Understanding how animals fight with Lloyd Morgan's canon

Various game theory models have been used to explain animal contests. Here we attend to the presumed cognitive abilities required by these models with respect to information gathering and consequent decision making. Some, such as the hawk/dove game and self-assessment models require very limited cognitive ability. By contrast, the broadly accepted sequential assessment model requires that contestants know their own abilities and compare them with information gathered about their opponent to determine which has the greater resource-holding power. However, evidence for assessment of relative abilities is sparse and we suggest that this complex ability is probably beyond most animals. Indeed, perceptual limitations may restrict information about an individual's own displays and thus preclude comparison. We take a parsimonious view and conclude that simple summation of causal factors accounts for changes in fight motivation without requiring mutual evaluation of relative abilities. © 2012 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Commentary on Tonson v. Collins (1762)

Significant case in which the arguments for and against the existence of copyright at common law were extensively debated for the first time before the Court of King's Bench. Both William Blackstone (author of Commentaries Upon the Laws of England, and one of the judges to hold in favour of the common law right in Donaldson v. Becket (uk_1774)) and Joseph Yates (who would later provide the dissenting opinion in Millar v. Taylor (uk_1769)) appeared on behalf of the plaintiff and the defendant respectively.

Commentary on An Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Literary Property (1762)

One of a number of published commentaries contributing to the mid-eighteenth century debate concerning the nature of literary property. The author of An Enquiry sought to repudiate the concept of a natural authorial property right existing at common law. In so doing, he specifically engaged with various aspects of William Warburton's earlier commentary (see: uk_1747), as well as presenting arguments that drew upon the nature of property in general, the differences between the right claimed by proponents of the common law right and other acknowledged incorporeal properties, the similarities between patents and copyright, the history of literary property, the experience of other jurisdictions (drawing upon Venice in particular), and the consequences that would follow from conceding the existence of a perpetual right both for authors in particular and society in general. This commentary, in turn, drew its own response in the guise of A Vindication of the Exclusive Rights of Authors, to their own work (1762).