Editing Consciousness (section)

===In animals===
{{Main|Animal consciousness}}

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 non-human animals, lacking the ability to express human language, cannot tell humans about their experiences.<ref name=Allen>{{cite web|author=Colin Allen|title=Animal consciousness|publisher=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition)|editor=Edward N. Zalta|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/consciousness-animal/|access-date=2011-10-25|archive-date=2019-07-31|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190731010951/https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/consciousness-animal/|url-status=live}}</ref> 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. Descartes, for example, has sometimes been blamed for mistreatment of animals due to the fact that he believed only humans have a non-physical mind.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Peter Carruthers|title=Sympathy and subjectivity|journal=Australasian Journal of Philosophy|year=1999|volume=77|issue=4|pages=465–482|doi=10.1080/00048409912349231|author-link=Peter Carruthers (philosopher)}}</ref> Most people have a strong intuition that some animals, such as cats and dogs, are conscious, while others, such as insects, are not; but the sources of this intuition are not obvious, and are often based on personal interactions with pets and other animals they have observed.<ref name=Allen/>

[[File:Big-eared-townsend-fledermaus.jpg|right|thumb|[[Thomas Nagel]] argues that while a human might be able to imagine what it is like to be a [[bat]] by taking "the bat's point of view", it would still be impossible "to know what it is like for a [[bat]] to be a bat". (''[[Townsend's big-eared bat]] pictured''.)]]

Philosophers who consider subjective experience the essence of consciousness also generally believe, as a correlate, that the existence and nature of animal consciousness can never rigorously be known. Thomas Nagel spelled out this point of view in an influential essay titled "[[What Is it Like to Be a Bat?]]". He said that an organism is conscious "if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like ''for'' the organism"; and he argued that no matter how much we know about an animal's brain and behavior, we can never really put ourselves into the mind of the animal and experience its world in the way it does itself.<ref name=NagelBat>{{cite book| author=Thomas Nagel|title=Mortal Questions|chapter=Ch. 12 What is it like to be a bat?|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1991|isbn=978-0-521-40676-5|author-link=Thomas Nagel}}</ref> Other thinkers, such as [[Douglas Hofstadter]], dismiss this argument as incoherent.<ref>{{cite book|author=Douglas Hofstadter|chapter=Reflections on ''What Is It Like to Be a Bat?''|pages=[https://archive.org/details/mindsifantasiesr00hofs/page/403 403–414]|title=The Mind's I|editor=Douglas Hofstadter|editor2=[[Daniel Dennett]]|publisher=Basic Books|year=1981|isbn=978-0-7108-0352-8|title-link=The Mind's I|author-link=Douglas Hofstadter}}</ref> Several psychologists and ethologists have argued for the existence of animal consciousness by describing a range of behaviors that appear to show animals holding beliefs about things they cannot directly perceive—[[Donald Griffin]]'s 2001 book ''Animal Minds'' reviews a substantial portion of the evidence.<ref name=Griffin2001>{{cite book|title=Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness|author=Donald Griffin|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2001|isbn=978-0-226-30865-4|author-link=Donald Griffin}}</ref>

On July 7, 2012, eminent scientists from different branches of neuroscience gathered at the [[University of Cambridge]] to celebrate the Francis Crick Memorial Conference, which deals with consciousness in humans and pre-linguistic consciousness in nonhuman animals. After the conference, they signed in the presence of [[Stephen Hawking]], the 'Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness', which summarizes the most important findings of the survey:

"We decided to reach a consensus and make a statement directed to the public that is not scientific. It's obvious to everyone in this room that animals have consciousness, but it is not obvious to the rest of the world. It is not obvious to the rest of the Western world or the Far East. It is not obvious to the society."<ref>{{cite AV media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSbom5MsfNM| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211028/RSbom5MsfNM| archive-date=2021-10-28|title=Animal Consciousness Officially Recognized by Leading Panel of Neuroscientists|date=3 September 2012|via=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

"Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals ..., including all mammals and birds, and other creatures, ... have the necessary neural substrates of consciousness and the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf|archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf|archive-date=2022-10-09|url-status=live|title=Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness}}</ref>