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The Discovery of Animal Consciousness: An Optimistic Assessment

The Discovery of Animal Consciousness: An Optimistic Assessment COLIN ALLEN THE DISCOVERY OF ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS: AN OPTIMISTIC ASSESSMENT What can we know about the conscious mental states of (nonhuman) animals? Faced with statutory requirements to assess animal welfare, this question has taken on practical importance for researchers and agricultur- ists (Bekoff 1994, 1998). But the question cannot be answered without first saying something about the sense in which “consciousness” is being used. The term “consciousness” is ambiguous in English (Wilkes 1984, 1995; Nelkin 1993). It is applied to the distinction between being asleep and awake, to the distinction between responsiveness and unresponsiveness to environmental features, to the distinction between deliberate and reflexive behaviors, to the fact that some neurological events “feel like something” to their subjects while others have no associated phenomenology, and to the distinction between self-awareness and the lack of self-awareness. The application of the term “conscious” in the first two senses – being awake, or being responsive to certain stimuli – is uncontroversial when applied to animals. The third and fourth senses are controversial. It has been disputed that animals have the capacity for reasoned, deliberate action (see Carruthers 1992), and that their experiences provide them with a qualita- tive feel, or phenomenology (Carruthers http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Springer Journals

The Discovery of Animal Consciousness: An Optimistic Assessment

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References (9)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Subject
Philosophy; Ethics; Theory of Medicine/Bioethics; Evolutionary Biology; Plant Sciences; Agricultural Economics
ISSN
1187-7863
eISSN
1573-322X
DOI
10.1023/A:1007716908222
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

COLIN ALLEN THE DISCOVERY OF ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS: AN OPTIMISTIC ASSESSMENT What can we know about the conscious mental states of (nonhuman) animals? Faced with statutory requirements to assess animal welfare, this question has taken on practical importance for researchers and agricultur- ists (Bekoff 1994, 1998). But the question cannot be answered without first saying something about the sense in which “consciousness” is being used. The term “consciousness” is ambiguous in English (Wilkes 1984, 1995; Nelkin 1993). It is applied to the distinction between being asleep and awake, to the distinction between responsiveness and unresponsiveness to environmental features, to the distinction between deliberate and reflexive behaviors, to the fact that some neurological events “feel like something” to their subjects while others have no associated phenomenology, and to the distinction between self-awareness and the lack of self-awareness. The application of the term “conscious” in the first two senses – being awake, or being responsive to certain stimuli – is uncontroversial when applied to animals. The third and fourth senses are controversial. It has been disputed that animals have the capacity for reasoned, deliberate action (see Carruthers 1992), and that their experiences provide them with a qualita- tive feel, or phenomenology (Carruthers

Journal

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental EthicsSpringer Journals

Published: Sep 6, 2004

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