A Horse's Point Of View
Masked: Writing from the animal point of view
"As part of journalism’s commitment to truth and justice by providing a diversity of relevant points of view, journalists have an obligation to provide the perspective of nonhuman animals in everyday stories that influence the animals’ and our lives."
"Journalists should: (1) observe, listen to, and communicate with animals and convey this information to audiences via detailed descriptions and audiovisual media, (2) interpret nonhuman animal behavior and communication to provide context and meaning, and (3) incorporate the animals’ stories and perspectives, and consider what is in their best interest."
"The spirit of the code could easily be expanded to include other marginalized living beings, namely our fellow animal species whose voices often go unheard regarding issues that directly influence their lives. To believe the expansion of this code is important, one must accept that other animals have interests, desires, thoughts, feelings, and points of view concerning what happens to them and that we can understand and explain their cognitive, emotional, and moral lives."
"Empirical research has clearly shown that other animals have interests, desires, and cognitive, emotional, and moral intelligences. And while we can use scientific evidence to support claims about animal sentience and our ability to interpret accurately their behavior, it is also self-evident to people who live with a companion animal that dogs, cats, parrots, rabbits, rats, and hamsters, for example, have desires and a viewpoint they convey to us, often quite persuasively. So, in this sense, it is important to recognize that animals really are not voiceless or unable to communicate what they want and need. In many species complex systems of communication involving various modalities have evolved, but too often we simply do not pay attention to how animals are expressing their intentions and desires."
"With the exception of our companion animals, most humans will likely not pay much attention to the needs and desires of countless other animals unless conveyed to us by others, especially through media. We rely on the media, particularly journalism, to inform us of important issues and events locally and globally and to set the agenda for what we and policy-makers consider priorities. While news is produced for and by humans primarily to help citizens become informed members of society, it has an obligation to inform us of all the ways our actions affect both humans and nonhumans so that we can make educated, responsible, and fair choices."
"Give voice to the voiceless"
"Western culture reflects its historical philosophical origins heavily influenced by humanism, Judeo-Christian worldviews of human superiority and dominion, and the Cartesian human animal dualism. But ideologically, we are entering a posthumanist era that may no longer be defined solely by a liberal humanist outlook that privileges the human as the central subject of concern and considers all other beings as natural resources."
"To complement the description of animal behavior, in situations where uncertainty exists, journalists should attempt to convey various interpretations of what particular behavior patterns might mean in terms of the animal’s intentions or their mental and physical state."
"Because we depend on humans to convey information about the lives of NHAs, the primary concern is how to determine who has the right to speak on behalf of nonhuman animals. The best choice would be someone who can represent the animals’ interests with credibility, familiarity, expertise..."
How Animals Think: Nonhuman minds have a great deal to teach us
By Alison Gopnik
"A better way to think about other creatures would be to ask ourselves how different species have developed different kinds of minds to solve different adaptive problems. Surely the important question is not whether an octopus or a crow can do the same things a human can, but how those animals solve the cognitive problems they face, like how to imitate the sea floor or make a tool with their beak. Children and chimps and crows and octopuses are ultimately so interesting not because they are mini-mes, but because they are aliens—not because they are smart like us, but because they are smart in ways we haven’t even considered."
By Sandhya Nankani
"An author who writes stories about animals might wear an Inside Out Mask. That mask allows the writer to describe the physical behavior of an animal in such a way that a reader can understand its emotions and mental state."
"Another mask a writer might wear is the Sensitive Mask. That mask allows him or her to see an animal's world with sensitivity—through nonverbal senses, such as smell, touch, sound, and sight."
"Of course, Bunting is not a turtle, but she has to imagine being one to successfully write about a turtle's life and to create an adventure the creature might have."
"Four questions to keep in mind:
1. What would it feel like to be a [fill in the blank here with an animal of your choice]?
2. How would I describe myself?
3. What is my life like?
4. What would I say?"
Examples: Charlotte's Web, The Jungle Book, Call Of The Wild, Emma's Turtle
Thinking with Animals
By Andreas Roepstorff
"An analysis of ethnographic material from Greenland demonstrates that people regard animals as nonhuman 'persons' i.e. as sensing and thinking beings. Like humans, animals are supposed to have knowledge about their environment. Taking this semiotic competence as a fact beyond any doubt enables skilled hunters and fishermen to rely not only on their own interpretation of the environment, but also on the animals' interpretation of their environment."
"An author who writes stories about animals might wear an Inside Out Mask. That mask allows the writer to describe the physical behavior of an animal in such a way that a reader can understand its emotions and mental state."
"Another mask a writer might wear is the Sensitive Mask. That mask allows him or her to see an animal's world with sensitivity—through nonverbal senses, such as smell, touch, sound, and sight."
"Of course, Bunting is not a turtle, but she has to imagine being one to successfully write about a turtle's life and to create an adventure the creature might have."
"Four questions to keep in mind:
1. What would it feel like to be a [fill in the blank here with an animal of your choice]?
2. How would I describe myself?
3. What is my life like?
4. What would I say?"
Examples: Charlotte's Web, The Jungle Book, Call Of The Wild, Emma's Turtle
Thinking with Animals
By Andreas Roepstorff
"An analysis of ethnographic material from Greenland demonstrates that people regard animals as nonhuman 'persons' i.e. as sensing and thinking beings. Like humans, animals are supposed to have knowledge about their environment. Taking this semiotic competence as a fact beyond any doubt enables skilled hunters and fishermen to rely not only on their own interpretation of the environment, but also on the animals' interpretation of their environment."
"Embedded in the interactions between humans and animals is a fundamental understanding of the similarities and differences between humans and nonhumans. It is suggested that the choice of a semiotic as opposed to a physical stance towards the nonhuman world is a question inscribed in larger issues of a cosmological nature, and that the distinction between humans and nonhumans is central to how people relate to, and act in, the world."
"Animals are 'persons' equipped with consciousness as a consequence of their being alive."
"Animals are sensible and sensing beings able to get what they want, such as prey and partners, while avoiding what they do not want, such as unpleasant things, places, or encounters with predators."
"They think along with animals, i.e. they use much more concrete ideas of how animals think about the world to get to know it, and this knowledge has consequences for the way they act in the world."
Animal Awareness: Current Perceptions and Historical Perspective
By Gordon M. Burghardt
"If we pass from the study of men to that of animals, we are astonished to rediscover in animals all that which we had before discovered in the innermost recesses of man's heart and mind. At each step taken in this unwonted sphere we meet surprise after surprise. Sense and stupidity, craft and simplicity, good and bad taste, kind heartedness and malice, gentleness and harshness, impetuosity and indifference, prudence and thoughtlessness."
"The distinction between mind as known directly to us (subjectively) and mind whose existence in other animals--human and nonhuman--can only be in- ferred (subjective analogical inference), was emphasized by..."
"What I am calling for is a critical anthropomorphism and predictive inference that encourages the use of data from many sources (prior experiments, anecdotes, publications, one's thoughts and feelings, neuroscience, imagining being the animal, naturalistic observations, insight from observing one's maiden aunt, etc.). But however eclectic in origin, the product must be an inference that can be tested or, failing that, can lead to predictions supportable by public data. This is, in fact, the way the most creative ethologists and psychologists have worked, but as it is not the way scientists are supposed to work, the method has been neither formalized nor taught."
Giving voice to the ‘‘Voiceless’’: Incorporating nonhuman animal perspectives as journalistic sources
By Carrie Packwood Freeman, Marc Bekoff & Sarah M. Bexell
Animal Awareness: Current Perceptions and Historical Perspective
By Gordon M. Burghardt
"If we pass from the study of men to that of animals, we are astonished to rediscover in animals all that which we had before discovered in the innermost recesses of man's heart and mind. At each step taken in this unwonted sphere we meet surprise after surprise. Sense and stupidity, craft and simplicity, good and bad taste, kind heartedness and malice, gentleness and harshness, impetuosity and indifference, prudence and thoughtlessness."
"The distinction between mind as known directly to us (subjectively) and mind whose existence in other animals--human and nonhuman--can only be in- ferred (subjective analogical inference), was emphasized by..."
"What I am calling for is a critical anthropomorphism and predictive inference that encourages the use of data from many sources (prior experiments, anecdotes, publications, one's thoughts and feelings, neuroscience, imagining being the animal, naturalistic observations, insight from observing one's maiden aunt, etc.). But however eclectic in origin, the product must be an inference that can be tested or, failing that, can lead to predictions supportable by public data. This is, in fact, the way the most creative ethologists and psychologists have worked, but as it is not the way scientists are supposed to work, the method has been neither formalized nor taught."
Giving voice to the ‘‘Voiceless’’: Incorporating nonhuman animal perspectives as journalistic sources
By Carrie Packwood Freeman, Marc Bekoff & Sarah M. Bexell
"As part of journalism’s commitment to truth and justice by providing a diversity of relevant points of view, journalists have an obligation to provide the perspective of nonhuman animals in everyday stories that influence the animals’ and our lives."
"Journalists should: (1) observe, listen to, and communicate with animals and convey this information to audiences via detailed descriptions and audiovisual media, (2) interpret nonhuman animal behavior and communication to provide context and meaning, and (3) incorporate the animals’ stories and perspectives, and consider what is in their best interest."
"The spirit of the code could easily be expanded to include other marginalized living beings, namely our fellow animal species whose voices often go unheard regarding issues that directly influence their lives. To believe the expansion of this code is important, one must accept that other animals have interests, desires, thoughts, feelings, and points of view concerning what happens to them and that we can understand and explain their cognitive, emotional, and moral lives."
"Empirical research has clearly shown that other animals have interests, desires, and cognitive, emotional, and moral intelligences. And while we can use scientific evidence to support claims about animal sentience and our ability to interpret accurately their behavior, it is also self-evident to people who live with a companion animal that dogs, cats, parrots, rabbits, rats, and hamsters, for example, have desires and a viewpoint they convey to us, often quite persuasively. So, in this sense, it is important to recognize that animals really are not voiceless or unable to communicate what they want and need. In many species complex systems of communication involving various modalities have evolved, but too often we simply do not pay attention to how animals are expressing their intentions and desires."
"With the exception of our companion animals, most humans will likely not pay much attention to the needs and desires of countless other animals unless conveyed to us by others, especially through media. We rely on the media, particularly journalism, to inform us of important issues and events locally and globally and to set the agenda for what we and policy-makers consider priorities. While news is produced for and by humans primarily to help citizens become informed members of society, it has an obligation to inform us of all the ways our actions affect both humans and nonhumans so that we can make educated, responsible, and fair choices."
"Give voice to the voiceless"
"Human superiority and discrimination towards other species"
"To complement the description of animal behavior, in situations where uncertainty exists, journalists should attempt to convey various interpretations of what particular behavior patterns might mean in terms of the animal’s intentions or their mental and physical state."
"Because we depend on humans to convey information about the lives of NHAs, the primary concern is how to determine who has the right to speak on behalf of nonhuman animals. The best choice would be someone who can represent the animals’ interests with credibility, familiarity, expertise..."
How Animals Think: Nonhuman minds have a great deal to teach us
By Alison Gopnik
"A better way to think about other creatures would be to ask ourselves how different species have developed different kinds of minds to solve different adaptive problems. Surely the important question is not whether an octopus or a crow can do the same things a human can, but how those animals solve the cognitive problems they face, like how to imitate the sea floor or make a tool with their beak. Children and chimps and crows and octopuses are ultimately so interesting not because they are mini-mes, but because they are aliens—not because they are smart like us, but because they are smart in ways we haven’t even considered."