Citation
Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith (2016) From thinking selves to social selves. Animal Sentience 10(10)
Commentary Type
Open Commentary
Thread
Mark Rowlands, Are animals persons?
Abstract
I argue that Rowlands’s concept of pre-reflective self-awareness offers a way to understand animals as Social Selves. It does so because it departs from the orthodox conception of self-awareness, which is both egocentric and logocentric. Instead, its focus is on the relation between consciousness and a person’s lived body, her actions and goals. Characterizing persons as pre-reflectively self-aware beings in Rowlands’s sense offers a much more useful conceptual tool to interpret social behaviour in animals.
Included in
Behavior and Ethology Commons, Cognition and Perception Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Evolution Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons