Conscious Animals
Increasingly, animal consciousness is being recognized by the scientific community, which could encourage the protection of animals on a global scale.
The most recent evidence of this shift comes from, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, a statement written by an international group of scientists from various fields. Although research on animal consciousness is hindered by the inability of animals to express their internal states, the group supports the notion that animals are unequivocally conscious.
"Non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors," the declaration says. "Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."
The group found striking similarities between animals and humans in regard to consciousness. "Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness," the declaration says. "Moreover, certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neurophysiological patterns, previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex."
Although the scientific community largely accepts animal consciousness, not everyone else believes that animals are conscious. As Philip Low of Stanford University announced to the group, "It might be obvious to everybody in this room that animals have consciousness; it is not obvious to the rest of the world." This declaration goes a long way in establishing a scientific argument for animal consciousness. It may be difficult to influence the world to act altruistically toward animals in the areas of science, food, and entertainment, but treating animals in a humane manner is now more important than ever.
Image by Bruce McKay Yellow Snow Photography, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.
Tweet
- 10-8-12
- David Wilder's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
Comments
This is the most ridiculous
anyoption The topic of
The topic of animal consciousness is beset by a number of difficulties. It poses the problem of other minds in an especially severe form, because animals, lacking the ability to express human language, cannot tell us about their experiences.Also, it is difficult to reason objectively about the question, because a denial that an animal is conscious is often taken to imply that it does not feel, its life has no value, and that harming it is not morally wrong. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, for example, has sometimes been blamed for mistreatment of animals because he argued that only humans are conscious.
Sorry, your article is not
A declaration of what is obvious
It's nice that a group of academic scientists should issue a "Declaration" that respectable scientific evidence (namely, the demonstrable presence in non-human animals of "neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of [human] conscious states") indicates that non-human animals such as mammals and birds are conscious beings. I wonder, however, at the perceived need for a "Declaration" of what is quite obvious to anyone who pays attention to the behavior of animals. Perhaps the authors of this Declaration felt that it was needed because they believe that most non-scientists are not aware that animals are conscious. Such a belief, I think, is mistaken. Anyone who has lived with a pet dog or cat knows the animal is conscious.
I suspect, however, that most people don't really care whether animals (other than their pets) are conscious, and so don't really care about the way that humans treat domestic animals (in particular, the chickens, cows and pigs that they eat). If this is so then, yes, it's good to have a Declaration by distinguished scientists that chickens, cows and pigs are conscious beings, who are capable of as much physical suffering as humans. This might not convert everyone to vegetarianism, but at least it might provide support for the abolition of the reprehensible and inexcusable manner in which the animals whose flesh most of us eat are treated as "dumb" animals who are incapable of suffering and who are "processed" on an industrial scale in the "advanced" societies in order to achieve "economies of scale" and to maximize profits for the giant food industry corporations which specialize in supplying to consumers what they want at a price they are willing to pay (and without having to think about the methods whereby what they want is provided to them).
Non-human animals, including
The experienced group of
Animals has their own
informative post
This article presents some very interesting and informative points to the readers. I would like to thank you for this excellent post and hope that you will keep up your effective work. Thanks
buy facebook fans
Directory