This is a topic which can hardly be painted in black and white, which easily submits to conclusions:
> There are those who defend the idea of insect consciousness , including Barron and Klein (Barron & Klein, 2016; Klein & Barron, 2016a), Tye (2016a, 2016b), Feinberg and Mallatt (2016, 2018, 2020) and Ginsburg and Jablonka (2019).
> There is also a vocal opposition including Adamo (2016a, 2016b), Allen-Hermanson (2008, 2016), Key, Arlinghaus, and Browman (2016), and Hill (2016). They argue that the evidence points to insects being “natural zombies”: cognitively sophisticated creatures with no conscious experiences. The argument often (though not always) takes the form yes, they do many cognitively impressive things, but we could also design a robot that could do those things, and we wouldn’t think the robot was thereby conscious.
> There is no agreement about whether insects are conscious or not, and, more fundamentally, no agreement on a methodology that could settle the issue.
Jonathan Birch (2020) The search for invertebrate consciousness
[PS, as I mentioned earlier, I have an article coming out soon which explores this topic in far more depth than we have done here]
PLB
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