The changing concept of animal sentience

By I. Duncan. 2006

266 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A brief history of the concept of sentience is given. It is pointed out that the idea of sentience, at least in the mammals and birds, was accepted by lay people by the time of the Renaissance and before it was acknowledged by philosophers. It was not until the Enlightenment of the 18th century that philosophers started to accept the notion that animals have feelings. Towards the end of the 19th century, scientists and philosophers had developed a fairly sophisticated concept of sentience. Little consideration was given to sentience by scientists through much of the 20th century due to the inhibiting influence of Behaviourism. In the last quarter of the 20th century, there was a surge of interest in animal sentience, and animal welfare scientists quickly realised that welfare problems can be better tackled with an understanding of how animals feel. Methods to investigate indirectly how animals feel are described and areas requiring further elucidation are listed.

Subfields: Genetics, Small Animals, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bb95a758566f35a4b4a6a48bfeadb2d05e2f6816

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Genetics

1. Tom Ben-Arye
2. Abílio Oliveira
3. M. M. Calheiros
4. J. Graça
5. S. Levenberg

In Small Animals

1. Tom Ben-Arye
2. S. Levenberg

In Social Psychology

1. Tom Ben-Arye
2. Abílio Oliveira
3. M. M. Calheiros
4. J. Graça
5. S. Levenberg

Citations in the corpus

• Tissue Engineering for Clean Meat Production (2019, background): “The public and the scientific community have come to respect farm animals as sentient beings, with physical and psychological needs (Hughes, 1995; Dawkins, 2006; Duncan, 2006; Webster, 2006; Panskeep and Others, 2012).”
• Moral Disengagement in Harmful but Cherished Food Practices? An Exploration into the Case of Meat (2014, background): “…on the negative implications of intensive farming to animals is informed by neurophysiological and behavioural evidence that support the notion that animals, particularly birds and mammals, have the ability to experience what happens to them (Duncan 2006; Guatteo et al. 2012; Prunier et al. 2013).”
• The Science of Animal Suffering (2008, unknown): “Q17 Au: Duncan (2006) not cited.”