Animal Minds, Theory of Mind, And Animal Ethics w/ Kristin Andrews

Hello, everybody! We start the week with an interview with Dr. Kristin Andrews. She is York Research Chair in Animal Minds and Professor of Philosophy at York University (Toronto), where she also helps coordinate the Cognitive Science program and the Toronto Area Animal Cognition Discussion Group. Dr. Andrews is on the board of directors of the Borneo Orangutan Society Canada, a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada, and the author of several books on social minds, animal minds, and ethics.

In this episode, we talk about how to properly study animal minds, and also issues regarding animal ethics. We start by discussing how difficult it is to study non-human animals’ behavior and minds, and Dr. Andrews presents the calibration method. We also discuss how we can use folk psychology as a starting point. We talk about the flaws with anthropomorphism and anthropectomy. We then get into the issue of theory of mind, and how to deal with consciousness in animal cognitive studies. Dr. Andrews also refers to recent exciting research that points to the possibility of plants also having consciousness and minds. Finally, we get into animal ethics, and discuss specifically issues related to how we can determine if there are other animals that also are moral agents, and how to study moral normativity in non-human animals. We end up by talking a bit about veganism.

https://youtu.be/raIpbVTh-pg

Link to podcast version (Anchor): http://bit.ly/37fLKd8