Minding Animals: companion animals and cognitive biophilia

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Minding Animals companion animals and cognitive
biophilia

• Human-pet relationships rich source of
  information about how we define ourselves and
  others (boundaries that we draw)
• Pet-keeping is a form of domestication but its
  structure and function is different. Many
  cultures have kept domestic animals but most have
  tended to have more functional and casual
  relationships with them Western habits of
  pet-keeping involve more intimate and intense
  relationships
• Pet-keeping involves elevating certain members of
  a species to a privileged position in the human
  society/household this position does not
  necessarily extend to all members of that species

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The function of pets

• Function varies according to culture and time
• Pets as resources (New Guineans use tame
  cassowary birds as sources of feathers)
• Pets as teachers (keeping species considered as
  prey to learn about behaviour and improve hunting
  techniques)
• Pets as status symbols (royalty keeping dangerous
  or exotic (expensive) animals)
• Pets as children (recipients of parental care
  and nurturance)

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The pet as marginal animal

• Domesticated animals bridge the gap between
  wild and tame, nature and culture. Pets
  are no longer wild, but neither are they
  fully-fledged members of human society.
• Animals may act as transitional objects to help
  humans bridge the gap between nature and culture,
  self and other (see Berman, 1990)
• Domestication is a transactional event
  (Savishinsky, 1983) between animals and humans
  some traditional peoples talk of domesticated
  animals as having lost their spirituality by
  becoming tamed

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The development of the human-pet relationship

• Most human-pet relationships are primarily social
  and involve social species, e.g. dogs. Pet
  owners engage in four processes of identity
  construction when assigning identity to pets and
  incorporating them into the home (Sanders, 1993)
• attributing thought, beliefs, intentions and
  desires to the pet
• treating pet as an individual in its own right
  and having attributes like personality
• seeing the pet as an active, reciprocal partner
  of the relationship
• incorporating the pet into the family sphere
• Does this process consist of anthropomorphism or
  does the relationship facilitate the development
  of reciprocity and mindedness?

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Psychological relationships with animals
positive effects

• Interactions with animals reduce stress and may
  help isolated, mentally disturbed and depressed
  people (e.g. Katcher Wilkins, 1992)
• The presence of a pet can facilitate social
  interaction and make owners appear more
  attractive and more friendly
• Empathy is a characteristic that seems to
  structure our relationships with both humans and
  animals there is a correlation between highly
  empathic responses towards people and towards
  pets (Paul, 2000)

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Psychological relationships with animals
negative effects

• Conflicting research highlighting the extent to
  which those who are closely attached to pets may
  not form close attachments to other humans (but
  see research on the elderly)
• Shepard suggests pet-keeping is a form of mental
  hygiene, and that they fulfil the need we have
  to feel a connection with nature in an
  increasingly alienated world
• The pet is our effort to extend a hand to the
  poor, broken brutes of the barnyard or
  agribusiness shed, to compensate for the
  vanishing bucolic community, a gray mass of
  egg-laying, meat-growing, milk-secreting
  machines, closed in the sterile barns of the new
  industrial farms. If we look at pet-keeping from
  this perspective of totemic thought a need for
  animals as urgent as good nutrition and good
  mothering pets appear quite different from our
  usual careless association.
• Shepard, 1998, pp192

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Misplaced relationships?

• Are the limited relationships we have with
  animals exploitative (e.g. lab animals, zoos) or
  pathological (keeping pets)?
• Our relationships with animals are ambiguous
  modern human-pet relationships are very close,
  but we distance ourselves from certain species in
  certain circumstances e.g. farmers and lab
  technicians adopt distancing strategies and
  special terminology to depersonalise them (e.g.
  animals are consumables to be harvested).

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Cognitive biophilia

• Humans seem biologically predisposed to affiliate
  with nature and form close connections with other
  species (the biophilia hypothesis, Wilson
  Kellert, 1993)
• Creating a kinship with animals did more than
  illuminate the complexity of human social
  relationshipsit made the world a more
  comfortable place by reducing human isolation.
  The presence of animals, their touch, their
  attention, became part of the pattern of social
  dialogue that helps to maintain human health.
  (p.187)

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Animals are good to think

• Close interconnection with nature often more
  characteristic of traditional cultures (e.g.
  totemism, from ototeman, the Obijwa for he is
  my relative). Levi-Strauss emphasised
  universality of totemism as basic way in which we
  categorise the world and use the natural world to
  mirror their own culture
• Deeper argument for the central role nature plays
  in structuring our cognitive worlds (Shepard,
  Wilson) relationships with animals are crucial
  to imagination, self-identity, symbolic thought
  and play (e.g. childhood naming of animals
  predates (and is the basis for) categorical
  thinking and helps to develop metaphorical
  thinking (which is the basis for all thought).
  Processes such as these can only happen in a
  context of relatedness with the natural world.

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Real and symbolic relationships

• In our imaginative life (e.g. play, dreams, fairy
  tales and myths) there are few boundaries between
  ourselves and animals. The dreams and stories of
  young children are predominated by the presence
  of animals (Lawrence, 1992), though adults dream
  less about animals (but they are still important
  symbolic figures in our dreams and fantasy life
  (Hillman, 1983).
• Are our relationships with animals in our modern,
  urban, industrial age more symbolic than real?
  If the presence of animals is necessary for our
  emotional and psychological health (and important
  for the development of imagination,
  categorisation and language) what happens in
  their absence?
• During nearly all the history of our species
  man has lived in association with large, often
  terrifying, but often exciting animals. Models
  of the survivors, toy elephants, giraffes and
  pandas, are an integral part of contemporary
  childhood. If all these animals become extinct,
  as is quite possible, are we sure that some
  irreparable harm to our psychological development
  would not be done?

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References

• Hillman, J. McLean, M. (1997) Dream Animals.
  Chronicle Books.
• Hindley, M. P. (1999). Minding animals the role
  of animals in childrens mental development.
  (ed.) F.L. Dolins, Attitudes to animals.
  Cambridge University Press.
• Katcher, A. Wilkins, G. (1993). Dialogue with
  animals Its nature and culture. In The Biophilia
  Hypothesis, (eds.) S.R. Kellert, E.O. Wilson,
  E.O. Washington, D.C. Island Press.
• Lawrence, E.A. (1993). The sacred bee, the filthy
  pig, and the bat out of hell Animal symbolism as
  cognitive biophilia. Also In The Biophilia
  Hypothesis.
• Paul, E.S. (2000). Love of pets and love of
  people. In Companion animals and us, (eds.) A.L.
  Podberscek, E.S. Paul, J.A. Serpell. Cambridge
  CUP
• Passariello, P. (1999). Me and my totem
  cross-cultural attitudes towards animals. In
  (ed.) F.L. Dolins, Attitudes to animals. CUP.

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References

• Rajecki, D.W., Rasmussen, J.L., Sanders, C.R.,
  Modlin, S.J. Holder, A.M. (1999). Good dog
  Aspects of humans causal attributions for a
  companion animals social behavior. Society and
  Animals, 7, 1, 17-34. (Access this online, follow
  link to S A from Anthro webpage)
• Sanders, C.R. (1993) Understanding dogs
  Caretakers attributions of mindedness in
  canine-human relationships. Journal of
  Contemporary Ethnography, 22, 2, 205-226.
• Savishinsky, J.S. (1983) Pet ideas The
  domestication of animals, human behavior, and
  human emotions. In New Perspectives on our Lives
  with Companion Animals, (eds.) A.H. Katcher
  A.M. Beck. Philadelphia University of
  Pennsylvania Press.

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Readings for next weeks session

• Asquith, P.J. (1997) Why anthropomorphism is not
  metaphor, In (eds.) R.W. Mitchell, N.S. Thompson
  H.L. Miles, Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and
  Animals. NY State University of New York Press.
• In AAA book, also try Ch.4 by E.C. Spada,
  Amorphism, Mechanomorphism and Anthropomorphism,
  and Ch 9 by H. Lehman, Anthropomorphism and
  scientific evidence for animal mental states.
• Schilhab, T.S.S. (2002) Anthropomorphism and
  mental state attribution. Animal Behaviour, 63,
  1021-1026.