Can animals grieve?

Millar, Becky 2024. Can animals grieve? ERGO 11 (17) , pp. 442-465. 10.3998/ergo.6157

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Abstract

Empirical research provides striking examples of non-human animal responses to death, which look very much like manifestations of grief. However, recent philosophical work appears to challenge the idea that animals can grieve. Grief, in contrast to more rudimentary emotional experiences, has been taken to require potentially human-exclusive abilities like a fine-grained sense of particularity, an ability to project toward the distal future and the past, and an understanding of death or loss. This paper argues that these features do not rule out animal grief and are present in many animal loss responses. It argues that the principal kind of “understanding” involved in grief is not intellectual but is instead of a practical variety available to animals, and outlines ways that the disruption to an animal’s life following a loss can hinge upon a specific individual and involve a degree of temporal organisation.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Publisher:	Michigan Publishing
ISSN:	2330-4014
Funders:	Arts and Humanities Research Council
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	25 March 2024
Date of Acceptance:	July 2023
Last Modified:	23 Jul 2024 13:38
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/167518

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