It's so easy for humans to anthropomorphize animals and believe that they have thoughts, feelings and inner lives similar to that of humans. We do it every day when looking at cute cat videos on the internet and imagining that the cats are laughing, or smiling or crying based on superficial similarities with human emotions. I think it's so tempting for our species to project our inner words onto the animal kingdom.<p>I think that's why so few biologists are willing to consider this area, it looks like they are projecting their biases and ways of thinking onto their subjects of study, which wouldn't be conductive to their research.
The word consciousness, as most people seem to use it, is not defined in a way that science can touch it. It only makes sense from a certain perspective, and that is not the perspective of science.<p>Asking "is some entity X conscious?" is sort of like asking "last December 6, what were the chances of there being a big earthquake in Indonesia the following day?" The only way to answer a "what are the chances?" type question is from the perspective of someone with limited knowledge. From the point of view of us, today, we don't have limited knowledge, we know the earthquake happened. So the question doesn't make sense.<p>Likewise with consciousness. You can't analyze it from a perspective other than that of the entity in question. It doesn't make sense.<p>There are plenty of other ways of defining consciousness that make it more accessible to science. But you might find it difficult to make sure it isn't inclusive of things that you don't consider conscious, like a self driving car or even your phone.
I think it's a pendulum. I remember when no scientist would say in print that animals could experience pain, and my shock when first reading a peer-reviewed article that suggested that (fish I think it was) did. Back then the Nim experiments were held to show that animals were not capable of understanding language in any way ('cause their syntax was imperfect.) However, before that scientists had been too quick to trumpet any sign of symbolic understanding as "animals understanding language."
Of course, it is also strict traditional (Thomist) Catholic doctrine that animals do not have souls (the seat of experience) or go to heaven; go back far enough and that was a strong limit on what science it was easy to publish.
Why won't they say that humans are conscious? Because this is not a question of biology and it is not a question biologists have the training or data to answer, even if you want them to take this stand for essentially political reasons.
The fact that pushed me over the edge is when I learned a cat twitching in its sleep is dreaming. Apparently all mammals dream.<p>Now we haven't exactly defined consciousness, but I can't really imagine how you can have dreaming without having an experience that "counts" to me.<p>Sometimes scientists use "recognizing oneself in a mirror" as the definition of "self-awareness", but I'd be sure to differentiate self-aware and conscious, because infants can't recognize themselves in mirrors, but they almost certainly experience pain that shapes them for life.
That old word - 'conscious'. We misuse it terribly. For instance we know when someone is 'unconscious', which should reasonably be the converse of being conscious. By that view, every animal that is aware and responding to its environment is conscious.<p>Another use (misuse?) of the word is to mean 'self-aware'. That one is harder to measure. But plenty of animals seem to meet that bar - if they recognize themselves in a mirror; if they can empathize with others etc.
Hmm. I had read in a book that volitional attentional binding (being able to shift your attention to different parts of your experience was closely related to what we call consciousness/experience, and that a lot of animals exhibit this behavior. So, most likely, animals are in fact conscious. Sadly I don't have any sources of research done in this area...
Consciousness is tricky philosophical business.<p>The reality is that on our planet, even something as simple as a plant (or fungi) can have memory, communication, and the ability to anticipate results. Where do we draw the line? Is there even a line that can be drawn? This issue goes way beyond just animals and until we have a functional metric of intelligence, I can't see us getting any real answers past simply recording data.<p>A link to a researcher on this subject as well as some of her published work:
<a href="http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/people/monica.gagliano" rel="nofollow">http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/people/monica.gagliano</a><p>There are quite a few people, all more qualified than I, researching matters like this. Figured that this was something that most might not even consider and thus was worth mentioning.
For anyone that wants to actually learn about consciousness, I recommend the book "In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind"[1]. It teases apart different aspects of what people call "consciousness", gives a theory that explains them, and describes the supporting evidence found so far. The theory suggests that some but not all animals are conscious.<p>I believe the theory -- "Global Workspace Theory"[2] -- is currently the leading theory of consciousness, though the field is still very new.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Theater-Consciousness-Workspace-Mind/dp/0195147030" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Theater-Consciousness-Workspace-Mind/...</a>
[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Workspace_Theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Workspace_Theory</a>
I think the author is conflating two every different notions of consciousness here, more specifically by not quite getting what the 'hard problem' of consciousness refers to.<p>The easy problem, which is what most of the article is about, is just self-monitoring—having some 'meta' processing. It's not hard to conceive of a system structured (roughly) like this: you start with a first order brain that just reacts to external stimuli, then you layer another system on it that monitors its state and calculates new inputs for it based on what was observed.<p>The hard problem isn't a scientific problem at all. It relates to immediate experience: what it's like to actually <i>feel</i> cold, or the experience of the color red, etc. It's basically accounting for 'qualia'—and it has nothing to do with what's usually called 'conscious thought.'
I recently spent good bit of time studying neuroscience. It's fascinating the way brain and nervous system functions. My own understanding is that animals are much more a slave to their neural networks as compared to humans. Because of frontal lobe and series of evolutionary changes, human beings have branched too far. Consciousness is also not fully understood at this stage. But I do concur that on cellular and structural level we are quite similar to other vertebrates. Still different.<p>Edit: if anyone is studying biology, medicine and are from software background; give me a shout. I would love to exchange ideas and collaborate
I was in a lecture by James Blackmon (cool dude, has some really interesting points about AI consciousness) He gave this example of testing for a Moral Patient, he stated "you would not hit a dog with a hammer, not because it can feel pain, but because it has an adverse reaction to the sensory input." By that conclusion he was saying that similarly an AI could be a moral patient because it can react to sensory input.<p>Interesting to think about.
Because the bible says so. And, it has always been the taboo in biology where biologists are a tad more reverent to religions than in other science.<p>Bibles says so: else eating/using animals would be a sin, and a lot of human «non virtuous behaviour» could be acceptable and animalism would be almost acceptable.<p>If human beings where animals (and animals considered conscious) monotheism most important axiom would disappear and most of our social order.