Pirachula Chulanon

Topic: Animal Minds in Early Modern Philosophy

Do non-human animals have minds? If they do, in what ways do their minds differ from ours? – Are they conscious? Can they think? Do they have feelings and emotions? How we think about animal mentality has deep consequences for how we treat animals, how we see the world we share with them, and how we understand our own minds. This course will trace the origin of the modern debate on animal mentality through an interdisciplinary lens: we will consider how the question of animal minds in modernity has been shaped by not only philosophers but also artists and experimental scientists in Europe between 1600-1800. Throughout the course, we will attempt to develop an understanding of how philosophy, artistic creation, and scientific discovery have historically been entwined, and how an interdisciplinary method of inquiry may be fruitfully applied to the study of the history of ideas and of culture more broadly. Authors will include Descartes, Henry More, Leibniz, Cavendish, La Mettrie, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Locke, and Condillac. Along with philosophical literature, we will read and discuss scholarship from the fields of cultural history, art history, and history of science.