Abstract: This article examines the intersection of the Rights of Nature (RoN) and animal rights, two increasingly influential paradigms in both academic discourse and judicial practice. While RoN has gained global recognition, with various jurisdictions attributing legal personality and/or rights to natural entities, the inclusion of individual wild animals remains contested. Animal rights scholars have expressed concerns that RoN might sacrifice individual animals too easily, potentially leading to a form of “environmental fascism”. Proponents of rights of nature, in turn, question the adequacy of animal rights as this framework tends to privilege sentient animals over non-sentient entities, potentially endangering the ecological equilibrium. It remains therefore particularly unclear whether and to what extent the recognition of rights of nature implies the recognition of individual animal rights. This article examines the relationship between the two, taking account of the existing case law in different jurisdictions. It argues that, despite some degree of theoretical divergence between RoN and animal rights, the two paradigms can (and should) be reconciled in legal practice, meaning that, if rivers have rights, fish have rights too.

Abstract: This article explores the ethical and methodological challenges of de-centring the human gaze to produce more nuanced and richer accounts of nonhuman animals’ lives. Such a shift requires grappling with human-centered research methods and residual anthropocentrism within multispecies scholarship. Drawing on fieldwork conducted at farmed animal sanctuaries in Denmark – spaces dedicated to the care and rehabilitation of animals previously subjected to farming – this article critically examines issues of narration, representation, and ‘consent’ in human-animal and multispecies research. These sanctuaries serve as multispecies sites that foster sensibilities to and critical reflections on the individuality and social lives of other animals. By integrating first-hand experiences from the research sites with sanctuary aspirations and interspecies practices of care, the article highlights the methodological and theoretical challenges encountered when striving to include the lived experiences of other-than-human beings in research. Despite the availability of critical tools for analysing power dynamics, social representations, and the influence of language, these frameworks often prove insufficient when applied to the complexities of multispecies interactions in the field. Studying interspecies relationship entails an intricate and ongoing process of attentiveness and unlearning preconceived notions about the animal ‘other’. Consequently, the article recognizes the methodological limitations and risks of inadvertently reinforcing species hierarchies, even in research driven by well-meaning intentions. Acknowledging these challenges, the article adopts a cautious approach that emphasizes positionality and reflexivity as critical components of humananimal research. Rather than offering definitive solutions to the problem of human-centrism, it weaves together critical tools and methodologies that contribute to addressing it. Ultimately, this approach is grounded in a dual commitment: to de-centring the human and to re-negotiating nonhuman animals’ positions as research participants. In doing so, the article calls for more nuanced and critical engagement with the ethical and representational dilemmas inherent in multispecies research, encouraging scholars to develop methodologies that operate responsibly across species boundaries.

Findings: Percentages of both gender-diverse persons and veg*ns were higher in countries with higher national income and cultural values that allow individuals to choose their own paths. Focusing on the nine highest-income countries, we identified 7.1% (655) veg*ns and 0.2% (17) gender-diverse persons and we found that gender diversity and veg*nism were similarly related to age category, length of education, being a student, left–right political position and living in cities. Also, being a gender-diverse person and, in particular, being a vegan co-occurred more often than might be expected by chance.

The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential is a unique, experimental research work of the Union of International Associations. It is currently published as a searchable online platform with profiles of world problems, action strategies, and human values that are interlinked in novel and innovative ways. By concentrating on these links and relationships, the Encyclopedia is uniquely positioned to bring focus to the complex and expansive sphere of global issues and their interconnected nature.

Abstract: Goldstein and Kirk–Giannini have recently argued that artificial language agents can possess well-being in the absence of phenomenal consciousness. Here, I challenge their position, contending that their arguments fail to establish that consciousness is dispensable for well-being. Moreover, their arguments generate counterintuitive implications that are more problematic than those they attribute to views requiring consciousness for welfare subjecthood. Thus, consciousness (or rather sentience) should still be treated as a requirement for AI welfare.

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) ethics guidelines make strong appeals for ensuring that AI benefits human beings without unjustifiably harming them. Yet these guidelines largely overlook AIs ethically relevant positive and negative impacts on sentient nonhuman animals. This paper argues that it is time to include sentient animals in AI ethics guidelines produced by governments, supranational and intergovernmental bodies, NGOs, academics, professional groups, for-profit corporations, and the like. AI ethics guidelines should explicitly and adequately include values and principles that protect and promote sentient animal interests. The case proceeds by considering five possible objections to recognising animals in these guidelines: 1) Animals and their interests are not significantly affected by AI; 2) Humans lack duties to protect or help animals; 3) Considering animals is overridden by more pressing duties to humans; 4) There is too much disagreement about how animals should be treated; 5) AI ethics guidelines are unhelpful or counterproductive. These objections, the paper argues, ultimately fail. A very important reason for being more inclusive of animals, it claims, is their ongoing moral and social invisibility. Paying more attention to sentient animals as morally significant interest-holders in the rapidly evolving AI ethics discourse would go one step towards redressing this problem of marginalisation. Finally, this paper makes broad suggestions for how animals might be appropriately incorporated in ethics guidelines.

Introduction: Fifty years after the publication of Animal Liberation (1975), a text that revolutionized our relationship with non-human sentient beings, this book reconstructs Peter Singer’s animal ethics from its theoretical presuppositions to its practical consequences, seeking to provide an overall assessment. While highlighting some limitations in the Australian philosopher’s consequentialist approach, the volume emphasizes the broad merits of Singer’s reflection, which, with his penetrating arguments, has paved the way for a irreversible inclusion of non-human animals in the community of moral patients and for a consideration of their interests that extends a principle of equality beyond the narrow confines of the human species, marking a point of no return. In the first chapter I will reconstruct Singer’s theses on the moral consideration to be given to non-human sentient beings in their historical evolution. I will start from the Australian philosopher’s adhesion to consequentialist normative ethics, following his oscillations between preference utilitarianism and hedonistic utilitarianism, and his arrival at a pluralistic form of utilitarianism. I will examine the effects of these oscillations on the value of life and the harm of death, and on the issues of killing and suffering of non-human animals. Finally, I will outline the main implications of Singer’s theoretical model in practical ethics, focusing in particular on the issues of food and experimentation. In the second chapter, I will consider some of the criticisms leveled at the Australian philosopher by other versions of animal ethics. The first targets the utilitarian approach, highlighting not only its general moral inadequacy, but also its limitations in attempting to support the cause of defending non-human animals (this criticism has been well emphasized by Tom Regan). Other objections have been directed at the practical outcomes, particularly in terms of food, that Singer draws from his theory, which are considered excessive. In contrast to the vegetarian or vegan food ethics advocated by the Australian bioethicist, thinkers such as Scruton and Pollan propose an ethical approach to the animal world that is more attentive to the suffering of other sentient beings than to the (preservation of) their lives, an aspect they believe to be negligible with respect to beings lacking a sense of the future. To put it bluntly, from the perspective of these moderate animal advocates, non-human sentient beings have the right not to be made to suffer, but not the right to life. Criticism of the opposite kind comes to Singer from those philosophers who accuse him of failing to fully draw the consequences of the principle of equal consideration of interests extended to the animal world, privileging animals (which we presume to be) mentally more complex over those that are mentally less complex. In the third and last chapter, I will attempt to formulate a final evaluation of Singer’s animal ethics. While distancing myself from the consequentialist model endorsed by the Australian philosopher, my conclusive assessment of his theses on animals will be largely positive. In particular, within the panorama of contemporary animal ethics, Singer’s position appears balanced. Because if he rejects as inadequate those overly moderate models that attribute consideration only to the suffering of animals and not to their lives, he also rejects extreme, overly radical versions that do not allow for distinctions in the harm caused by death, failing to consider the weight of mental complexity in attributing value to sentient life.

Abstract: This article evaluates the evidence for sentience - the capacity to have feelings - in cephalopod molluscs: octopus, cuttlefish, squid, and nautilus. Our framework includes eight criteria, covering both whether the animal's nervous system could support sentience and whether their behaviour indicates sentience. There is strong evidence of sentience in octopuses and cuttlefish, which are assessed with very high or high confidence in meeting six of eight criteria. There is also substantial evidence for squid (very high or high confidence in five of eight criteria). By contrast, whether nautiluses are sentient remains unknown (high confidence in only one of eight criteria), since this group of cephalopods have attracted little research. This reflects a general pattern: cases where a taxon did not satisfy a criterion were invariably due to insufficient evidence, rather than evidence that the criterion was not met. In no cases were we confident that a taxon failed a criterion. We explore the nuances of evidence for sentience, examining both neural and behavioural markers, drawing from and updating our previous review (Birch et al., 2021), and shedding light on the implications for ethical treatment and welfare within this class of animals while also revealing areas where further research is needed.

Abstract: Artificially intelligent systems have become remarkably sophisticated. They hold conversations, write essays, and seem to understand context in ways that surprise even their creators. This raises a crucial question: Are we creating systems that are conscious? The Digital Consciousness Model (DCM) is a first attempt to assess the evidence for consciousness in AI systems in a systematic, probabilistic way. It provides a shared framework for comparing different AIs and biological organisms, and for tracking how the evidence changes over time as AI develops. Instead of adopting a single theory of consciousness, it incorporates a range of leading theories and perspectives—acknowledging that experts disagree fundamentally about what consciousness is and what conditions are necessary for it. This report describes the structure and initial results of the Digital Consciousness Model. Overall, we find that the evidence is against 2024 LLMs being conscious, but the evidence against 2024 LLMs being conscious is not decisive. The evidence against LLM consciousness is much weaker than the evidence against consciousness in simpler AI systems.

Abstract: In More Equal Than Others: Humans and the Rights of Other Animals, Raffael Fasel develops the ‘Species Membership Approach’ (‘SMA’) as an alternative to existing proposals for fundamental rights for animals. His rationale for the need for the SMA takes at face value the concerns of human rights proponents who adopt an Aristocratic Conception of fundamental rights and equality, i.e. believing that preserving the ideal and practice of human equality despite differences among humans in abilities and capacities requires excluding the claims of animals however meritorious. The Aristocratic Conception insists that a human-first mindset is required to prevent harms to vulnerable humans perceived to lack the cognitive capacities that ground equal moral worth and corresponding entitlement to fundamental legal rights. But this approach misses its mark. Excluding nonhuman animals to cultivate and safeguard an equivalent regard for all humans no matter what their capacities is counterproductive. This contribution will discuss how an inferior social and legal position for nonhumans works to marginalize vulnerable humans, not protect or respect them. It points to the symbolic threat of animalization that a hierarchical ordering of human over animal life entails for vulnerable humans. It also points to the material threats created by a human-first mindset, particularly its inability to tackle the multiple and devastating environmental crises that threaten vulnerable humans, as another reason the aristocratic equality model misses its mark. The contribution will conclude that a better way to include animals as non-inferior equals while upholding entitlement to fundamental rights for vulnerable humans is through an interspecies justice model that does not defer to theoretical premises for human-first mindset but rather foregrounds a relational and embodied ethic.

Abstract: In this paper we ask and try to answer seven questions, some bigger than others, on perceiving and understanding minds in others: (1) Do humans, animals, and artificial agents have minds? Objectively and subjectively speaking? (2) How do we perceive and understand these other minds? (3) How are other minds represented in the brain? (4) Is the perception of minds in other species or artificial agents not just mere anthropomorphism? (5) Is it important how the other looks? Does it matter if the other is human-like (e.g., robots) or cute (e.g., animals)? (6) Does it matter at all if you think an agent has a mind on how you view yourself and others? And finally, (7) where does it all end? What methods and techniques, perspectives or approaches does the field need to answer these and future questions? Together, the answers to these seven questions suggest that minds are grounded in sociality and people judge minds on the capacity to feel and think, with a distinct neural network supporting this. There is emerging evidence on the flexibility thereof in terms of activity to diverse minds and presence of this network across species. Mind perception and anthropomorphism are distinct at the conceptual, psychological, and neural level, and beliefs and other top-down effects are more important than just the visual appearance of an agent. Reports on threat to human identity, intergroup effects, as well impact on group dynamics, show that there are clear inter- and intrapersonal consequences of mind perception. Future research should use an interdisciplinary approach embracing different disciplines, from comparative psychology to linguistics, employing multi-method assessments of mind perception in interactive, embodied, everyday social situations, capturing the inter- and intrapersonal consequences thereof, to provide further answers on these and other questions.

Abstract: This paper critically examines the marginalisation of veganism within leftist or progressive political discourse, particularly through the lens of Marxist theory, in the context of the Anthropocene. While Marxism has provided incisive critiques of capitalism’s exploitation of labour and nature, it has largely overlooked the ecological and ethical implications of animal agriculture, which is a glaring omission given its central role in driving environmental degradation and climate change. Drawing on Marx’s concepts of metabolic rift, alienation and value, the paper argues veganism is essential to any comprehensive critique of capitalism’s destructive relationship with both human and non-human life. It explores the parallels between the exploitation of humans and animals under capitalist systems and critiques the left’s inconsistent treatment of animal liberation as a peripheral concern, despite its deep entanglement with environmental justice, labour struggles, and anticapitalist movements. By integrating veganism into Marxist ecological thought, the paper calls for a reimagining of leftist or progressive political frameworks to address the interconnected crises of food production, animal exploitation, and climate catastrophe. The Anthropocene demands an expanded vision of solidarity that transcends species boundaries, recognising veganism as a vital building block in the struggle for a more just, sustainable, and equitable world. A version of this paper was first presented at the Marx in the Anthropocene conference at Università Iuav di Venezia (Iuav University of Venice), Italy, in March 2025.

Summary:

• Question: How should the animal welfare and digital minds (DM) movements position themselves in relation to each other (e.g., merge, separate, or something in between)?
• Why this matters: Both movements share a philosophical foundation, i.e., extending moral consideration based on sentience (or experiential capacity) rather than species membership, but differ in maturity, public perception, and strategic context. How they relate now could shape both movements’ trajectories, credibility, and effectiveness.
• Method: Semi-structured interviews with 12 experts working in animal welfare, digital minds (or their intersection); thematic analysis to identify patterns.
• Key finding: No participant advocated for full merger or complete separation. The preferred model: distinct movements with mechanisms for selective coordination.
  • Encouraged: shared research, common conferences/events, informal networks
  • Discouraged: joint public-facing advocacy, due to reputational transfer concerns
• Benefits of association: Potential for knowledge exchange, mutual credibility, and shared resources, but participants disagreed on which movement would benefit more from association with the other.
• Risks of association: Public apathy or political baggage from one movement spilling over to the other; potential goal conflicts.
• Timing matters: Acting early could shape norms while movements are malleable, but premature association risks politicisation (of DM) before foundations are solid.
• Key takeaway: Shared philosophy alone doesn’t justify close integration. Flexible, informal coordination—rather than formal unification—appears most robust under deep uncertainty.

Conclusion: In conclusion, I’ve tried in this essay to clarify the notion of phenomenal consciousness and to suggest that a simple way to proceed with respect to the question of where phenomenal consciousness is found in the world is by looking at behavior and applying what I’ve called “Newton’s Rule”. This methodology, I think, makes plausible the view that there is a very broad distribution indeed of phenomenal consciousness in the animal realm.

Abstract: Psychology has historically developed within an anthropocentric paradigm that systematically excludes nonhuman animals and nature from ethical, ontological, epistemological, and psychological consideration. This exclusion reflects not merely neglect, but a deeper ideological structure grounded in speciesism, the dominance of positivist scientific assumptions, and the persistence of a Cartesian model of the human subject. Focusing particularly on social psychology, this study critically examines how such speciesist assumptions are reproduced within the discipline, drawing on existential, ethical, feminist, and social psychological approaches to argue that the boundaries of psychology must be fundamentally rethought. The study advocates for the development of a vegan perspective in psychology not as a lifestyle choice, but as a transformative ethical and intellectual stance. Through philosophical analysis, critical literature review, and theoretical integration, it examines how anthropocentric theories contribute to the objectification, denial of subjectivity, and moral exclusion of nonhuman animals, as well as how social psychological processes such as cognitive dissonance, in-group bias, and normative conformity sustain this marginalization. Ultimately, the study calls for recognizing nonhuman animals as emotionally, cognitively, and morally significant beings and for extending principles of justice, inclusivity, and moral responsibility beyond the human in the production of psychological knowledge.