Animal Sentience Meeting 2014-07-24

Agreed to start with a literature review, which might end up being the whole project.
Agreed to keep in touch via this wiki if that works well, plus email and phone calls as necessary. If the wiki isn’t working well then agreed to switch to regular emails or regular phone calls.

If you want a general introduction to philosophy of mind, I can recommend something, especially now that I realise you’re not a philosophy major! I think the important concepts are sentience and consciousnes (which I think are the same thing but some people might not agree). I expect you’ll find that some people think self-consciousness is relevant to sentience too. I disagree with that, personally.
I’ve suggested concentrating on the philosophy literature, but I guess there might be something in the science literature. I doubt it though. The best author I know so far who’s just from science (as opposed to philosophy or both philosophy and science) is Marian Dawkins. I’ve just had a look at her recent paper at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~abrg/papers/dawkins/TREE_corrected_proof.pdf and it doesn’t look much use to me. You might find one of her books better — http://users.ox.ac.uk/~snikwad/styled-2/index.html. Only — damn — the ANU doesn’t have the one that’s probably best, “Why Animals Matter”, and nor does the National Library. Um. I suggest you have a look at her other books in the Hancock — see http://library.anu.edu.au/search~S1?/adawkins%2C+marion/adawkins+marion/-3%2C0%2C0%2CB/exact&FF=adawkins+marian+stamp&1%2C6%2C/indexsort=- — and if you like her style then I can get “Why Animals Matter” for you on interlibrary loan. (Sigh. The ANU library is really crap for such a good university.)

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