“In light of the evolutionary links and behavioural similarities between humans and higher animals, it is hard to believe that belief-desire psychology could explain human behaviour, but not animal behaviour. If humans have beliefs, so do animals.”
"Do Animals Have Beliefs?" (1979); as quoted in The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan (University of California Press, 2004), p. 36 https://books.google.it/books?id=Y0tWjRmxFE4C&pg=PA36.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Stephen Stich 1
American philosopher 1943Related quotes
Freedom for Über-Marionettes: What Science Won't Tell You (p. 151)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)
Räume, die Empfindungen auslösen, verändern das Verhalten des Menschen. Die Verhaltensbeeinflussung des Menschen durch die gestaltete Umwelt ist eine qualitative Zielsetzung des architektonischen Entwurfs.
Man and Space - Mensch und Raum 2005
“Copyright law as it is, it's just completely out of touch with human behaviour.”
" 'Intellectual disobedience' and the future of copyright: Nina Paley interviewed at Foo (2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcJqxIyFv4s#t=4m25s" <!-- Retrieved 27 February 2013 -->
Context: In ten years I think the [copyright] laws are going to be worse and I also think they are going to be less relevant. I mean, already the difference between the laws and people's behaviour, It's like they're different planets. I'm not hopeful for the laws changing. A lot of other people are, so maybe we will have meaningful copyright reform. I doubt it. I don't think it matters. I think the tools are available for people to create and share culture and they're going to do that and they might be doing it illegaly and at a certain point it's going to be more than the system can handle. I will say that if the power structure as it exists wants to continue they're going to have to reform because it's not sustainable. Copyright law as it is, it's just completely out of touch with human behaviour.
Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 43 as cited in: Owen Holland (2003) " The first biologically inspired robots http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/holland02first.pdf"
“The only difference between a human and an animal is in having inspiration.”
Preface; The Sacredness of Human Life
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)
Context: In law we draw a line between the killing of human animals and non-human ones, setting the latter apart as brutes. This was founded on a general belief that humans have immortal souls and brutes none. Nowadays more and more people are refusing to make this distinction. They may believe in The Life Everlasting and The Life to Come; but they make no distinction between Man and Brute, because some of them believe that brutes have souls, whilst others refuse to believe that the physical materializations and personifications of The Life Everlasting are themselves everlasting. In either case the mystic distinction between Man and Brute vanishes; and the murderer pleading that though a rabbit should be killed for being mischievous he himself should be spared because he has an immortal soul and a rabbit has none is as hopelessly out of date as a gentleman duellist pleading his clergy. When the necessity for killing a dangerous human being arises, as it still does daily, the only distinction we make between a man and a snared rabbit is that we very quaintly provide the man with a minister of religion to explain to him that we are not killing him at all, but only expediting his transfer to an eternity of bliss.