Projektbeschreibung
Die Psyche von Tieren
Wie fühlt es sich an, eine Biene zu sein? Oder ein Fisch? Empfindet eine Krake Freude, Angst oder Schmerz? Diese und ähnliche Fragen stellen sich Biologie und Philosophie derzeit. Das EU-finanzierte Projekt ASENT möchte Antworten finden. Dazu erstellt es eine Methodik für die Wissenschaft des tierischen Empfindungsvermögens – des subjektiven Erlebens der Welt und des eigenen Körpers von Tieren. ASENT entwickelt insbesondere einen konzeptuellen Rahmen, um zu verstehen, wie das Empfindungsvermögen im Tierreich variiert. Außerdem wird ein System für vorgeschlagene experimentelle Versuche gestaltet, um je nach Tierart ein Profil zum Empfindungsvermögen anzulegen. Das Projekt prüft auch die Dimensionen des Empfindungsvermögens (im Hinblick auf die Relevanz für das Tierwohl und den ethischen Status von Tieren).
Ziel
The goal of ASENT is to construct solid conceptual and methodological foundations for the science of animal sentience.
The term sentience refers to an animal’s subjective experience of the world and of its own body. In recent years, an interdisciplinary community of animal sentience researchers, drawn from neuroscience, comparative psychology, evolutionary biology, animal welfare science and philosophy, has begun to emerge. However, the field is characterized by foundational controversy over the nature of sentience and the criteria for its attribution, leading to heated debate over the presence or absence of sentience in fish and in invertebrates such as cephalopods and arthropods.
ASENT aims to find ways to resolve these debates, enabling researchers to move beyond the impasses that result from deep foundational disagreement. What is needed is a conceptual framework for thinking about sentience as an evolved phenomenon that varies along several dimensions, a deeper understanding of how these dimensions of sentience relate to measurable aspects of animal behaviour and the nervous system, and a richer picture of the links between sentience, welfare and the ethical status of animals.
ASENT will answer this need by providing:
1. An account of the basic functional capacities involved in sentience, and an evaluation of which capacities justify us in regarding an animal as a sentience candidate.
2. An overarching conceptual framework for understanding the dimensions along which sentience varies across the animal kingdom, based on distinguishing multiple structural properties of sentience;
3. A scheme of proposed experimental tests for constructing a species’ most likely sentience profile with reference to these dimensions, implemented with scientific collaborators using bees as a test case.
4. An assessment of which dimensions of sentience are most relevant to animal welfare and to the ethical status of animals.
Wissenschaftliches Gebiet
Programm/Programme
Thema/Themen
Finanzierungsplan
ERC-STG - Starting GrantGastgebende Einrichtung
WC2A 2AE London
Vereinigtes Königreich