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Animal Consciousness

R. Gregory

Published 2003 in Perception

ABSTRACT

Only philosophers question whether other people are conscious, though presumably philosophers assume their listeners are conscious of their wise words. Like the rest of us, philosophers will talk to their dogs without expecting verbal answers, a bark or a tail wag being enough to bridge the metaphysical gap for practical purposes; though recent electronic toy dogs are impressively canine, although presumably unaware. Loss of speech in people is disturbing and deeply puzzling. It is hard, even for experienced neurologists, to know what goes on in the inner world of prolonged coma where speech is lost. Absence of speech, or other behaviour, does not necessarily mean absence of consciousness. In sleepwalking there may be behaviour without related consciousness, and in acting consciousness can be decoupled from what is spoken. Helmholtz, then of course Freud, stressed the importance of unconscious processes of brain and mind for behaviour and perception. This, now frequently stated separation, is the basis of the philosophical conundrum: How do we recognise consciousness from behaviour? The problem is that either can occur without the other, though intelligence is limited without consciousness. Although we are generally confident that `higher' animals have consciousness, not entirely different from ours, confidence fades for very different organisms, such as fish or birds or spiders. Wonderful as the skills of a spider are, it is far from clear that spiders build their webs consciously. Our compunction at destroying a spider is different from guilt associated with mistreating a dog or a cat or a horse, though the spider ends up dead. Most of us think of the horse feeling the whip and remembering the sting, while we assume the intricate circuits of the spider feel nothing up to or through its door of death, when its circuits fail. Although we are sure `higher' animals are conscious, this is far from clear for `lower' creatures such as spiders. Yet where is the evidence? For us there is all the difference in the world between loss of behaviour (as with the arrow poison, muscle relaxant curare) and switching off consciousness with an anesthetic such as ether. The question is: How far down the evolutionary tree does this behaviour ^ consciousness distinction go? Is this an empirical question that might be answered experimentally? While idling a passing hour reading New Scientist, as is my weekly wont, I came across a Comment and Analysis piece by Joyce D'Silva (Chief Executive of Compassion in World Farming) called ``Faster, cheaper, sicker'' (New Scientist 15 November 2003, page 19). D'Silva writes of the `discomfort' of chickens, made to grow abnormally fast:

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