Any discussion of animal consciousness will quickly polarize into two
distinct groups. The first believes that human beings possess
consciousness and animals either do not, or if they do, it cannot be
satisfactorily proved that they do. Animal awareness is viewed as a
sort of black box, and any description of what animals might be
thinking or feeling is dismissed as "anthropomorphism".

The other group believes that there is no reason not to suppose that
consciousness or awareness of some sort is present in any organisms
that possess central nervous systems. Naturally, a dog will have a
different experience of the world than a person, and so will a honey
bee. But these three creatures have in common (among many things) the
awareness of light, time, and they possess memory and the ability to
successfully navigate in the environment.

But finally, the question of consciousness in animals turns back to:
what is consciousness in people? --  and most of the same problems we
have with animal awareness are here, as well. One cannot *know* in
any real sense, the consciousness of another person and we must rely
on observation (as well as their reports) to form of a picture of
*what it is like* to be them.

I only say all this because I think this a very interesting topic but
one which has several pitfalls. One is the problem that no one yet
agrees what consciousness is, even in us, and another is that very
little about it can really be proved in the classical sense.

---------------------------------

Robert Griffin:

Contrary to the widespread pessimistic opinion that the content of
animal thinking is hopelessly inaccessible to scientific inquiry, the
communicative signals used by many animals provide empirical data on
the basis of which much can reasonably be inferred about their
subjective mental experiences. Because mentality is one of the most
important capabilities that distinguishes living animals from the
rest of the known universe, seeking to understand animal minds is
even more exciting and significant than elaborating our picture of
inclusive fitness or discovering new molecular mechanisms. Cognitive
ethology presents us with one of the supreme scientific challenges of
our times, and it calls for our best efforts of critical and
imaginative investigation.

---------------------------------

David Chalmers:

Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the
mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious
experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts
of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in
recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have
tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short
of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is
intractable, and that no good explanation can be given.

--
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>