The shape of animal thought: a T4EU Science Café at Trieste Next

On Sunday 27 September, from 11:30 to 12:45, the Science Café “The Shape of Animal Thought: From Cognition to Law” will take place at Area Talk 2, Piazza Unità d’Italia, as part of the programme of Trieste Next – Festival of Scientific Research. The event will also be streamed live on the Trieste Next YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@triestenextfestival/streams

The event will bring together neuroscience and law to explore how recent discoveries about animal cognition may challenge the way we understand and regulate our relationship with non-human animals.

Over the past decades, scientific research has revealed increasingly complex cognitive abilities in animals, ranging from spatial reasoning and numerical skills to apparently innate preferences for particular sounds. Such findings do not only reshape our understanding of animal minds. They also raise important ethical and legal questions about the status and protection of non-human animals.

The discussion will feature Cinzia Chiandetti, Professor of Cognitive neuroscience at the University of Trieste, and Tomasz Pietrzykowski, Professor of Law at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. The Science Café will be chaired by Alberto Pallavicini, Professor of Genetics at the University of Trieste.

Starting from evidence from comparative cognition, the speakers will examine the boundary between scientific knowledge and legal norms. If animals possess cognitive abilities once considered uniquely human, should this affect the rights and protections granted to them? And is contemporary law equipped to respond to new scientific insights?

The Science Café will offer the public an interdisciplinary perspective on these questions, connecting research on animal cognition with the emerging debate on non-human legal personhood.