Animal Consciousness
In mid-April of 2024, a group of researchers published a declaration, signed by dozens of prominent and expertise-relevant biologists and philosophers, that says there’s a realistic possibility that all vertebrates and many invertebrates are conscious.
This statement, called the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (which follows and expounds upon the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness) was unveiled at a conference dedicated to this subject, and the claim is that phenomenal consciousness (which is the most basic kind, according to modern theory on the matter, and which basically says that it is “like something” to be a particular creature) might be found all over the place.
The idea of subjective experience being a hallmark of consciousness is not universally accepted, but it’s increasingly popular with folks who work and do research within the realm of consciousness biology and philosophy, and the implications of this claim could be huge, if true.
Consider what this would mean for the domestication and slaughter of such animals as pets and for food, for instance, or what it might mean for our development of increasingly conscious-seeming artificial intelligence system.
Research has shown that octopuses feel and respond negatively to pain, that zebrafish seem curious, that bees are playful, and that some types of fish pass the mirror test, attempting to clean themselves off when, looking in a mirror, they notice marks (placed by researchers) on their bodies—which suggests they recognize themselves in the reflection, which in turn suggests they have a conscious awareness that makes such recognition possible.
None of which is definitely proven, as there are other possible, reflexive and zombie-like explanations for all of these, and other oft-cited examples that seem to indicate at least a modicum of consciousness in non-human animals.
The concept of “consciousness” in humans, too, is far from a universally agreed-upon thing, which makes this conversation even more fraught.
But these sorts of declarations are not made casually, as getting over one’s skis in the research world can make attaining future funding and growing one’s career difficult, if one bets one’s reputation to something that ends up being bunk.
So this isn’t an indication that animal consciousness is definitive, but it does suggest that the amalgamation of recent research (which these signatories cite as their rationale for publishing this declaration) implies that many animals we previously considered to be mindless automatons may actually be conscious in a way that we would recognize, and that we may, someday, need to cope with this realization: legally, socially, and psychologically.