Patterns

OK. So, I read a paper by a certain person whose work I liked and found a reference to another paper that was about considering collectives in animal ethics.

I couldn't get the paper but I was able to ask the author to send it to me.

She did. When I read it there was an element that I thought might be useful for my idea of a dissertation about animal cultures.

So I emailed the author and thanked her and said that the idea might help me because I wanted to do a dissertation on how animal groups foster individual survival, well-being, agency and identity, through communication, social learning, play and culture.

She replied and said did I want to present a paper at the Netherlands animal ethics group!!!!

I said I was a long way off, but, er, did that mean she thought it was a good idea?

Yes, she said, she and another philosopher (whose work I know) are working on something in precisely the same area!!!!!!

So. Yay.

It hugely encouraged me. I thought of some practical examples - lessening harms of the Anthropocene, translocations, rewilding, orphans, inter situ conservation. An example that comes from Gay Bradshaw's Carnivore Minds book is puma populations... should one release pumas into an area where the wild pumas are socially dysfunctional due to athropogenic stressors, for example. Oh, and wildlife corridors.

Anyway, it feels like there is something here. At last.

It ties in the cool work on animal languages, trans-species psychology, animal cultures, play... and maybe even my much loved and little understood Eduardo Kohn.

And definitely Matthew Calarco.

Plenty to chew on.