PHIL 260: Animals & Science
Course Syllabus
Philosophy 260.01Spring 2014TTH 11:00-12:20HOL 207
Dr. Kathie JenniHOL 309Extension
Office Hours:Fridays 10-12,and by appointment
Course Description:
This course examines the troubled and complex relationships among science,
philosophy, and animals. For centuries, respected thinkers in Western philosophy and science denied that animals had mental lives: feelings, desires, emotions, intentions, thoughts. The topic of animal minds was, in fact, long regarded as disreputable and pointless by most scientists and philosophers. In part because of this, moral questions about how humans should treat animals were long ignored.
In recent decades, all of this has changed in dramatic ways. Scientists eagerly investigate animals’ mental lives in a variety of ways, and ethicists and activists have instigated an ongoing moral transformation in how animals are regarded and treated in society. Animal ethics is an actively debated topic in many arenas; and one of the most contested inquiries involves science itself. In particular, the practice of biomedical research using animal subjects has been sharply questioned and defended by philosophers and scientists. Paradoxically, it is the findings of science itself—that animals can feel and suffer, be bored and distressed, have preferences and desires—that have brought into question the ethics of invasive and harmful animal research in the service of human knowledge and well-being.
Our inquiry into these issues will come in two parts. For the first half of the semester, we will examine the attitudes, methods of study, and findings of science about animal minds, with special attention to the ethical implications of those findings. In the second half, we will examine ethical arguments about the scientific use of animals as experimental subjects.
There is no prerequisite for this course, and it could be successfully petitioned to count for “HP” credit; it is also open to Johnston contracting and evaluation.
Course Objectives:
1) To develop your ability to dophilosophy: to ask fundamental questions, challenge your worldview and beliefs, examine (fairly!) opposing arguments, and arrive at positions supported by careful and honest reasoning;
2) To introduce you to philosophical assumptions and scientific attitudes toward (nonhuman) animals, the study and salient findings about animal minds, and the ethical questions these findings raise about how humans treat animals; and
3) To help you to examine your life and society, and to develop well-considered positions of your own about animal ethics.
Required Texts:
Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals (NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).
Virginia Morell, Animal Wise: the Thoughts and Emotions of our Fellow Creatures (NY: Crown, 2013).
Jeremy R. Garrett, editor, The Ethics of Animal Research: Exploring the Controversy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012).
Course Requirements and Grading:
1)Daily Preparation and Participation (about 25% of course grade):
You’re expected to read and give thought to all assignments before the appropriate class meeting, and to be prepared to discuss or write about them in class. You’ll occasionally be asked to write short reflections on the readings (outside of class) to prepare for discussions or (in class) to stimulate your thinking. Participation in discussions, efforts on short writing exercises, improvement during the semester, and overall attentiveness and effort all count toward the “participation” component of your grade.
Coming to class is crucial in this course, given the difficulty of philosophy and the importance of conversation to doing it well. Missing class without a good reason—and coming late—will definitely hurt your grade or evaluation; chronic absence is grounds for a failing grade in the course, regardless of performance on written work. I expect your full engagement, every day.
Being physically in class is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for participating well. You are, of course, expected to be respectful of everyone in the classroom. This means coming to class on time, not carrying on private conversations when others are speaking, staying awake and listening actively, not texting or surfing the internet, and (when possible) contributing your own perspectives to discussions.
2) Three 4-5 pp. Essays (roughly 50% of course grade):
These open-book assignments will require that you explain and critique central issues and arguments that we have examined in class, in response to essay prompts that I’ll provide. The essays will fall due around February 7 (the end of Week 4), February 27 (the end of Week 7), and April 4 (the end of Week 11).
3) A 12-15 pp. individualized writing project (roughly 25% of course grade):
I’ll ask you to select a particular species of animal and a particular human practice that affects animals of that species, and to examine (a) the mental capabilities of that species of animal and (b) ethical implications for the human practice in question. For example, you might select mice as a species of interest to you, and examine opposing ethical arguments about biomedical research using mice. You might select pigs as a species of individual interest, and examine ethical arguments about the treatment of pigs in factory farming. You might select elephants as a species of special interest, and examine ethical arguments about keeping elephants in zoos.
This assignment will require that you make use of our texts to support your assertions about the mental life of the animal you select, do some research about how animals of that kind are routinely treated in a particular human practice, and examine two or more viewpoints about the ethics of that practice. (I’ll provide more guidance about this when the time comes.)
You’ll be asked to select your topic (animal species and human practice) no later than the 7th week of class (by Friday, February 28), submit an annotated bibliography of 4 sources by Friday, March 21, and submit the final draft of the essay by Tuesday, April 22. The paper will serve as a final, integrative project and will take the place of a final exam.
Class Format:
Class-time will be devoted to a mixture of short lectures (with questions encouraged throughout), documentary films, and classroom discussions in which you are strongly encouraged to participate. Be sure to complete the assigned reading before each class; otherwise you will be unable to enter effectively into our conversations or benefit fully from them. The lectures will elucidate difficult concepts and are intended to complement the readings; that’s one reason why regular attendance in class is critical.
Class Climate:
Productive philosophy can’t happen without people sharing and commenting on one another’s thoughts, so this will be an important dimension of our class. Even if your ideas aren't fully developed or do not jibe with your peers’, they will be respected by all of us so long as they are honest and supplemented with your efforts to support them. Discussion, debate, thinking out loud, and laughing together will all be a part of this class; but (of course) disrespect for classmates or ridiculing their ideas is never acceptable.
Policies for Written Assignments:
All work submitted (except for in-class free-writes) must be typed and double-spaced, with cpi (characters per inch) of 10-12, stapled, with pages numbered, and identified with your name. You must submit (on time) hard copies; email submissions of your work are not acceptable. Late essays will be penalized 1/3 of a grade for every day they are tardy without a compelling reason.
Grading Standards:
There is an excellent discussion of the University’s grading system on pp. 23-24 of the 2012-2014 University Catalog, which is available at the U of R website. I urge you to study that system so as to have a good sense of the rigor demanded of college-level work.
Your essays will be graded according to (a) the accuracy and clarity with which you explain central ideas and arguments, (b) the clarity with which you express your own viewpoints and your efforts to provide rational defenses of them, and (c) the interest and thoughtfulness of your discussions.
Intellectual Honesty:
Plagiarism is submitting another person’s work as your own, or using another author’s words or ideas without proper attribution. It is stealing, it defeats learning, it wrongs your peers, it degrades you, and it insults your professor. It will not be tolerated in this course. Please see the University’s Academic Honesty policy on pp. 12-19 of the University Catalog; pages 13-14 are particularly useful in spelling out exactly what practices violate academic honesty.
Accommodations for Disabilities:
If you have a disability (e.g., attention, health, hearing, vision, learning, physical, psychiatric) that may have an impact on your work in the class and for which you may require accommodations, please let me know right away so that we can make sure that your learning needs are appropriately met. You must register with Disability Services for disability verification and determination of reasonable accommodations: go to for further information.
Course topics and Readings
This schedule is tentative; we may revise it depending on class pace and interest. Current assignments will be announced in class; so if you miss class, always check with me or a classmate to see what the assignment is so that you can arrive prepared for the next session.
Weeks 1 and 2: Introduction: Philosophy, Science, and Animal Minds
Morell: Introduction, 1-26
Balcombe: Foreword and Introduction, ix-xii and 3-14
Film: Dogs Decoded
Weeks 3-6: Animal Minds
Balcombe, “Experience,” 7-78
Morell, “Among Fish,” 49-73
“Birds with Brains,” 74-92
“The Laughter of Rats,” 116-31
Balcombe, “Coexistence,” 83-138
Morell, “Parrots in Translation,” 93-115
“Elephant Memories,” 132-57
“The Wild Minds of Dolphins,” 181-205
“ What it Means to be a Chimpanzee,” 206-33
Weeks 7-8: Ethical Implications
Morell, “Epilogue,” 261-67
Balcombe, “Emergence,” 163-204
Film: Speciesism: the Movie
Weeks 9-13: The Ethics of Animal Research
Garrett, “An Overview of the Debate,” 3-8
Rollin, “Ethics and Animal Research,” 19-30
Schiffer, “The Evolutionary Basis for Animal Research,” 31-49
Brody, “Defending Animal Research: An International Perspective,” 53-66
Norcross, “Animal Experimentation, Marginal Cases, and the Significance of Suffering,” 67-80
Regan, “Empty Cages: Animal Rights and Vivisection,” 107-24
Rowan, “Debating the Value of Animal Research,” 197-214
Engel, “The Commonsense Case against Animal Experimentation,” 215-36
Film Possibilities:
On Particular Animal Species and Individuals
A Murder of Crows (60 min.)
Echo: An Elephant to Remember (60 min.)
Ape Genius (54 min.)
Dogs Decoded (56 min.)
On Ethical Issues in our Treatment of Animals
The Witness (43 min.)
Fowl Play (51 min.)
Speciesism: The Movie (94 min.)
On the Ethics of Animal Research
Bad Medicine: The Human Cost of Animal Experiments (45 min.)