Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Over the past several decades, issues of animal rights have transformed from something of a niche cause to a mainstream concern in much of the world. It’s no coincidence that this increased consciousness has occurred amid a flurry of research detailing how nonhuman animals thrive, suffer, emote and process information in ways quite similar to humans. And it’s not just our primate cousins that seem to possess surprising levels of smarts – even small-brained creatures such as honeybees can count and grasp abstract concepts. Our rapidly evolving understanding of nonhuman animal intelligence poses myriad important questions for scientists, philosophers and lawmakers. For instance, to what extent should legal protections of ‘personhood’ apply to nonhuman animals? And can we ever hope to get past our own biases when assessing the minds of other beings?
As Marta Halina, a senior lecturer in philosophy of cognitive science at the University of Cambridge, explains in this latest instalment of Aeon’s In Sight series, these emerging ethical issues demand a new framework for helping us to better understand cognition in its many varieties and root out anthropocentrism. One potential tool, Halina says, is through creating something akin to a periodic table of elements for intelligence, guided by both qualitative and quantitative assessments. Through her work on a new initiative researching ‘the major shifts in computational organisation that allowed evolving brains to process information in new ways’, Halina hopes to help build a scientifically rigorous backbone for this proposed ‘periodic table’ of cognition.
This Video was made possible through the support of a grant to Aeon+Psyche from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this Video are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. Funders to Aeon+Psyche are not involved in editorial decision-making.
Interviewer: Sally Davies
Producer: Kellen Quinn
Cinematographer: Eva Kraljević
Editors: Chloe Abrahams, Eva Kraljević
Colourist: Natasha Nair
Illustrator: Ryan McAmis
video
Language and linguistics
Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better
8 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes
video
Anthropology
Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?
4 minutes
video
Subcultures
Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community
5 minutes
video
Technology and the self
A deepfake porn victim confronts the pain of having her likeness stolen and vandalised
19 minutes
video
Wellbeing
Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest
11 minutes
video
Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
12 minutes
video
Rituals and celebrations
A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle
8 minutes
video
Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
11 minutes