Paper Info
Title
On Chance, Causality, Agency, Volition, and Communication: The Case of the Subversive Parrot of Sfakion.
Abstract
This is a study (comprising a mild formalisation) of a narrative about human-like communication by a parrot, its political context, and punishment meted to this bird. In law, when causality is taken to have been concomitant with volition, the actus reus is said to have been the effect of mens rea. This calls into question how we reason about causality, as well as about chance. We analyse the death sentence which was carried out on a parrot on the island of Crete, as it was shouting republican slogans even after Metaxas had restored the Greek monarchy. Culturally, parrots have been conceived in a rather complex manner. Executing the parrot in Sfakion was no mere disposal of an object which was functioning in an inconvenient manner. Nor, arguably, was it a trial of animals in the medieval sense. Even without mens rea, and with the actus reus itself being rather problematic (the parrot was repeating something it had been taught under the Republic), the parrot was destroyed as chattel which had become a nuisance. Chance comes in: because \"beyond a reasonable doubt\" could not apply as usually meant. Determining the guilt of the parrot was not relevant. It was not the case that the parrot was making sounds which per chance happened to carry an offensive meaning (cf. the monkey typing away at a keyboard and just happening to write Shakespeare's plays).
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1007/978-3-642-45324-3_10
Language, Culture, Computation (2)
Keywords
Field
DocType
agency,causality,communication
Social psychology,Mens rea,Psychology,Reasonable doubt,Narrative,The Republic,Politics,Law,Sentence,Actus reus,Offensive
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
8002
0302-9743
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.35
18
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ephraim Nissan116421.59