Report or activist project
Animal Sentience and Consciousness: a Certain Way of Knowing
Opening Thought
But in keeping with the principle of evolutionary continuity, and in light of recent decades of scientific exploration of both human and animal minds, I would summarize it this way: all animals share a great many of the general features of living. Animals, including humans, have internal experiences of sensation, perception, feeling, thought, and intention (Panksepp, 2009). These internal experiences are responses to the external world we share, about which animals communicate with other animals. All animals, inclusive of humans, are members of an extended family, a notion that carries an important affective component. Yes, it is past time that we accept and teach this scientifically correct and affectively compelling notion, and that we allow it to motivate our behavior towards other animals. As C & H suggest, this shift to bringing the animal Other into our circle of concern may then have ripple effects in improving the lot of humans, nonhuman animals, and ecosystems alike (Freeman, 2012; Goodman, 2012).
Animal Sentience 2018.165: Benvenuti on Chapman & Huffman on Human Difference
WHY
Why look at sentience, consciousness and intelligence in this subject?
To read Western and Indigenous ways of knowing into these aspects of animals
To think about the ethics of what is needed to acquire this information and its implications
Much public policy and many decisions about animals are based on this research.
To assess if animals want know if they are intelligent and more intelligent than another group, for example, are Orcas smarter than Dolphins?
To see if conclusions based on improved knowledge of animal consciousness benefits humans
Can more money be made with more knowledge about animals; can animals be protected more effectively with more knowledge?
To what extent do humans need to know about the capacities of some animals because of the harm humans have done?
Should animals be harmed to find out the answers we seek about the capacities of animals?
Tim Ingold on Relationality
Tim Ingold on Relationality: Another Way of Knowing and Being
If genes interact with anything, it is with other constituents of the cell, which interacts with other cells in the organism, which interacts with other organisms in the world. It is out of this multilayered process that the capacities of living beings emerge. In other words, these capacities are outcomes of the whole developmental system comprised by the presence of the organism, with its particular genetic and cellular composition, in its environment (Lewontin 1983; Oyama 1985). Thus the forms and capacities of all organisms, human beings included, are not prefigured in any kind of specification, genetic or cultural, but are emergent properties of developmental systems.
At whatever stage in the life-cycle we may choose to identify a particular capacity – even at birth – a history of development already lies behind it (Dent 1990: 694). More importantly, people do not live their lives in a vacuum but in a world where they are surrounded by other people, objects and places, together making up what is usually known as the environment. Growing up in an environment largely shaped through the activities of their predecessors, human beings play their part, through their intentional activities, in fashioning the conditions of development for their successors. This is what we call history.
Ingold: ‘Beyond biology and culture. The meaning of evolution in a relational world, direct quotes.
Tim Ingold: Relational thinking
What we need, instead, is a quite different way of thinking about organisms and their environments. I call this ‘relational thinking’. It means treating the organism not as a discrete, pre-specified entity but as a particular locus of growth and development within a continuous field of relationships. It is a field that unfolds in the life activities of organisms and that is enfolded in their specific morphologies, powers of movement and capacities of awareness and response (Ingold 2002: 56–7).
Ways of knowing: the science of sentience
Sentience
Sentience Definition
Sentient means to feel, to have the capacity to have feelings, to experience pain, suffering, grief, joy and gratitude.
Definition of ‘Sentience’
a sentient being is able to “evaluate the actions of others in relation to itself and third parties, to remember some of its own actions and their consequences, to assess risks and benefits, to have some feelings, and to have some degree of awareness.”
The agreed circle of sentience has expanded to include vertebrate animals (creatures with spines), and in particular parrots, dogs, pigs, cows, other farmed animals, and other companion animals. Studies of non-vertebrate animals, including octopus, squid, and cuttlefish, and decapod crustaceans (e.g. shrimp, lobsters, crayfish, and crabs), indicate that they too are probably sentient. Scientists have not yet conclusively determined whether spiders, other insects, and gastropods (e.g. slugs and snails) are sentient.
https://sentientmedia.org/sentience-what-it-means-and-why-its-important/
Video: Mic the Vegan
Why is sentience important to an animal?
It is required for life for many animals
Why is the sentience of other animals important to humans?
Basis of animal welfare claims
Basis of animal welfare legislation
Anchoring place of ethics
Element of policy development
Exclusion of farm animals, who are clearly sentient, from welfare legislation
Animal Consciousness
Sentience connection to consciousness
Straight forwardly:
To have consciousness a being must be sentient
Consciousness-Human
its most basic, literal sense, to be conscious means to be awake and receptive to stimulus received from the surrounding environment
The next level of distinction is the capacity for rational thought and decision-making skills
The final measure of consciousness that denotes full human participation is contingent upon awareness of self.
https://sites.google.com/site/intelligenceandevolution/the-argument-for-animal-intelligence
The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
‘The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals. Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing. Deep brain stimulation of these systems in humans can also generate similar affective states. Systems associated with affect are concentrated in subcortical regions where neural homologies abound. Young human and nonhuman animals without neocortices retain these brain-mind functions. Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus). ‘
The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness was written by Philip Low and edited by Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, David Edelman, Bruno Van Swinderen, Philip Low and Christof Koch. The Declaration was publicly proclaimed in Cambridge, UK, on July 7, 2012, at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals, at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, by Low, Edelman and Koch. The Declaration was signed by the conference participants that very evening, in the presence of Stephen Hawking, in the Balfour Room at the Hotel du Vin in Cambridge, UK.
The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
‘We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”’
The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness was written by Philip Low and edited by Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, David Edelman, Bruno Van Swinderen, Philip Low and Christof Koch. The Declaration was publicly proclaimed in Cambridge, UK, on July 7, 2012, at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals, at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, by Low, Edelman and Koch. The Declaration was signed by the conference participants that very evening, in the presence of Stephen Hawking, in the Balfour Room at the Hotel du Vin in Cambridge, UK.
Animal Consciousness
‘In conclusion, extensive behavioural and cognitive capacities that have until recently been thought to be exclusive to humans and some primates have been identified in non-primate animal species. Among the most elaborate capacities, there is evidence that animals have knowledge of their own state (bodily self). They have the capacity to know and deal with their own knowledge, and also to evaluate the psychological state of their conspecifics, potentially leading to some form of empathy. One important outcome of this work is that the present report may be used for designing future ways of rearing animals’
Suggested citation:Le Neindre P,Bernard E,Boissy A, Boivin X, Calandreau L,DelonN, Deputte B, Desmoulin-Canselier S, Dunier M, Faivre N, Giurfa M, Guichet J-L, LansadeL, Larrère R, Mormède P, Prunet P, Schaal B, ServièreJ, TerlouwC, 2017. Animal consciousness. EFSA supporting publication 2017:EN-1196. 165pp. doi:10.2903/sp.efsa.2017.EN-1196
Video: the mirror test
Bee intelligence
Are Bees Smart? Yes, Enough to Teach Other Bees How to Complete Tasks
An experiment conducted by researchers at Queen Mary University of London and published in 2017 showed that very clever bees can use tools and teach other bees to perform some tasks. Here is what the scientists had to say:
‘One hallmark of cognitive complexity is the ability to manipulate objects with a specific goal in mind. Such “tool use” at one time was ascribed to humans alone, but then to primates, next to marine mammals, and later to birds. Now we recognize that many species have the capacity to envision how a particular object might be used to achieve an end. Loukola et al. extend this insight to invertebrates. Bumblebees were trained to see that a ball could be used to produce a reward. These bees then spontaneously rolled the ball when given the chance. Instead of copying demonstrators moving balls over long distances, observers solved the task more efficiently, using the ball positioned closest to the target, even if it was of a different color than the one previously observed. Such unprecedented cognitive flexibility hints that entirely novel behaviors could emerge relatively swiftly in species whose lifestyle demands advanced learning abilities, should relevant ecological pressures arise.’
https://letsgetsciencey.com/are-bees-smart/
Is the research on the capacities of animals illustrative of Ingold, Western or Indigenous ways of knowing or none of these?