Talk:Animal consciousness/Archive 1

Half hour audio on this topic
This is a pleasant half hour discussion on the question of animal consciousness/attention/mind, from Radio National's The Philosopher's Zone, between Alan Saunders and Peter Godfrey-Smith. Not sure if it should be an external link on the article. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:14, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
The article needs to have included The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, published recently, which recognizes the existence of consciousness on at least some nonhuman animal classes (mammals, birds and cephalopoda). I haven't included it myself because other people, especially those who are specialized in Biology and Zoology, may write about it with more biological propriety. Robfbms (talk) 11:05, 18 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Good call -- soon after it occurred, as well. Don't be afraid to edit, dude.  Glad you mentioned it here, but it really is no more complex a matter to start a new section for a thing like that right out there on the page itself.  A little "who/what/when/where/how", maybe a quote or two to round that out, and a verifiable source from which you're getting your information and you're all good to go.  :^) :^)


 * I personally suspect that in time the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness will come to have a separate entry of its own as its implications are likely to become rather broad and far-reaching. But for now it's just a very statement of consensus, and Wikipedia's not a crystal ball.  Aside from going in and cleaning up redundant citations in the Cambridge § I'm still mulling over how to make best use of it on here.


 * At writing, two separate footnotes reference the same PDF and a third references the conference website. I understand concerns about wanting to reference each potentially controversial statement, too, but also frankly rather doubt it's really necessary to footnote each single bulleted paragraph which are quoted in succession.  I think the principle is simply that statements likely to be challenged do need to be cited, for something like this I'm tempted to say "once is enough".


 * I personally rather like the wikilinks within the quote but can't remember off the top of my head what the manual of style says about wikilinking within quotes. I think the principle on that is "maintain structural integrity" but can't recall for sure exactly how that likely plays out here, and what all the reasoning is behind it.  Hm.


 * Another set of questions in my mind to which I don't really have a good, solid answer yet: how much quote is enough quote, and how much quote is simply too much? At what point does the quoted text become sufficiently substantial a portion of the document that you just go right on and quote the whole darn thing?


 * I like the sidebox with the document's conclusion, but do think it's a mistake to have that side-by-side with a prior quote four or five times its length because it violates the overall document's structure while simultaneously quoting most of it. I guess I hope to maybe getting around to incorporating some of the information in the bulleted paragraphs elsewhere throughout this article -- mining the source -- seeing where it *really* fits in smalller bits and pieces, then maybe putting in some secondary and tertiary sourced information on the story behind the document itself in the so-named §.


 * Sorry if I'm rambling or just thinking through my fingertips here but I'm too tired to really work on it right now and figured it couldn't hurt to see what other folks involved on this page might have to say about any of this.


 * Cheers, ༺།།ༀ་ཨཱཿ་ཧཱུྃ།།འཚེར།།xeltifon།།སར་ཝ་མང་ག་ལམ།།༻ &#123;say it&#125; &#123;contribs&#125; 11:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're rambling :) --Epipelagic (talk) 11:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * lol - i do that. the fact that i'm not re-reading what i wrote is all the proof i need.  i swear - i can have an edit war against myself over such momentous issues as commas versus semicolons.  :^) :^)


 * while you've got my attention, though, let me park some related external links here which folks may find of interest from
 * | Discovery News,
 * | Scientific American, and
 * | Psychology Today.


 * My personal interest in this article is sort of marginal right now for which reason I haven't evaluated those links' potential value as sources, but I do figure they might be of interest to someone working a bit more closely here than I am.


 * Cheers, ༺།།ༀ་ཨཱཿ་ཧཱུྃ།།འཚེར།།xeltifon།།སར་ཝ་མང་ག་ལམ།།༻ &#123;say it&#125; &#123; ζ(3) &#125; &#123;did it&#125; 18:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

General comment on style
While it may be appropriate in an academic paper, in Wikipedia I am not keen on style like "In 1927, Carr argued that..." or "According to Burghardt, 1985, ...", presented as if we are supposed to already know who these people are. This is especially true when it is so prominent in the lead section. The general reader would most likely ask "Who is 'Carr', and why is it important what he or she thinks?". 86.128.1.149 (talk) 00:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi 86.128.1.149! I fully agree with you. Please, be bold and start editing the lead!  Lova Falk     talk   15:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I partially agree with these views, and I edited the lead to address that. However, this topic has a long history with conflicted views from different schools and different eras, and the lead is attempting to catch something of the flavour of that. Since the topic is far from settled with historic inputs from many disciplines, it is difficult to give a coherent account that avoids referring to specific times and persons. --Epipelagic (talk) 07:04, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Private video
On the side of the section "Mirror test" is a link to a YouTube video with the title "Amazing Apes: Self-awareness (1 of 10)". The video is marked private and cannot be watched. The URL is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-pc_M2qI74 2.217.215.125 (talk) 14:46, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Gorillas and the mirror test
I seem to remember reading somewhere that only the Western gorillas have tested positive in the mirror test. Have Eastern gorillas been tested? Maybe the dichotomy is between mountain and lowland gorillas? Would be interesting to research which species/sub-species have been tested.__DrChrissy (talk) 09:13, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Cognitive bias
It seems to me that cognitive bias tests are an investigation of emotion and therefore consciouness. Should I include a section in this article?__DrChrissy (talk) 15:27, 28 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Perhaps a section called "Cognitive bias and emotion" after the section on "Pain and suffering", since similar issues arise relating consciousness to suffering (which is an emotion). Might not Cognitive bias in animals have its own article? --Epipelagic (talk) 22:37, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the positive feedback on this.__DrChrissy (talk) 15:28, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Unhelpful corrections
You replaced the sentence Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is" with Despite the difficulty in definition, philosophers believe there is a shared intuition underlying the understanding of consciousness. I restored the original version because it was more nuanced and more faithful to the cited source. You also commented in your edit summary that you corrected grammar; can't end a sentence with the word 'is'. I don't recall encountering that rule before. Does it apply to all verbs, or just to the verb "to be"? Did Shakespeare make a gramatical error when he wrote "to be or not to be"?

There is also a problem with this edit. You added unnecessary spaces in the headings and unnecessary spacing lines after the headings, and commented in your edit summary that you corrected layout and spacing. Actually you corrected nothing, merely added redundant spaces and blank lines. The spaces and blank lines you added are just passed over and ignored when the source text is processed prior to display. The processor has extra (wasteful) code which allows you to do this because that's what some editors want. That is all. Personally I prefer those unnecessary additions were not there. They just make the source code more difficult to read. When I originally wrote the article I naturally did not include them. On the other hand, you have written articles yourself, and presumably you include these embellishments. That's fine if that's what you want, and I wouldn't dream of going to the articles you wrote and start removing them. And if I did, I certainly wouldn't rub salt into the injury with a misleading edit summary saying corrected layout and spacing. Nor am I going to revert the edit you made here; it's just not that important. I'm just noting that it is mildly annoying, and you seem to be imposing this personal preference of yours on editors elsewhere. --Epipelagic (talk) 01:41, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Second para of lead
I am a little concerned that the opening paragraphs do not accurately reflect the abilit of animals to communicate to us about thier experiences. In the second para, it is stated "It poses the problem of other minds in an especially severe form because animals, lacking the ability to express human language, cannot tell us about their experiences". This is an accurate reflection of the reference given, however, I feel there are other aspects of animal cognition which sould be included for balance. We already discuss cognitive bias in the body - perhaps this should be mentioned in the lead? There are plenty of examples of categorisation, discrimination and individual recognition which "tell us about their previous experience" - perhaps these should be mentioned in the lead? DrChrissy (talk) 10:15, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * The issue is not so much about how animals behave. It is more about whether certain behaviours can be said to reliably indicate consciousness. There are core philosophical and methodological issues with the very notion of conscious itself (and therefore with animal conscious). These issues cannot be said to be generally resolved, and that needs to be keep central in the article. Sure animals can exhibit many intelligent behaviours that we might associate with the behaviour of conscious beings. But it does not follow from that that the animal must necessarily be conscious. A skilfully programmed robotic "animal" could in principal exhibit the sort of behaviours you mention, yet we would probably not want to attribute consciousness to a robot. The problem exists, in force, with humans as much as animals, but we tend to accede to indignant human self-reports that they are indeed conscious. How might you react if it were suggested that you were not? There is a similar issue to do with the notion of pain. We tend to think that for there to be "pain" there must be suffering, and suffering implies consciousness. It is usual in medical setting to accept human self-reports as to whether or not they are experiencing pain. In these areas we assign high privilege to the language capabilities of humans compared to other animals. However, humans, and therefore presumably other animals, can exhibit behavioural signs of experiencing pain, and yet be anaesthetised to the experience of pain. That is, behavioural correlates do not necessarily indicate suffering (pain). Similarly humans affected by certain drugs or dementias can exhibit behaviours we normally associate with consciousness. This can even include quite convincing social conversations which seem to proceed from some form of automated neural pilot with no one actually "at home", that is, no one acting at a conscious level. I think it is important that the article does not obscure core issue like these by introducing too much distracting material about behaviours just because they might be plausibility associated with consciousness. --Epipelagic (talk) 12:19, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Do non-human animals express human language?
Recent edits have changed the meaning of a statement that animals can not express human language, to indicate that some species can. These edits seem to relate to studies on Koko, which are controversial. I do not object to information about Koko being included in the article, but I do not think the evidence is strong enough to completely change the initial content, especially in the lead. DrChrissy (talk) 20:39, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Glass half empty/full
To an engineer, the glass is twice as large as it should be... Wamnet (talk) 16:47, 10 October 2016 (UTC) And to a surrealist, it's a giraffe eating a necktie Jeremy Beatson (talk) 00:55, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

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zero-sense
The concept zero-sense is [|mentioned] in the article.

... Alex, has demonstrated they possess the ability to associate simple human words with meanings, and to intelligently apply the abstract concepts of shape, colour, number, zero-sense ...

However a google search revealed no results for such a thing and wikipedia has no article about it. This leads me to the thought that such concept does not exist. I suppose the intention was to convey that Alex understands the concept of the number zero. If that is the case, the sentence should be edited (IMO replacing *zero-sense* with *the number zero* is sufficient). Otherwise, we should either find a way to explain whatever the phrase is supposed to say or delete it. -- Martinkunev (talk) 21:25, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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CDOC in lede?
Would anyone object to putting a sentence on the Cambridge Declaration into the lede? It might replace the Carr quote, which doesn't seem to add much. Cambridge has been formally cited 80 times in five years, compared to 47 times across a century for Carr. FourViolas (talk) 14:31, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree the lead could conclude with a mention of the CDOC. I would also retain the the Carr quote. There needs to be some gestures in the lead indicating the long and variegated history of the topic. --Epipelagic (talk) 17:25, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

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the article reads as an attack on animal consciousness including other humans, identical to attacks on skin colour variation by racists
this article reads as an attack on animal consciousness including other peoples consciousness, identical to attacks on skin colour variation by racists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.150.8.147 (talk) 02:15, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

That's quite a loaded claim to make without any elaboration or citing any specific passages from the article. I propose this comment is removed as irrelevant unless it can be substantiated. 98.113.91.134 (talk) 23:39, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Fish passed the mirror test
There was a study published not so long ago where a fish called the bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) passed a mirror test. The article says the fish shows behaviour, that may reasonably be interpreted as passing through all phases of the mark test: (i) social reactions towards the reflection, (ii) repeated idiosyncratic behaviours towards the mirror, and (iii) frequent observation of their reflection. When subsequently provided with a coloured tag in a modified mark test, fish attempt to remove the mark by scraping their body in the presence of a mirror but show no response towards transparent marks or to coloured marks in the absence of a mirror. I thought it might be good to add this info to the article. Arien433 (talk) 21:25, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Anomalies and counterexamples
A large section under the above title has been added to the article. There are issues with the section, so I have removed it from the article and placed its text immediately below (I have numbered the examples for later comment)...

Several classical experiments in ethology cannot be readily reconciled with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness.

1. Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915) argued that insects “obey their compelling instinct, without realizing what they do.”  For instance, to understand that she can grab her paralyzed prey by a leg instead of an antenna is utterly beyond the powers of a sand wasp. ““Her actions are like a series of echoes each awakening the next in a settled order, which allows none to sound until the previous one has sounded.” Fabre’s numerous experiments led him, in turn, to the view that scientists often try to “exalt animals” instead of objectively studying them.

2. C. Lloyd Morgan's (1852-1936) observations suggested to him that prima facie intelligent behavior in animals is often the result of either instincts or trial and error. For instance, most visitors watching Morgan’s dog smoothly lifting a latch with the back of its head (and thereby opening a garden gate and escaping) were convinced that the dog’s actions involved thinking. Morgan, however, carefully observed the dog’s prior, random, purposeless actions and argued that they involved “continued trial and failure, until a happy effect is reached,” rather than “methodical planning.”

3. E. L. Thorndike (1874 –1949) placed hungry cats and dogs in enclosures “from which they could escape by some simple act, such as pulling at a loop of cord.” Their behavior suggested to him that they did not “possess the power of rationality.”  Most books about animal behavior, Thorndike wrote, “do not give us a psychology, but rather a eulogy of animals.”

4. Although Wolfgang Köhler experiments are often seen as providing support for the animal consciousness hypothesis, his book is replete with counterexamples. For instance, he placed chimpanzees in a situation where they could only get bananas by removing a box. The chimpanzee, Köhler observed, “has special difficulty in solving such problems; he often draws into a situation the strangest and most distant tools, and adopts the most peculiar methods, rather than remove a simple obstacle which could be displaced with perfect ease.”

5. More recent experiments likewise suggest that it is perhaps too early to declare unequivocally that “animals are conscious beings."

6. Nobel prize winner Niko Tinbergen observed that when an egg of a ground-breeding goose accidentally rolls out of the nest, the goose competently brings it back with its bill. But if the egg is removed just after the bird has started to retrieve it, the “goose goes right on making the retrieving movement just as though the egg were there.”

7. Daniel J Povinelli and Timothy Eddy of the University of Louisiana showed that chimpanzees were just as likely to beg food from a person who could see the begging gesture as from a person who could not (Povinelli & Eddie), thereby raising the possibility that chimpanzees do not understand that people see.

8. Moti Nissani of Wayne State University trained Burmese logging elephants to lift a lid in order to retrieve food from a bucket. The lid was then placed on the ground alongside the bucket (where it no longer obstructed access to the food) while the treat was simultaneously placed inside the bucket. All elephants continued to toss the lid before retrieving the reward, thus suggesting that elephants do not grasp simple causal relationships.

The first sentence says, Several classical experiments in ethology cannot be readily reconciled with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. First, it has not been established that these are "classical experiments" in ethology. That is an appeal to some implied special status for these experiments. Unless that claim can be verified with appropriate citations then it is form of original research. Second, it is claimed that these experiments "cannot be readily reconciled with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness". I take issue with that because the experiments that follow are either about animals that are not mentioned in the Cambridge Declaration, or they are about some aspect of cognition which, by itself is not sufficient to conclude anything about whether consciousness is present or not. Consciousness cannot simply be reduced to some specific aspect of cognition.

1: is about insects. The Cambridge Declaration does not include insects.

2: is an observation about a specific behaviour in a dog which it is claimed demonstrates "“continued trial and failure" rather than "methodical planning". You cannot extrapolate from that example to the much larger claim that this means the dog is not conscious. I sometimes do things myself by trial and error rather than by methodical planning. That does not say anything useful about whether or not I am conscious.

3: is a variant of example 2. Possessing "the power of rationality" is not an essential condition for consciousness. A man being tortured in a secret black site prison may well be in an extreme state of irrationality yet adamant that he is also in an acute state of consciousness.

4: Again, at times chimpanzees may well fail to notice the simplest solution to dealing with an obstacle. That is a failure in noticing something specific, but is says nothing about whether the chimpanzee is conscious in other ways or at other times. I too often fail to notice things, but that doesn't mean...

5: Says it is 'too early to declare unequivocally that “animals are conscious beings"'. But the Cambridge Declaration does not declare unequivocally that all animals are conscious. It refers specifically to some animals.

6: So the goose has some sort of automated reflexive behaviour, triggered by an egg being in the wrong place. You cannot conclude from that anything about the consciousness of the goose. You may have automated reflexive behaviours too, such as if you are tickled, but it doesn't follow that means you are unconscious at that moment. And it certainly doesn't follow that you are permanently unconscious. Yet that is what the logic is saying.

7: Again, the mere fact that chimpanzees show limited understanding in certain contexts does not say anything about whether they are conscious or not. If you have a stroke which makes it difficult for you to determine the position of your hand when you can't see it, then that says something only about your awareness in that specific context. It says nothing about your general awareness or consciousness,

8: Well again, the failure of an elephant to grasp a casual relationship says nothing about whether or not the elephant is generally conscious. It is merely saying the elephant is not specifically aware of the casual relationship. In that very moment, it could be conscious of many other things.

In conclusion, none of these examples comes anywhere near being a counterexample to the Cambridge Declaration. – Epipelagic (talk) 10:32, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Praise for this article
I'm commenting just to praise this article. I found it easy to read (despite being a complex topic), easy to skim through, well structured, and well presented overall! My thanks to the key editors here for what I think is excellent work. Stay (talk) 18:15, 29 August 2019 (UTC)