Beyond barbarity and concealment: animal sacrifice and religious slaughter in Islamic responses to postdomesticity

In a society where animals to be consumed as food are produced using modern industrial animal farming system (described as postdomestic in Bulliet [2005 Bulliet, R. W. 2005. Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The past and Future of Human–Animal Relationships. New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]]), most people who consume animals are very much removed from the production process. Most consumers do not participate actively or have intimate knowledge of the rearing and slaughtering of animals for food. In this article, I critically analyse existing Islamic responses to problems arising from the postdomestic condition with regard to consuming animal as food. In this article, my analysis focuses on making explicit the connection between the assumption of barbarity in the civilising discourse surrounding religious requirement for animal slaughter and the problem of postdomestic concealment of animals we consume. Furthermore, I analyse the role that the Islamic requirement for animal slaughter (zabiha) and the tradition of Festival of Sacrifice (eid al-adha) can have potential solutions that religion can offer to the problems of postdomesticity.     

Explaining Own and Others' Behavior in a Controversial Issue: Animal Experimentation

Abstract

The authors investigated how 2 groups with different attitudes toward animal experimentation–researchers who conducted animal experiments and members of animal welfare organizations who protested against animal experiments–made attributions for the behavior of the opposing group. The 2 groups showed an actor-observer effect, mentioning more internal causes for the opponents' behavior and more external causes for their own behavior. Both groups were able to take the other's perspective, resulting in a reversed actor-observer effect. The less involved participants followed the pattern of ratings of the group whose attitudes corresponded to their own. In particular, the participants with a negative attitude toward animal experimentation rated researchers' behavior as more internally caused than did those with a positive attitude. The results illustrated how the participants formed and defended attitudes in a social context.     

Absolute Error

The position that a composite error score is not an interpretable indicator of motor performance is supported and expanded. It is shown that Henry’s E² statistic possesses the same deficiencies as A ², and thus is equally invalid. Responses are made to a number of specific criticisms of the Schutz and Roy paper made by Henry.     

Evolutionary Perspectives and Transdisciplinary Intersections: A Roadmap to Generative Areas of Overlap in Discussing Human Nature

This essay assesses a subset of approaches to the topic of human nature(s) and endeavors to identify generative areas of overlap for transdisciplinary conversation. Rather than pursue a resolution to the problem of potentially incompatible frameworks across perspectives, I seek to provide a template, or a roadmap, for a better conversation. My conclusions derive from a targeted literature assessment of subareas within the disciplines of philosophy, biology, anthropology, psychology, and theology, emphasizing those open to evolutionary contexts. I highlight eighteen core elements/themes and propose a few central thematic clusters as foci for moving the exchange on human nature between theology and science forward.     

指示性手势：来自动物交流系统的证据

指示性手势通常被定义为指明空间中某个物体或处所的手部动作, 但其是否为人类交流系统所独有, 心理学界做了大量研究。通过回顾这一领域的主要理论以及相关争论, 结果发现：动物既可能具有使用指示性手势的能力, 也可以解读手势背后的社会认知意图。未来研究在克服样本数量不一致、实验任务笼统以及研究方法单一等不足的基础上, 还应当注意心理学、语言学以及生物学等多学科的交汇融合。     

动物创造创新:最简单的智慧闪光

动物创造力既有重要的生态和进化意义,也为人类创造力的研究提供了借鉴与启发。文章首先概括了近年学者们对动物创造力的定义;其次介绍了动物创造力理论的变化;重点总结了影响动物创造力的内部因素,分别是动物的探索性、新异恐惧、学习能力和坚持性,随后针对动物创造力不同脑区及相关神经递质的研究进行了展开讨论,并对动物创造力未来的研究方向进行了展望。     

A RANDOMNESS‐BASED THEODICY FOR EVOLUTIONARY EVILS

We develop and knit together several theodicies in order to find a more complete picture of why certain forms of (nonhuman) animal suffering might be permitted by a perfect being. We focus on an especially potent form of the problem of evil, which arises from considering why a perfectly good, wise, and powerful God might use evolutionary mechanisms that predictably result in so much animal suffering and loss of life. There are many existing theodicies on the market, and although they offer helpful resources, we combine and further develop several proposals to produce a composite theodicy that avoids certain shortcomings of the individual theodicies. An important element of our project is locating a role for randomness in cosmic and biological evolution. In particular, we show how randomness might enhance or enable certain goods, including everlasting goods, at the risk of temporary evils.     

Equality,its Basis and Moral Status: Challenging the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests

The principle of equal consideration of interests (ECOI) is a very popular principle in animal ethics. Peter Singer employs it to ground equal treatment and solve the problem of the basis of equality, namely the problem of why we should grant equal treatment despite the variability of people’s features. In this paper, I challenge Singer’s argument because ECOI does not provide plausible grounds to presume that the interests of diverse individuals are actually equal. Analyzing the case of pain and the interest in not suffering in particular, I contend that there are some insurmountable epistemic and axiological problems in accounting for the equality of interests. Besides criticizing ECOI as a basis of equality, I argue that we need to rely on an equality of moral status. I conclude by providing some considerations on the relation between equality and the principle of proportionality.     

Estimating the growth of internal evidence guiding perceptual decisions

Perceptual decision-making is thought to involve a gradual accrual of noisy evidence. Temporal integration of the evidence reduces the relative contribution of dynamic internal noise to the decision variable, thereby boosting its signal-to-noise ratio. We aimed to estimate the internal evidence guiding perceptual decisions over time, using a novel combination of external noise and the response signal methods. Observers performed orientation discrimination of patterns presented in external noise. We varied the contrast of the patterns and the delay at which observers were forced to signal their decision. Each test stimulus (patterns and noise sample) was presented twice. Across two experiments we varied the availability of the visual stimulus for processing. Observer model analyses of discrimination accuracy and response consistency to two passes of the same stimulus, suggested that there was very little growth in the internal evidence. The improvement in accuracy over time characterised by the speed-accuracy trade-off function predominantly reflected a decreasing proportion of non-visual decisions, or pure guesses. There was no advantage to having the visual patterns visible for longer than 80 ms, indicating that only the visual information in a short window after display onset was used to drive the decisions. The remarkable constancy of the internal evidence over time suggests that temporal integration of the sensory information was very limited. Alternatively, more extended integration of the evidence from memory could have taken place, provided that the dominant source of internal noise limiting performance occurs between-trials, which cannot be reduced by prolonged evidence integration.