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3 results

Animal Ethics in the Wild
  • Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature
  • Catia Faria
  • Published online:
    18 January 2023
    Print publication:
    22 December 2022
  • Animals, like humans, suffer and die from natural causes. This is particularly true of animals living in the wild, given their high exposure to, and low capacity to cope with, harmful natural processes. Most wild animals likely have short lives, full of suffering, usually ending in terrible deaths. This book argues that on the assumption that we have reasons to assist others in need, we should intervene in nature to prevent or reduce the harms wild animals suffer, provided that it is feasible and that the expected result is positive overall. It is of the utmost importance that academics from different disciplines as well as animal advocates begin to confront this issue. The more people are concerned with wild animal suffering, the more probable it is that safe and effective solutions to the plight of wild animals will be implemented in the future.

  • Chapter 8 - Tractability

  • Catia Faria, Complutense University of Madrid
  • Book:
    Animal Ethics in the Wild
    Published online:
    18 January 2023
    Print publication:
    22 December 2022, pp 168-175

  • Summary

    This chapter claims that wild animal suffering is not intractable, nor interventions to reduce it are infeasible. To label certain interventions to reduce wild animal suffering as infeasible is merely to state that we cannot achieve them given our current state of knowledge. This is, at best, only partially true, considering the array of low-impact interventions presently available. At any rate, the fundamental discussion is not about which ways of helping animals in nature are already available, but rather whether we have reasons to develop the means that will make it increasingly more feasible to help them. Feasibility should be understood dynamically and conditional upon trying. With regard to large-scale interventions, we can affect their feasibility by putting ourselves in a position to achieve them, both individually and collectively. This could mainly be done by developing welfare biology as a new field of research as well as by adopting a future-focused approach to animal advocacy.

  • Algorithmic complexity of shape grammar implementation

  • Thomas Wortmann, Rudi Stouffs
  • Journal:
    AI EDAM / Volume 32 / Issue 2 / May 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 May 2018, pp. 138-146

  • Computer-based shape grammar implementations aim to support creative design exploration by automating rule-application. This paper reviews existing shape grammar implementations in terms of their algorithmic complexity, extends the definition of shape grammars with sets of transformations for rule application, categorizes (parametric and non-parametric) sets of transformations, and analyses these categories in terms of the resulting algorithmic complexity. Specifically, it describes how different sets of transformations admit different numbers of targets (i.e., potential inputs) for rule application. In the non-parametric case, this number is quadratic or cubic, while in the parametric case, it can be non-polynomial, depending on the size of the target shape. The analysis thus yields lower bounds for the algorithmic complexity of shape grammar implementations that hold independently of the employed algorithm or data structure. Based on these bounds, we propose novel matching algorithms for non-parametric and parametric shape grammar implementation and analyze their complexity. The results provide guidance for future, general-purpose shape grammar implementations for design exploration.