Re-minding Animals: Developments in the Scientific Study of Nonhuman Animals

Stories about nonhuman animals continue to fascinate us as they have since Aristotle. A phrase recently employed in a moral philosophical account of animals. "animals matter," can also be applied to animal stories-they matter too. For our accounts of animals are a powerful influence on our attitudes toward and practices involving animals. Of course, all animal stories are accounts both of animals and, whether explicitly or only implicitly, of their storytellers. The authors of this set of 21 essays are biologists, philosophers, and psychologists who share a common concern with "a revival of interest in the study ofanimal minds" (p. xx) [all references are to the book under review unless otherwise indicated]. They discuss a host of questions centering on whether there can be a science of animal minds, what it might look like, and what its methods and rules of evidence can be. Their attempts to answer these and other questions in the philosophy of science result in these conceptually dense but nonetheless engaging stories about animals, science, and scientists. The present essay attempts a cohesive reading of the varied perspectives found in the collection. It is itself an animal story, although one thrice removed from a direct narrative about animals. It is necessarily a commentary on accounts in the philosophy of science regarding animal behavior scientists' studies, them­ selves accounts of animals. In fairness to the editors and authors of this fme anthology, before I tell that story let me locate myself as a storyteller. I am interested in the ethics of relations "between the species," more particularly between human and nonhuman animals, and most particularly between scientists and educators and their nonhuman "subjects." What will be the results of this revival of interest in animal minds on the treatment of animals in science? How will it affect the numbers of animals used, the conditions under which they are housed, the degree of invasiveness of their treatment? . My own position on the ethics and scientific merit of animal research leads me to favor a significant reduction in the numbers of animals used in research, notably when they are used as models of complex human phenomena. I also am critical of the use of a lab setting and, specifically, of the caging of animals of most species (Shapiro, 1989), preferring a style of research and education which can be conducted in naturalistic or seminaturalistic settings. On ethical, scientific validity and pedagogical grounds, I also favor