I haven’t researched it, but I’m guessing that ‘animals are conscious’ headlines peaked about two months back.
- “If Animals Are Conscious, What about Us?”
Crawford Kilian, The Tyee (April 29, 2024) - “Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient”
Evan Bush, NBC News (April 19, 2024) - “It’s ‘irresponsible’ to ignore widespread consciousness across animal world, dozens of scientists argue”
Saul Elbein, The Hill (April 19, 2024)
“Animal consciousness” makes more sense than some headlines suggest — so this week I’ll be talking about new research, old ideas, and how I see being human.
- Science, Attitudes, and Conscious Animals
- Of Mice and Men and Little Albert
- “Little Less Than a God” —
Science, Attitudes, and Conscious Animals
Although I’m not even close to being on the same page as folks with “meat is murder” posters over their desks, I think that, by one definition, animals are conscious.
“Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds”
Pallab Ghosh, BBC News (June 15, 2024)“Charles Darwin enjoys a near god-like status among scientists for his theory of evolution. But his ideas that animals are conscious in the same way humans are have long been shunned. Until now.
“‘There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery,’ Darwin wrote.
“But his suggestion that animals think and feel was seen as scientific heresy among many, if not most animal behaviour experts.
“Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin….”
[emphasis mine]
Pallab Ghosh may have taken his cue for religious-themed terms like “near god-like status”, “scientific heresy”, and “cardinal sin” from a scientist’s frustration with his field’s status quo.
“Unholy Trinity”, “Heretics”, Galileo — Folklore is Fine, But …
Neuroscientist Anil Kumar Seth apparently thinks the trouble started with René “Je pense, donc je suis / Cognito ergo sum / I think therefore I am” Descartes.
Descartes apparently also said that “language is the only certain sign of thought in a body”. That’s from the BBC News piece, and lines up with Descartes’ ideas about mind-body dualism, but I haven’t verified it.1
“…‘This unholy trinity, of language, intelligence and consciousness goes back all the way to Descartes,’ [Sussex University’s Prof Anil Seth] told BBC News, with a degree of annoyance at the lack of questioning of this approach until recently.
“The ‘unholy trinity’ is at the core of a movement called behaviourism, which emerged in the early 20th Century. It says that thoughts and feelings cannot be measured by scientific methods and so should be ignored when analysing behaviour….”
(“Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds” , Pallab Ghosh, BBC News (June 15, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
Behaviorism and 20th century antics — are rabbit holes I’ll sidestep today.
I think Anil Seth and Pallab Ghosh have a point. Taking a second or third look at what ‘everybody knows’ is a good idea: particularly after we’ve collected new data.
But I could do without the conventional slant on “heretics” and Galileo.
“…It is a field of study that the modern-day heretics who have signed the New York Declaration claim has been neglected, even ridiculed. Their approach, to say the unsayable and risk sanction is nothing new.
“Around the same time that Rene Descartes was saying ‘I think therefore I am’, the Catholic church found the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei ‘vehemently suspect of heresy‘ for suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe….”
(“Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds” , Pallab Ghosh, BBC News (June 15, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
Oh boy. A little background. In 1633, the Roman Inquisition found Galileo “vehemently suspect of heresy”.
Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” said that Earth goes around the Sun. As it turns out, he was right. But it took tools we developed later, and more precise observations, to demonstrate that the heliocentric model is essentially accurate.
I strongly suspect that Galileo’s abrasive personality, regrettable connotations of “nuncius” in his 1610 “Sidereus Nuncius”, and 17th century European politics factored into Galileo’s trouble.
I’ve talked about this before, and probably will again. Mainly because folklore about ‘Galileo, champion of science against the forces of superstition and oppression’ is so firmly embedded in my culture.
It makes a good story, but it also does no favors to either science, religion, or folks who think pursuing truth is a good idea.2
Conscious? A Better Term Would be “Sentient”
Whether or not animals are conscious depends on what “conscious” means.
Being “conscious” could mean being self-aware, or being aware of phenomena inside (or outside) oneself.
Neither of those definitions say what the “self” is, or how the state of self-awareness could be measured by an outside observer. Or, for that matter, whether an outside observer would be sufficiently not-self to be considered truly “outside”.
Wrenching myself back to whether or not animals are “conscious”, one more excerpt from that BBC News piece:
“…The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds.
“But if new evidence emerges of animals’ abilities to feel and process what is going on around them, could that mean they are, in fact, conscious?
“We now know that bees can count, recognise human faces and learn how to use tools….
“… ‘If bees are that intelligent, maybe they can think and feel something, which are the building blocks of consciousness,’ [Queen Mary University of London’s Prof Lars Chittka] says….”
(“Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds” , Pallab Ghosh, BBC News (June 15, 2024))
Quebec University’s cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad said — good grief, another excerpt; but this’ll be the last one (this week) from BBC News.
“…’The field is replete with weasel words and unfortunately one of those is consciousness,’ says Prof Stevan Harnad of Quebec University.
“‘It is a word that is confidently used by a lot of people, but they all mean something different, and so it is not clear at all what it means.’
“He says that a better, less weasley, word is ‘sentience’, which is more tightly defined as the capacity to feel. ‘To feel everything, a pinch, to see the colour red, to feel tired and hungry, those are all things you feel,’ ….”
(“Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds” , Pallab Ghosh, BBC News (June 15, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
Sentience, as defined by Professor Harnad, is a pretty basic function. Stretched a bit, it would make our Mars rovers like Curiosity sentient: or conscious.
That doesn’t bother me. But I’m also not upset that Lewis Carrol had Alice chatting with an anthropomorphic sheep. It’s been years since I read about some psychologist having fits over anthropomorphic animals in stories, and I’m wandering off-topic.
If animal “consciousness” is like Harnad’s “sentience”, then I figure all animals are “conscious”: all those that have nerves, anyway. They wouldn’t last long, without some capacity to ‘feel’ their environment.
Being sapient, that’s something else.3 Having wisdom, being able to think about memories — in my darker moments, I’ve wondered how many humans actually use those abilities.
On the ‘up’ side, Pallab Ghosh is right. There hasn’t been a “eureka” moment when scientists suddenly realized that animals feel stuff. Rather, awareness that animals aren’t insensate lumps is (slowly) becoming accepted and acceptable.
Of Mice and Men and Little Albert
Dr. Jeffrey S. Mogil’s research was, I think, useful. But the Wired Science headline isn’t accurate.
Mice can’t show pain in their faces “just like humans”; more accurately, humans can’t show pain just like mice.
Our ears hardly move at all, and we don’t even have vibrissae/whiskers.
“Mice Show Pain on Their Faces Just Like Humans“
Wired Science (May 10, 2010)“Mice in pain have facial expressions that are very similar to human facial expressions, according to scientists who have developed the ‘mouse grimace scale.’ The pain expressions of mice could help researchers gauge the effectiveness of new drugs.
“People have been using similar facial-expression coding systems in babies and other humans who are unable to verbally express their pain. ‘No one has every [!] looked for facial expression of pain in anything other than humans,’ said Jeffery[!] Mogil of McGill University, co-author of the study….
“…Mogil first noticed that mice can sense the pain of other mice in 2006. He saw that mice were communicating their pain visually, which had to be either by interpreting each other’s facial expressions or body movements. Mogil wondered if we could see whatever the mice were seeing….
“…To test for facial expressions of the mice, Mogil put them through mild to moderate pain tests (similar to a headache or swollen finger, easily treated with Tylenol or aspirin) and used high-definition cameras to monitor their expressions. Pictures from before and after the pain stimulus were shown to technicians at the lab of colleague Kenneth Craig….”
On the other hand, our nearly-immobile ears and lack of whiskers notwithstanding, humans and mice do share facial expressions.
Maybe Mogil was the first scientist to notice “that mice can sense the pain of other mice”. Burrowing into digitized research papers would be more work than I have either time or inclination for, so I haven’t confirmed it.
My guess is that Jeffrey Mogil was right, that no scientist had (1) noticed murine facial expressions as possible social signals and (2) studied them.
However, Charles Darwin’s “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals” (1872) looked at facial expressions and body language from a biological viewpoint. It didn’t get the traction of his “Origin of Species”.
An 1873 Quarterly Journal of Science review said “The Expression…” had “so much of acute observation and amusing anecdote” that it might appeal to the general public.
Maybe Darwin’s description of expressions we share with animals offended Victorian sensibilities, or maybe “The Expression…” fell out of academic fashion.
Either way, instead of studies of emotional states shared by humans, mice, and dogs, we got behaviorism and the Little Albert experiment.
I suspect part of the problem with “The Expression…” was that it might have made the right sort feel uneasy about tormenting lab animals and using undesirables and disposable kids in their research.4
But time passed, attitudes changed. Now we’ve got new bioethics rules — and a grimace scale that’s helped keep track of how critters are feeling.
Animals, People, and Paying Attention
I don’t have scholarly research to back this up, but my experience suggests that there’s — not so much two sorts of people, as a continuum with a fair number of folks at each end.
Over on the ‘I’m a highly educated and intelligent person’ end, you’ve got folks who say that animals don’t have emotions, can’t feel pain, and are basically animated lumps of occasionally-useful material.
At the other end, you’ve got the ‘poodles are people too’ set, who take anthropomorphism to disturbing heights. Or depths.
‘Animals are lumps’ may be out of fashion now. I haven’t run into it for decades. Not in print, at any rate.
I’m not at either end, but didn’t have trouble with the idea that non-human animals experience emotions. Possibly because I grew up around animals. Cats, specifically.
Reading feline. and canine. emotions isn’t hard. It just takes paying attention. Mind you, my experience may not be normal.
I enjoy interacting socially with folks. But it’s a bit exhausting. I understand that I come across as — eccentric. Then, well into middle age, I (finally) listened to my wife and talked with a psychiatrist.
Folks with autism are supposed to be none too bright, and about as talkative as your average stump.5 I’m anything but. Even though ASD shows up in my medical chart:
- ADHD: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, inattentive type
- ASD: Autism spectrum disorder
- Cluster A personality disorder
- Schizotypal personality disorder
- GAD: Generalized anxiety disorder
- PDD: Persistent depressive disorder
- PTSD: Post traumatic stress disorder
Good grief, I’m not even normally abnormal.
The point is that I’ve long since learned how to read facial expressions and body language when interacting with other people.
Doing the same with critters is, if anything, easier. They’re nowhere near as complicated as we are.
“Little Less Than a God” —
We’re the lords of creation, with dominion over the world and all its creatures.
So we can do whatever we want, right?
Wrong.
Make no mistake. We have “dominion”, and are very hot stuff.
“Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth.”
(Genesis 1:26)“When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars that you set in place—
“What is man that you are mindful of him,
and a son of man that you care for him?
“Yet you have made him little less than a god,
crowned him with glory and honor.
“You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
put all things at his feet:”
(Psalms 8:4–7) [emphasis mine]
But our “dominion” isn’t ownership. It’s more like part of our job description.
We have authority over the creatures of this world: as stewards. We’re responsible for taking care of our home, and leaving it in good working order for future generations. (Genesis 1:26, 2:5–8; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 16, 339, 356-358, 2402, 2415-2418, 2456)
I don’t know how many folks actually said that we were “lords of creation”. Or, rather, that gentlemen from a few countries were the rightful rulers of everyone and everything.
The only 19th century “lords of creation” references I found were from 1838 and 1859. Both were snarky commentary on current assumptions about men, those household appliances they called women, and women who weren’t cheering for the status quo.6
Those assumptions, along with a smug confidence that the upper crust were this world’s ultimate authority, were eroding during my childhood, snapped shortly thereafter, and that’s another topic. Topics.
Which reminds me. It’s been a while since I talked about being Catholic, taking the Bible seriously, Tradition with a capital “T”, the Magisterium, and making sense.
“…Know what the Bible is – and what it isn’t. The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with the people he has called to himself. It is not intended to be read as history text, a science book, or a political manifesto. In the Bible, God teaches us the truths that we need for the sake of our salvation….” (“Understanding the Bible” , Mary Elizabeth Sperry, USCCB)
I put definitions, and links to some of what I’ve said, in the footnotes.7 Moving on.
— With All the Responsibilities That Come With Our Nature
I’m human, so I’m “an animal endowed with reason”. (Catechism, 1951)
That, and being made in God’s image, means we can and should think about what we do. (Catechism, 1950-1974, and more)
We’ve been told that we should treat animals humanely. And people, too.
“For six days you may do your work, but on the seventh day you must rest, that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and that the son of your maidservant and the resident alien may be refreshed.”
(Exodus 23:12)“You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out grain.“
(Deuteronomy 25:4)“The just take care of their livestock,
but the compassion of the wicked is cruel.”
(Proverbs 12:10)“It is written in the law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.’ …”
(1 Corinthians 9:9)“For the scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it is threshing,’ and, ‘A worker deserves his pay.'”
(1 Timothy 5:18)
Recapping, we’re animals.
But besides being animals, we’re people: made “in the image of God.” Responsibilities come with our nature, like not inflicting needless death and suffering on animals. (Catechism, 355, 361-368, 1701-1709, 1951, 2418, 2415-2418)
Using animals for food and clothing is fine. So is using animals in medical/scientific research, along with having pets and farm animals. Within reason. Loving animals is okay: loving animals the way we (should) love other people isn’t. (Catechism, 2417-2418)
That’s why I don’t have a problem with scientists (finally) coming to grips with the idea that animals are “conscious”: that they have sensations the way we do.
Maybe that recognition will help us treat animals more humanely. I hope so.
Folks in my part of Western civilization have been making some progress in terms how we treat animals. Meanwhile, some of us have been promoting daft ideas.8 And that’s yet another topic.
Or maybe not so much.
I’ve noticed that, even with election hysteria howling across my news feed, nobody’s pushing equal rights for alligators as a party platform plank. Maybe some ideas are too crazy, even for American politics.
And on that note, I’ll take a deep breath, sit still for a second, and wrap this up with the usual links:
- “Science, Religion, and Saying Goodbye to the 19th Century“
(May 25, 2024) - “Frog and Spider are Friends“
(August 5, 2023) - “Horses and Humans, Chimps and Muscles“
(December 31, 2022) - “Green Sahara, Environmental and Climate News“
(July 30, 2022) - “Florida Indoor Fish Farm: An Aquaculture Alternative“
(May 8, 2021)
1 Thinkers and thoughts about thinking:
- Wikipedia
- Wikiquote:
- Discourse on the Method (René Descartes (1637))
- René Descartes
- Part of my take on philosophy, philosophers, and making sense:
- “Jesus, Human on His Mother’s Side: the Incarnation” (December 25, 2021)
- “Gnosticism” (April 21, 2018)
2 Mostly the 17th century, one of recent history’s livelier eras:
- Wikipedia
- Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) (“This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations….”)
- Eighty Years’ War (ca. 1566/1568-1648)
- Franco-Spanish War (1635-1659)
- The Fronde (French civil wars, 1648-1653)
- Galileo affair (1610-1633)
- Galileo Galilei
- Portuguese Restoration War (1640-1668)
- Reformation (1517-)
- René Descartes
- Roman Inquisition
- Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667)
- Sidereus Nuncius (1610)
- Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)
- Galileo, the quest for truth, and contemporary folklore
- “Science, Religion, and Saying Goodbye to the 19th Century” (May 25, 2024)
- “Kamo’oalewa: Breakaway Asteroid and Quasi-Moon” (April 27, 2024)
- “A Star by Any Other Name, and a Galilean Interlude” (November 13, 2021)
3 Thinking about animals and thinking isn’t as straightforward as it might seem:
- Wikipedia
- “Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds“
Pallab Ghosh, BBC News (June 15, 2024))
4 Animals, emotions, and why bioethics matter:
- Wikipedia
- Auricle (anatomy)
- Behaviorism
- Ear
- Ear wiggling
- Emotion in animals
- The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) (“This article may require copy editing for cohesion, formatting, and excessive linking….”)
- Grimace scale
- Jeffrey Mogil
- Little Albert (results published February 1920)
- Scientific, in a Pavlovian sense, yes
- Acceptable at the time, yes
- Ethical, no
- Pain in animals
- Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center
- Whiskers (vibrissae)
- Willowbrook State School
- “The facial expressions of mice” , The face of a mouse reveals its emotions
Stefanie Merker, PhD / Nadine Gogolla, PhD; Newsroom, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (April 2, 2020) - PubMed, National Institutes of Health
- “The grimace scale reliably assesses chronic pain in a rodent model of trigeminal neuropathic pain” ; Titilola Akintol, Charles Raver, Paige Studlack, Olivia Uddin, Radi Masri, Asaf Keller; Neurobiology of Pain (2017)
- “Using the Mouse Grimace Scale to Reevaluate the Efficacy of Postoperative Analgesics in Laboratory Mice” ; Lynn C Matsumiya, Robert E Sorge, Susana G Sotocinal, John M Tabaka, Jeffrey S Wieskopf, Austin Zaloum, Oliver D King, Jeffrey S Mogil; Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (2012)
- “Do mice have a pain face?” Paul A Flecknell; Nature Methods (2010)
- “How the Mouse Grimace Scale will help us cope with pain” , Cynthia Lee, Media Relations Office, McGill University (May 9, 2010)
- (possible title: ‘Mice pull pained expressions’?) ; Dr. Jeffrey S. Mogil, Kenneth Craig; Nature Methods (May 9, 2010) [no link found]
- murine
Dictionary.com - From Apathetic Lemming of the North, a blog I stopped updating in 2016
- “Chaser and 1,022 Toys: The Dog Knows What Each One’s Called” (December 23, 2010)
- “Otters, Snow, Ice, and Fun ” (October 20, 2010)
- “Mice Feel Pain (We knew That) – And Show it Like We do (“No One” Knew That)” (May 11, 2010)
- Bioethics and medical ethics; for me, it’s personal
5 Animals, autism, emotions, and not-entirely-unrelated topics:
- Wikipedia
- Anthropomorphism
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
- Autism (AKA ASD)
- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (AKA DSM)
- Emotion in animals
- The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) (“This article may require copy editing for cohesion, formatting, and excessive linking….”)
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Major depressive disorder
- Personality disorder
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Primate sociality
- Schizotypal personality disorder (subset of cluster A personality disorder)
- Species-typical behavior
- Living with quirks
- “Saints, Depression, Assumptions, and Me” (March 23, 2024)
- “Prescription Quest: Another Month’s Epic Saga” (September 9, 2023)
6 “Lords of creation” and changing attitudes, 19th century:
- Library of Congress
- “Denouncing ye Lords of Creation” , J[?]N’s illustration in Harper’s Weekly (June 11, 1859)
- “The Lords of creation men we call” ; R., J. S.; music and lyrics; published by Fiot, Meignen and Co., Philadelphia (1838)
“BIBLE: Sacred Scripture: the books which contain the truth of God’s Revelation and were composed by human authors inspired by the Holy Spirit (105). The Bible contains both the forty-six books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament (120). See Old Testament; New Testament.”
“HOLY SPIRIT: The third divine person of the Blessed Trinity, the personal love of the Father and Son for each other. Also called the Paraclete (Advocate) and Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit is at work with the Father and the Son from the beginning to the completion of the divine plan for our salvation (685; cf. 152, 243).”
“MAGISTERIUM: The living, teaching office of the Church, whose task it is to give as authentic interpretation of the word of God, whether in its written form (Sacred Scripture), or in the form of Tradition. The Magisterium ensures the Church’s fidelity to the teaching of the Apostles in matters of faith and morals (85, 890, 2033).”
“TRADITION: The living transmission of the message of the Gospel in the Church. The oral preaching of the Apostles, and the written message of salvation under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (Bible), are conserved and handed on as the deposit of faith through the apostolic succession in the Church. Both the living Tradition and the written Scriptures have their common source in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ (75–82). The theological, liturgical, disciplinary, and devotional traditions of the local churches both contain and can be distinguished from this apostolic Tradition (83).”
(Glossary, Catechism of the Catholic Church)
I’ll occasionally talk about the Bible, the Magisterium, and Tradition with a capital “T”:
- “Pope Francis and an Open Catholic Church” (August 12, 2023)
- “St. Jude, Judas Thaddaeus: Patron Saint of Desperate Cases” (August 13, 2022)
- “Evolution: Science, Religion, Opinions and Me” (August 28, 2021)
8 Animals, amusements, and ideas; good and otherwise:
- Wikipedia
