The currently leading cognitive theory of consciousness, Global Workspace Theory,1,2 postulates that the primary functions of consciousness include a global broadcast serving to recruit internal resources with which to deal with the current situation and to modulate several types of learning. In addition, conscious experiences present current conditions and problems to a "self" system, an executive interpreter that is identifiable with brain structures like the frontal lobes and precuneus.1Be it human, animal or artificial, an autonomous agent3 is said to be (...) functionally conscious if its control structure (mind) implements Global Workspace Theory and the LIDA Cognitive Cycle, which includes unconscious memory and control functions needed to integrate the conscious component of the system. We would therefore consider humans, many animals4 and even some virtual or robotic agents5,6 to be functionally conscious. Such entities may approach phenomenal consciousness, as found in human and other biological brains, as additional brain-like features are added.Here we argue that adding mechanisms to produce a stable, coherent perceptual field7 in a LIDA controlled mobile robot might provide a small but significant step toward phenomenal consciousness in machines.>8 We also propose that implementing several of the various notions of self in such a LIDA controlled robot may well prove another step toward phenomenal consciousness in machines. (shrink)

The ethical debate on the moral consideration of non-human animals (hereafter animals) is currently centred on the evidence of sentience in these individuals. Legal protection for vertebrates and cephalopods (and decapods in the UK) has resulted from the recognition of sentience in these animals. Although one should celebrate the significant advances in the legal protection of animals in recent decades, current animal legislation is modulated by an instrumental viewpoint, remaining speciesist and anthropocentric. A sentient being is here understood as one (...) who has the phenomenological experience of awareness, which is the most basic sense of phenomenal consciousness that implies the existence of a subject who is not indifferent to what happens to itself. This paper demonstrates, with reasonable assumptions, that this concept of sentience would apply to many invertebrate species, thus deeming them worthy of increased moral consideration and legal protection. In cases in which sentience cannot be demonstrated clearly, one should assume the precautionary principle and consider the intrinsic value of each animal to designate moral consideration. In considering sentience as the primary condition for moral consideration, science must expand who is recognized as sentient rather than being reductionist. Animal ethics must review to whom the moral consideration should be given. Animal legislation must include legislative innovations and invertebrates in its protective scope. Thereby, a significant improvement in the current political and legislative decisions would be rooted in animal ethics. Opening the ethical perception and broadening the debate are urgent, as moral consideration should be given to all animals. (shrink)

In order to develop a true biological science of consciousness, we have to remove humans from the center of reference and develop a bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, as Donald Griffin intended with his call for a “cognitive ethology.” In this article, I make use of the pathological complexity thesis (Veit 2022a, b, c ) to show that we can firmly ground a comparative study of animal consciousness by drawing on the resources of state-based behavioral life history theory. By (...) comparing the different life histories of gastropods and arthropods, we will be able to make better sense of the possible origins of consciousness and its function for organisms in their natural environments. (shrink)

The evolutionary origin of consciousness has been a growing area of study in recent years. Nevertheless, there is intense debate on whether the existence of phenomenal consciousness without the cerebral cortex is possible. The corticocentrists have an empirical advantage because we are quasi-confident that we humans are conscious and have the well-developed cortex as the site of our consciousness. However, their prejudice can be an anthropic bias similar to the anthropocentric prejudice in pre-Darwinian natural history. In this paper, I propose (...) three basic principles to provide a conceptual basis for evolutionary studies of consciousness: the non-solipsistic principle, the evolution principle, and the anthropic principle. These principles collectively help us to avoid solipsism, anthropocentrism, and anthropomorphism to some degree, although we cannot be completely free from them. Also, the landscape metaphor associated with the anthropic principle provides an image of how different forms of consciousness can be acquired. (shrink)

Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, distress or harm, broadly understood, have a special significance for animal welfare law. Drawing on over 300 scientific studies, we evaluate the evidence of sentience in two groups of invertebrate animals: the cephalopod molluscs or, for short, cephalopods (including octopods, squid and cuttlefish) and the decapod crustaceans or, (...) for short, decapods (including crabs, lobsters and crayfish). We also evaluate the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices involving these animals. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend three claims about what it will take for an AI system to be a basic moral patient to whom we can owe duties of non-maleficence not to harm her and duties of beneficence to benefit her: (1) Moral patients are mental patients; (2) Mental patients are true intentional systems; and (3) True intentional systems are systematically flexible. We suggest that we should be particularly alert to the possibility of such systematically flexible true intentional systems developing (...) in the areas of exploratory robots and artificial personal assistants. Finally, we argue that in light of our failure to respect the well-being of existing biological moral patients and worries about our limited resources, there are compelling moral reasons to treat artificial moral patiency as something to be avoided at least for now. (shrink)

Birch’s criterion for the precautionary principle imposes a high evidential standard that many cases will fail to meet. Reliable, relevant anecdotal evidence suggestive of animal sentience should also fall within the scope of the precautionary principle. This would minimize potential suffering (as happened in the case of cephalopods) while further evidence is gathered.

There is no agreement on whether any invertebrates are conscious and no agreement on a methodology that could settle the issue. How can the debate move forward? I distinguish three broad types of approach: theory-heavy, theory-neutral and theory-light. Theory-heavy and theory-neutral approaches face serious problems, motivating a middle path: the theory-light approach. At the core of the theory-light approach is a minimal commitment about the relation between phenomenal consciousness and cognition that is compatible with many specific theories of consciousness: the (...) hypothesis that phenomenally conscious perception of a stimulus facilitates, relative to unconscious perception, a cluster of cognitive abilities in relation to that stimulus. This “facilitation hypothesis” can productively guide inquiry into invertebrate consciousness. What is needed? At this stage, not more theory, and not more undirected data gathering. What is needed is a systematic search for consciousness-linked cognitive abilities, their relationships to each other, and their sensitivity to masking. (shrink)

This study discusses the mimic octopus’ acts of imitation of a banded sea-snake as an antagonistic response to enemies from a cognitive-semiotic perspective. This mimicry model, which involves very close physical resemblance and highly precise enactment, displays goal-orientedness because the octopus only takes it on when encountering damselfish, a territorial species, and not other sea animals that the octopus has been shown to imitate, such as lionfish and flounders. Based on theoretical principles and analytic tools from Mitchell’s typology of deceptive (...) acts, Zlatev’s Mimesis Hierarchy and Zlatev’s types and levels of consciousness, this research raises the possibility that T. mimicus exhibits the following attributes: bodily self-awareness; cognitive empathy, which builds upon deception and perspective-taking strategies to imagine or project itself into the place of the antagonist; and capability to reflectively reorganise the standard complete imitation pattern into a partial one in order to optimise its effect, based on conscious visual appraisal of the stimulus position. These capacities would place T. mimicus at the dyadic mimetic level on the Mimesis Hierarchy. For this reason, it is suggested that the name mimic octopus could be replaced by mimetic octopus. (shrink)

The idea that there can be only one cognitive system within any single given cognitive organism is an established albeit implicit one within cognitive science and related studies of the mind. The firm foothold of this notion is due largely to the immense corpus of empirical evidence for the correlation of a high level of cognitive sophistication with a centralized nervous system. However, it must be pointed out that these findings are sourced in large part from studies on vertebrates. This (...) paper presents a potential counterexample to the notion that only one cognitive system can be realized within any single genuine cognitive organism. This counterexample is the octopus, an invertebrate with what initially appears to be a paradoxical combination of vertebrate-like cognitive and behavioral capacities and a functionally decentralized nervous system. The extensive relegation of sensorimotor processing and control responsibilities to the peripheral nervous system which controls the arms of the octopus raises principled reasons to believe that the octopus is an organism that may house multiple independent cognitive systems. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed the rise of chefs to a position of cultural prominence. This rise has coincided with increased consciousness of ethical issues pertaining to food, particularly as they concern animals. We rank cookbooks by celebrity chefs according to the minimum number of sentient animals that must be killed to make their recipes. On our stipulative definition, celebrity chefs are those with their own television show on a national network in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia. (...) Thirty cookbooks by 26 such chefs were categorized according to the total number of cows, pigs, chicken, fish and other species they included as ingredients. The total number of animals killed was divided by the number of non-dessert recipes to generate an average number of animal deaths per recipe for each book. We outline the rationale for our project and its methodology before presenting a ranked table of 30 cookbooks by celebrity chefs. This method generates several interesting findings. The first concerns the wide variation in animal fatalities among cookbooks. The chef with the heaviest animal footprint killed 5.25 animals per recipe, while the omnivorous chef with the smallest footprints killed 0.19 per recipe. Clearly, not all approaches to meat eating are equal when it comes to their animal mortality rate. Pigs and large ruminants are all substantially bigger than poultry, which are themselves bigger than many fish. The prime determinant of a chef’s place in the index was the number of small animals his or her recipes required. Whether a chef cooked in the style of a particular cuisine (Italian, French, Mexican etc.), by contrast, had no discernible influence on his or her ranking. We analyze how different chefs present themselves—as either especially sensitive or insensitive to ethical issues involving animals and food—and note cases where these presentations do or do not match their index ranking. -/- . (shrink)

This chapter addresses the extent to which nonhuman animals are conscious. Most important perhaps is what criteria should be used in making such a determination.

If the octopus were conscious, what would its consciousness be like? This paper investigates the structure octopus consciousness, if existent, is likely to exhibit. Presupposing that the configuration of an organism’s consciousness is correlated with that of its nervous system, it is unlikely that the structure of the sort of conscious experience that would arise from the highly decentralized octopus nervous system would bear much resemblance to those of vertebrates. In particular, octopus consciousness may not exhibit unity, which has long (...) been assumed to be the normal or default structure of consciousness. The octopus nervous system is characterized by the following features: its three anatomically distinct components have extensive functional autonomy and little intercommunication; much of the sensory processing and motor control routines—that in vertebrates are localized in the brain—take place within the peripheral arm nervous system; and proprioception and somatotopic representation are significantly downplayed. In this paper, I present the octopus as a highly successful biological organism in which it is plausible that the unified model of consciousness does not hold. (shrink)

The currently leading cognitive theory of consciousness, Global Workspace Theory,1,2 postulates that the primary functions of consciousness include a global broadcast serving to recruit internal resources with which to deal with the current situation and to modulate several types of learning. In addition, conscious experiences present current conditions and problems to a "self" system, an executive interpreter that is identifiable with brain structures like the frontal lobes and precuneus.1Be it human, animal or artificial, an autonomous agent3 is said to be (...) functionally conscious if its control structure (mind) implements Global Workspace Theory and the LIDA Cognitive Cycle, which includes unconscious memory and control functions needed to integrate the conscious component of the system. We would therefore consider humans, many animals4 and even some virtual or robotic agents5,6 to be functionally conscious. Such entities may approach phenomenal consciousness, as found in human and other biological brains, as additional brain-like features are added.Here we argue that adding mechanisms to produce a stable, coherent perceptual field7 in a LIDA controlled mobile robot might provide a small but significant step toward phenomenal consciousness in machines.>8 We also propose that implementing several of the various notions of self in such a LIDA controlled robot may well prove another step toward phenomenal consciousness in machines. (shrink)

This paper integrates type functionalism with the Kairetic account to develop context-specific models for explaining mental states, particularly pain, across different species and systems. By employing context-dependent mapping f_c, we ensure cohesive causal explanations while accommodating multiple realizations of mental states. The framework identifies context subsets C_i and maps them to similarity subspaces S_i, capturing the unique physiological, biochemical, and computational mechanisms underlying pain in different entities such as humans, octopi, and AI systems. This approach highlights the importance of causal (...) relations in defining mental states and preserves their functional roles across diverse contexts. Furthermore, the paper incorporates elements of token functionalism by recognizing species-specific realizations of mental states. By acknowledging the unique representations of mental states within different species and systems, the framework provides a nuanced understanding of how similar functional roles can be fulfilled by diverse physical substrates. This synthesis of type and token functionalism enhances our explanatory power and coherence in addressing the complex nature of mental states. The resulting framework offers a robust tool for analyzing and understanding mental phenomena, with significant implications for cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and artificial intelligence. By maintaining the functional roles of mental states while accommodating their multiple realizations, this approach not only advances theoretical understanding but also opens new avenues for practical applications in cross-species empathy, AI ethics, and the development of context-aware cognitive models. (shrink)

We normally assume that there’s just one conscious individual per animal. Some question this, suggesting that there may be nonhuman taxonomic groups whose normal, adult members house more than one conscious subject. Call this the multitudes view (“MV)”. Our aim is methodological: we hope to understand how we might assess whether MV is true. To that end, we distinguish two strategies for counting conscious subjects: the duplication strategy and the mind-first strategy. We use human split-brain patients and octopuses to illustrate (...) the prospects and limitations of each approach, as some have argued that both sets of individuals contain multitudes. We’ll contend that while the duplication strategy is applicable to split-brain patients, it isn’t apt for octopuses. The mind-first strategy fairs better here, but there’s a catch: it requires, in a way the duplication strategy does not, numerous contentious assumptions about the nature of mentality, the individuation of minds, and consciousness to simply get off the ground. These difficulties clarify just what it would take to establish MV. (shrink)

Success semantics holds, roughly, that what it is for a state of an agent to be a belief that P is for it to be disposed to combine with her desires to cause behaviour that would fulfill those desires if P. J. T. Whyte supplements this with an account of the contents of an agent's “basic desires” to provide an attractive naturalistic theory of mental content. We argue that Whyte's strategy can avoid the objections raised against it by restricting “basic (...) desires” to sensory inclinations that cause us to do things independently of our beliefs about their contents. -/- La sémantique du succès soutient, en gros, que ce qu'il faut pour qu'un état d'un agent soit une croyance en P, c'est que cet état soit disposé à se combiner avec ses désirs pour provoquer un comportement qui répondrait à ces désirs si P. J. T. Whyte complète cela par un compte-rendu du contenu des « désirs de base » d'un agent pour fournir une théorie naturaliste attrayante du contenu mental. Nous soutenons que la stratégie de Whyte peut éviter les objections qui lui sont faites en restreignant les « désirs de base » aux inclinations sensorielles qui nous font agir indépendamment de nos croyances sur leur contenu. (shrink)

This article explores the moral complexities and inconsistencies in the perception of fish welfare; mainly, that fish lack the ability to suffer and, therefore, exist outside of humanity’s moral horizon. The science behind fish sentience has advanced to the point where a serious discussion on the human-fish relationship is warranted. It is argued that enough scientific evidence exists to provide evidence for fish sentience and suffering. However, for those unconvinced in light of the lack of both scientific and popular consensus, (...) the precautionary principle, where we treat fish as if they may suffer, will ultimately be advocated as an appropriate approach to fish welfare. (shrink)

To answer the question of why we have consciousness, I propose the following evolutionary trajectory leading to this feature: Nervous systems appeared for the purpose of orchestrating behavior. As a rule of thumb the challenges facing an animal concern either approach or avoidance. These two options were originally hard-wired as reflexes. Improvements in adaptability of response came with an expansion of the computational aspect of the system and a concomitant shift from simple reflexes to instinctual behavior, learning, and eventually, feelings. (...) The assessment of positive and negative feelings allows organisms to weigh various options, but for this to be a viable strategy, an awareness of hedonic value is required. This was presumably the first neural attribute to evolve that required awareness, and thus the key force in the evolution of consciousness. The attribute first appeared in the early amniotes (the phylogenetic group comprising reptiles, birds and mammals). Support for this model in current accounts of the neurobiology of feelings and consciousness is discussed. (shrink)

We present Birch and colleagues with a dilemma. On one interpretation, they aim to chart the distribution of a sort of minimal perceptual awareness across the animal kingdom, where that awareness can be fully characterized in third-person psychological terms. On this interpretation, the project is worthy but dull, since it doesn’t touch the question that has excited most people: whether other animals are phenomenally conscious. On an alternative interpretation, in contrast, they hope to resolve this latter question, arguing that phenomenal (...) consciousness is extremely widespread. But if this is their intention, then their argument begs the question. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether animals have souls and the ability to experience God after death within the limitations of their nature. Plausible explanations for the natural origin of life and for the development of subsequent complexity are increasingly being advanced by molecular biologists. Christian tradition and scholasticism teach that the human body is animated by the soul which is the agent of vital activities. This teaching is incompatible with the claim for a natural origin for life. At (...) some stage in the evolution of chordates and cephalopods a sense of self-awareness and an ability to distinguish between pleasure and the absence of pleasure would have arisen permitting the potential for ensoulment. The premise that evolution was gradual but ensoulment was discontinuous predicates the irrational conclusion that for one generation the parents were animals without souls and their children humans, made in the image of God, and with souls. Biological gradualism is incompatible with a sudden ensoulment dichotomy both in the evolutionary history of humans and for a maturing foetus, human or animal. Gradualism must apply to both body and soul. A Christian interpretation of physicalism, however, provides an alternative to dualism and resolves the paradoxes and difficulties relating to animals. (shrink)

Cephalopods are extraordinary molluscs equipped with vertebrate‐like intelligence and a unique buoyancy system for locomotion. A growing body of evidence from the fossil record, embryology and Bayesian molecular divergence estimations provides a comprehensive picture of their origins and evolution. Cephalopods evolved during the Cambrian (∼530 Ma) from a monoplacophoran‐like mollusc in which the conical, external shell was modified into a chambered buoyancy apparatus. During the mid‐Palaeozoic (∼416 Ma) cephalopods diverged into nautiloids and the presently dominant coleoids. Coleoids (i.e. squids, cuttlefish (...) and octopods) internalised their shells and, in the late Palaeozoic (∼276 Ma), diverged into Vampyropoda and the Decabrachia. This shell internalisation appears to be a unique evolutionary event. In contrast, the loss of a mineralised shell has occurred several times in distinct coleoid lineages. The general tendency of shell reduction reflects a trend towards active modes of life and much more complex behaviour. (shrink)

It is well known that humans represent the mental states of others and use these representations to successfully predict, understand, and manipulate their behaviour. This is an impressive ability. Many comparative psychologists believe that some non-human apes and monkeys attribute mental states to others. But is this ability unique to mammals? In this paper, I review findings from a range of behavioural studies on corvids, including food caching, food recaching and food sharing studies. In order to protect their caches from (...) being pilfered, corvids successfully keep track of observing conspecifics, employ a number of caching and recaching strategies, and exploit environmental factors to reduce the amount of visual and auditory information available to observing conspecifics. When giving food items as gifts, corvids give items for which conspecifics have developed a preference. I argue that the available evidence supports the hypothesis that corvids attribute mental states to conspecifics. I further hypothesize that corvids do so through process-driven simulation and the running of non-verbal multimodal rules accomplished by a class of mental representations called semantic pointers. (shrink)

Octopuses are highly intelligent animals with vertebrate-like cognitive and behavioural repertoires. Despite these similarities, vertebrate-based models of cognition and behaviour cannot always be successfully applied to octopuses, due to the structural and functional characteristics that have evolved in their nervous system in response to the unique challenges posed by octopus morphology. For instance, the octopus brain does not support a _somatotopic_ or point-for-point spatial map of the body—an important feature of vertebrate nervous systems. Thus, while octopuses are capable of motor (...) tasks whose vertebrate counterparts require detailed interoceptive monitoring, these movements may not be explainable using motor control frameworks premised on internal spatial representation. One such motor task is the extension of a single arm. The ability of octopuses to select and use a single arm without the guidance of a somatotopic map has been regarded as a motor control puzzle. In an attempt at a solution, this paper develops a predictive processing account of single-arm extension in octopuses. (shrink)

This study discusses the mimic octopus’ (Thaumoctopus mimicus) acts of imitation of a banded sea-snake (Laticauda sp.) as an antagonistic response to enemies from a cognitive-semiotic perspective. This mimicry model, which involves very close physical resemblance and highly precise enactment, displays goal-orientedness because the octopus only takes it on when encountering damselfish, a territorial species, and not other sea animals that the octopus has been shown to imitate, such as lionfish and flounders (Norman et al. 2001). Based on theoretical principles (...) and analytic tools from Mitchell’s (1986) typology of deceptive acts, Zlatev’s (2008) Mimesis Hierarchy and Zlatev’s (2018) types and levels of (self-)consciousness, this research raises the possibility that T. mimicus exhibits the following attributes: (i) bodily self-awareness; (ii) cognitive empathy, which builds upon deception and perspective-taking strategies to imagine or project itself into the place of the antagonist; and (iii) capability to reflectively reorganise the standard complete imitation pattern into a partial one in order to optimise its effect, based on conscious visual appraisal of the stimulus position. These capacities would place T. mimicus at the dyadic mimetic level on the Mimesis Hierarchy. For this reason, it is suggested that the name mimic octopus could be replaced by mimetic octopus. (shrink)