession of intrinsic ends a sufficient and necessary condition for being alive?	82B
1.B.6. Does my account of life explain and unify all of the necessary conditions for something's being alive?	90
1.B.6(a) Does my account of life unify the necessary conditions for something's being alive?	90
1.B.6(b) What are the necessary conditions for something's being alive?	95
1.B.7 What does it mean for a living thing to have a nature?	96
1.B.8 Do living things have a privileged ethical status?	106
Chapter 2 - What does it take to have a minimal mind?	114
2.A How should we look for intentional agency in organisms?	114
2.A.1. Preliminaries	114
2.A.2. Mental states - Aristotelian, Cartesian and modern positions contrasted	114
2.A.3. Conclusions reached - a note to the reader	116
2.A.4 Wolfram's neo-animism: Are minds nothing more than computational devices?	117
2.A.5 Dennett's intentional stance: Is mind a property of intentional systems?	129
2.A.5(a) Has Dennett mis-described intentionality?	129
2.A.5(b) Is Dennett's intentional stance a global theory of mental states?	132
2.A.5(c) Is Dennett's intentional stance tied to reductionism?	135
2.A.6 Why only living things can possess minds. Implications for artificial intelligence.	140
2.A.7 Different kinds of intentional stance? Narrowing the search for mental states in organisms	147
2.A.8 Biological processes that are best described using a goal-centred intentional stance	151
2.A.9 Philosophical arguments against the possibility of belief in non-human animals	153

2.B What does an organism need in order to possess a minimal mind?	157
2.B.0 The Tree of Life - major groupings and relationships	157
2.B.1 Sensory criteria for identifying mental states in organisms	163
2.B.2 Memory-related criteria for attributing mental states to organisms	177
2.B.3 Is flexible behaviour enough for having a mind?	188
2.B.4 Learning-related criteria for attributing mental states to organisms	203
2.B.4(a) Habituation and sensitization	207
2.B.4(b) Associative learning	218
2.B.4(c) Does associative learning qualify as learning, in the ordinary sense of the word?	229
2.B.4(d) Does associative learning require a mentalistic explanation?	231
2.B.5 Mind and movement - the significance of control in the identification of intentional agency	245
2.B.5(a) Why internal states are important	246
2.B.5(b) Does directed movement qualify as agency?	248
2.B.5(c) Does navigation qualify as agency?	253
2.B.5(d) Does having an action selection mechanism qualify as agency?	258
2.B.5(e) The importance of fine-tuning for intentional agency	266
2.B.6 Representations and mental states	275
2.B.6(a) Why there can be no representation without the possibility of mis-representation	275
2.B.6(b) Do Dretskean representations warrant the ascription of mental states to animals?	279
2.B.7 Getting it wrong: the centrality of self-correction to belief	287
2.B.7(a) Does associative learning require a mentalistic explanation?	287
2.B.7(b) Does the phenomenon of blocking enable us to identify which animals have expectations?	292
2.B.8 Synthesis: the ingredients of intentional agency	295
2.C. Four models of a minimal mind	298
2.C.1 A model of operant agency in insects	298
2.C.2 Spatial learning, agency and belief in insects	329
2.C.3 A model of tool agency in Cephalopods	333
2.C.4 A model of social agency in fish	334
2.D Higher kinds of learning in insects	337
Chapter 3 - Animal Emotions	338
3.0 Chapter outline	338
3.1 Methodological Considerations	340
3.1(a) Human Emotions cannot be defined apart from animal emotions	340
3.1(b) General Properties of Emotions	341
3.1(c) Animal emotions have intentional objects	345
3.2 What are the cognitive pre-requisites of animal emotions?	349
3.3 What are animal emotions "about", and what is each basic kind of animal emotion about?	358
3.4 How do we identify basic emotions in animals, what are they and which animals can be said to have them?	362
Chapter 4 - Animal Consciousness and Higher Mental States	374
4.A. Phenomenal Consciousness in Animals	374
4.1 What philosophers have to say about animal consciousness	375
4.1.1 Philosophical distinctions regarding consciousness	375
4.1.2 An outline of the current philosophical debate on animal consciousness	383
4.2 Scientific findings regarding consciousness	388
4.2.1 Primary versus "higher-order" consciousness	388
4.2.2 Behavioural criteria for consciousness	390
4.2.3 Neural pre-requisites for consciousness	402
4.3 Ethical implications of animal consciousness	420
4.B Evidence for rational agency in animals	422
4.C Are non-human animals capable of moral agency?	429
Chapter 5 - What are our duties towards other organisms?	436
5.0 Chapter outline	436
5.1 Which entities have moral standing?	436
5.2 What duties do we have towards living things, and what is the basis for them?	451
5.2.1 Duties owed to living things in general	451
5.2.2 Duties owed to animals with minds	453
5.2.3 Duties owed to companion animals (pets)	469
5.2.4 Duties owed to human beings	472
5.2.5 Duties pertaining to groups of organisms: greater wholes (e.g. ecosystems) and classes (e.g. species)	478
Chapter 6 - What are we entitled to do vis-a-vis other organisms?	482
6.0 Chapter outline	482
6.1 Instrumentalism rejected	483
6.2 The cardinal difficulty of biocentrism	486
6.3 The deficiencies of a holistic ethic	489
6.4 Vital, central and peripheral needs	493
6.5 A Telos-Based Account of Entitlements and Justifiable Harms	496
6.5(a) The Telos-Promoting Principle (TPP): which goods are we entitled to pursue?	496
6.5(b) The Telos-Promoting Harm Principle (TPHP): which actions are we entitled to perform?	498
6.6 Can harm done to other living things sometimes be justified on ecological grounds?	525
Bibliography	528
Appendices	620
Appendix to chapter 1	620
Appendix to chapter 1 part A: Is teleology redundant?	620
Appendix to chapter 1 part B: What are the necessary conditions for something's being alive?	636
Appendix to chapter 2	662
Appendix to chapter 2 part A: Wolfram's neo-animism	662
Appendix to chapter 2 part B: Criteria for having a minimal mind	669
Some Background Information on the Five Kingdoms of Life	671
1. Sensory criteria for identifying mental states in organisms	684
1.1 Which organisms have sensors?	684
1.2 Cotterill's arguments for denying true senses to bacteria	690
1.3 Different kinds of senses in various kinds of living things	693
2. Memory-related criteria for identifying mental states in organisms	704
2.1 The Simplest kind of memory: chemical memory	705
2.2 Problems relating to the definition of different kinds of memory	709
2.3 Which organisms possess procedural, semantic and episodic memory?	712
3. Is flexible behaviour enough for having a mind?	715
3.1 How indirect, modifiable stimulus-coupling can still be a fixed pattern of behaviour	715
3.2 Examples of so-called "flexible" behaviour which turn out to be fixed	717
3.3 Fixed behaviour is compatible with multiple functions determining the value of the output variable	720
3.4 Does flexible behaviour occur in bacteria?	721
3.4.1 Cellular regulation in bacteria	722
3.4.2 Phenotypic plasticity in bacteria	725
3.4.3 Gene-swapping in bacteria: flexible behaviour?	730
4. Is learning enough for having a mind?	733
4.1 Are there any forms of learning more basic than habituation?	733
4.2 Which organisms can undergo habituation and sensitization?	735
4.3 Which organisms are capable of associative learning?	742
4.4 Pavlov's model of associative conditioning compared with a contemporary model (Brembs, 1996)	768
4.5 Three cases of associative learning without a brain which challenge Dretske's account of belief	771
5. Mind and Movement - the significance of control in intentional agency	776
5.1 Why random changes are insufficient for intentional agency	777
5.2 Directed movement in organisms	779
5.3 How animal cells see and move	784
5.4 Case study: action selection in cnidaria	788
5.5 Agency in cnidaria?	792
5.6 Can cnidaria learn?	795
5.7 Case study: centralised action selection in flatworms	795
7. Getting it wrong: the centrality of self-correction to belief	798
7.1 Is the phenomenon of blocking evidence of expectations in animals?	798
7.2 Do higher-order forms of associative learning warrant an agent-centred intentional stance?	804
Appendix to chapter 2 part C: Case studies	812
1. Operant Agency	814
1.1 Operant Agency in Drosophila melanogaster	814
1.2 Merfeld's Model of Efference Copy	822
1.3 Definition of Operant Agency	824
2. Navigational Agency	829
2.1 Definition of Navigational Agency	829
2.2 Case study: Navigational Agency in Insects	834
2.2(a) Is path integration a form of intentional agency?	835
2.2(b) Is navigation by visual landmarks a form of intentional agency?	839
2.2(c) Do insects use cognitive maps?	846
2.3 Case study: Navigational Agency in Cephalopods	850
3. Tool Agency	853
3.1 Definition of Tool Agency	853
3.2 Case study: Tool Agency in Cephalopods	858
4. Social Agency	866
4.1 Definition of Social Agency	866
4.2 Case study: Social Agency in fish	872
4.3 Case study: Evaluation of the evidence for Social Agency in octopuses	885
5. A Special Case of Combined Agency in the Jumping Spider Portia	888
Appendix to chapter 2 part D: Case studies of higher-order learning in insects	891
1. Reversal Learning (an update on Gary Varner's claims regarding desire in animals)	892
1.1 Rapid reversal learning in honeybees: evidence for the acquisition of beliefs?	892
1.2 Is progressive adjustment in multiple reversal learning trials evidence for the acquisition of beliefs?	895
2. Concept Formation in Insects	897
2.1 Can honeybees form categorical concepts?	898
2.2 Can honeybees form the concepts of "same" and "different"?	902
Note: Higher-order learning in octopuses	909
Appendix to Chapter 3 - Animal Emotions	915
1. Should we stipulate consciousness as a requirement for having emotions?	916
2. Is emotion fundamentally distinct from cognition?	919
3. Do the basic emotions of fear, anger and desire presuppose a capacity for language?	923
4. Can emotions be explained as bodily states?	934
5. Deficient methodologies for distinguishing animal emotions	939
6. What kinds of emotions do animals have?	941
7. Which Animals Have Emotions?	951
8. A general strategy for identifying occurrences of basic emotions in animals	954
Appendix to Chapter 4 - Animal Consciousness and Higher Mental States	963
Appendix to chapter 4 Part A - Phenomenal Consciousness	963
1.1 Can access consciousness occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness?	964
1.2 Persistent Vegetative State: a case of behavioural wakefulness in the absence of phenomenal consciousness	973
1.3 Evaluation of Carruthers' arguments against the occurrence of consciousness in non-human animals	975
1.4 How the welfare of animals lacking phenomenal consciousness can be objectively assessed	981
Appendix to chapter 4 part B - Higher-order consciousness and language in non-human animals?	986
Appendix to chapter 5	993
Appendix to chapter 5 part A - Marginal Animal Cases	993
Appendix to chapter 5 part B - Marginal Human Cases and their relevance for our duties towards animals	1010
Appendix to chapter 6	1019
Appendix to chapter 6 part A - Do Animals and Other Organisms have Rights?	1019
Appendix to chapter 6 part B - Practical Implications of TPHP	1043

Table of Contents