Before arguing for cephalopod consciousness, the Cephalover explores arguments for any animals being conscious. This page was published over five years ago.
Please be aware that due to the passage of time, the information provided on this page may be out of date or otherwise inaccurate, and any views or opinions expressed may no longer be relevant. Some technical elements such as audio-visual and interactive media may no longer work. For more detail, see our Archive and Deletion Policy. These articles are Animal consciousness: a synthetic approach by Edelman and Seth , Subjective experience is probably not limited to humans: The evidence from neurobiology and behavior by Baars , and Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans by Panksepp We have to start out assuming that the question of consciousness in non-human animals is worth investigating Where do we start?
The first thing to do is to operationalize consciousness. We have to determine how we will identify consciousness in non-human animals, if it exists. It is, however, very difficult to do with animals, as we for the most part lack any reliable form of verbal communication with non-humans. Notable possible exceptions to this include parrots like Alex the Grey Parrot , who learned language well enough to pretty unambiguously demonstrate cognitive capacities such as numerical representation and the ability to categorize objects and some chimpanzees who have been taught to use simple language for example, Washoe , who was taught to use American Sign Language to communicate with her keepers.
Despite these exceptions, linguistic reports remain a rare and difficult-to-use tool for studying consciousness in animals. One way of working around the inability of most animals to use language and our inability to interpret the other ways they might be projecting information is to allow the animals to report on their experience through some sort of trained response, such as by pressing a lever, pushing a button, or another physical activity.
After damaging parts of the cortex that process visual information in these monkeys, the experimenters found that they continued to point to the correct spot, but they not longer reported seeing a stimulus when the stimulus was in a certain part of the visual field.
By training the monkeys in this study to report on their experience, the authors of this study were able to show that their awareness of their sensory world is separable from the at least some of the basic functionality of their sensory world, arguing that they have some sort of conscious perception of the world on top of the ability to make motor responses to sensory stimuli. In some cases, animals do not need to be trained to show behavioral evidence of complex cognitive processes, which suggest but importantly do not prove the existence of consciousness.
For example, as part of their arguments for the possibility of consciousness in birds, Edelman and Seth cite observations of birds exhibiting object constancy which is the ability to attend to an object even though it leaves the visual field, such as when it is hidden behind another object — for example, peek-a-boo is fun because young babies do not have object constancy, and so they act as if you disappear when you are hidden from sight, using and modifying tools, and changing their behavior based on their perceptions of being watched by other birds.
The most classical method of doing this in humans and apes is by testing to see if they can recognize themselves in a mirror. It has been used on many animals, and some that appear to have the ability to recognize themselves include dolphins, chimpanzees, gorillas, and in one of my new personal favorite behavioral studies by Plotnik et al.
These behavioral methods fall short of actually addressing consciousness per se, and they would never fly as an argument for consciousness in animals in and of themselves actually, the results with macaques are a veritable one-hit KO in this argument, but only because they involve a species so closely related to humans — arguments from analogy to more distant evolutionary relatives require correspondingly more evidence to make.
According to this strategy, we should use neurological processes some well-studied ones are the mobilization or production of neuroactive chemicals in the body and changes in EEG patterns as a link between the behaviors we know to be associated with conscious states in humans in his argument, emotional states in particular and analogous behaviors in animals.
Finally, we can attempt to identify neural processes in the rat that correspond with this behavioral reaction in the rat and in humans, as well as neural processes that correspond specifically with the perception of the event in this case, pain in humans. If we find that homologous neural processes and behaviors occur in both cases, we have a good case for suggesting that analogous subjective experiences also occur. In apparent agreement with this idea, both Baars and Edelman and Seth make a case for the identification of consciousness in non-humans through the study of neural processes that resemble those associated with human consciousness.
The latter authors, in their argument for the possibility of consciousness in birds, identify the presence of human-like or conscious-like EEG patterns in birds and the presence of a neural circuit analogous to the thalamocortical circuit of humans which has been shown through studies of brain-damaged patients and neuroimaging studies to be closely associated with consciousness as evidence supporting the interpretation of bird behavior as indicative of consciousness.
Baars argues that the apparent evolution of these brain structures suggests that consciousness is universal at least among all mammals. This is what he claims — I regrettably do not have the expertise in paleobiology or comparative anatomy to agree with or dispute his claims about brain evolution, but they sound like they could be disputed.
In essence, the argument for consciousness in animals remains an argument by analogy from the easily acceptable existence of consciousness in humans. It uses both behavioral and neural evidence to build this case. Critically, though, it makes use of comparative neuroscience to support the existence of consciousness in non-human vertebrates. Remember, though, that non-human mammals and birds are relatively closely related to people, and so their neuroanatomy is arguably suitably homologous to human neuroanatomy to make such an argument.
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Some people say if you can plan years ahead it shows consciousness, but that just shows planning. The question really is, do other species have mental experiences or do they sense things without having any sensation of what they are experiencing? Animals do—they react to movement: fight or flight or curiosity. It is incredible to me there is still a debate over whether animals are conscious and even a debate over whether human beings can know animals are conscious.
If you watch mammals or even birds, you will see how they respond to the world. They play. They relax when things are good. It seems illogical for us to think that animals might not be having a conscious mental experience of play, sleep, fear or love. In the beginning there was almost no neurology, nothing was known of how mental processes worked.
Animal behavior was based on fables, like foxes are clever, tortoises are persistent. We can only describe what they do. Meanwhile, people have spent decades watching wild animals. They have to be in order to do the things they do and make the choices that they do, and use the judgments that they use.
Many people simply assume that animals act consciously and base their belief on their own domestic animals or pets. Other people do not want animals to be conscious because it makes it easier for us to do things to animals that would be hard to do if we knew they were unhappy and suffering. When the public sees wild animals they feel lucky to see elephants, or they might go to Yellowstone and see wild wolves. Researchers spend decades watching these creatures and see individuals.
Many researchers have names for the animals and recognize the different personalities. Some are bold; some are shy. Some are more aggressive; some are mellower; some babies are much more assertive.
They see that some wolves are very assertive and aggressive and other wolves forbear. What you see when you actually get to know wild animals is very different from a casual sighting. If you saw human beings doing nothing but drinking water or running around a field, would you think that is all there is to human beings?
If you know the people drinking the water or running around, you have a different experience watching them. Many people think that empathy is a special emotion only humans show. But many animals express empathy for each other. There are documented stories of elephants finding people who were lost. They had encased her in sort of a cage of branches to protect her from hyenas. People have also seen humpback whales help seals being hunted by killer whales. There is a documented account of a humpback sweeping a seal on its back out of the water, away from the killer whales.
These things seem extraordinary and new to us because we have only recently documented these incidents.
But they have probably been doing these kinds of things for millions of years. I tried to take a break from writing about conservation to write about what animals do in their natural lives.
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