Freddy Purcell reports on the latest colloquium, discussing the ambiguities and moral issues around assessing animals for consciousness.
Last week we heard from Mona-Marie Wandrey, from the University of Cambridge, on animal consciousness. Originally qualified as a medical doctor, Mona-Marie’s research has since focussed on the difficulty of ascribing consciousness to others, as well as the moral implications of these ascriptions. This talk focussed on some of the injustice that may occur in the science attempting to uncover animal consciousness.
In 2024, the New York Declaration decided that there is strong evidence of consciousness in mammals and birds, with a realistic possibility of consciousness in all other vertebrates and many invertebrates. Instantly, Mona-Marie pointed out that this declaration indicates that we have trouble thinking of minds significantly different to ours as conscious. In this consideration, she therefore finds that evidential standards include non-epistemic values. The question Mona-Marie therefore sought to examine was then what these values might be, and what harms they may cause.
Borrowing from Nagel (1974), Mona-Marie defined consciousness loosely as subjective experience characterised by a first-person perspective. Other adjacent notions like sentience, the ability to feel pain or pleasure, were also used in this discussion. Of course, the presence of either condition is morally significant as we tend to believe that it is important to minimise suffering, something dependent on consciousness or sentience. Unfortunately, however, we can’t experience what it’s like to be anyone or anything else, so scientists must rely on external markers of consciousness.
Mona-Marie argued that a marker-based approach is the primary methodology utilised in animal consciousness studies. Here, consciousness is assumed to be present, backgrounding a search for its markers. In one 2021 study into cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans, these markers included brain structure, responses to pain, and value related judgements. The quantity and quality of markers present is then examined to form an overall indication of whether that animal is conscious. Naturally, the next issue is deciding the point at which markers are sufficiently numerous and of high enough quality to indicate consciousness. Mona-Marie soon showed that the decision on where this threshold should lie, inevitably incorporates non-epistemic values.
Following Dung and Newen (2023), Mona-Marie separated decisions on this threshold into two categories. A strongly anthropocentric approach only accepts markers of consciousness found in humans to be evidence of consciousness in animals. This kind of thinking supports decisions like the New York Declaration where only birds and mammals cross the threshold of consciousness because they have the brains most similar to humans. A different approach employs validation of consciousness that is sensitive to the species examined, considering how evidence relative to that animal’s physiology and lifestyle might be compelling, even if it differs from human markers. For example, in examining hermit crabs, Birch et al (2021) find evidence of value related judgements as the crabs would be more reluctant to give up what they considered a “good shell” under harsh conditions, than a “bad shell”. In this way, Birch et al’s study lowers the threshold for what are considered signs of consciousness, arguing that crustaceans should be brought into moral consideration. Critics of the study argue that it is too speculative, or that bringing more animals into moral consideration threatens the livelihoods of individuals that rely on fishing. Mona-Marie argued that this debate shows that decisions on consciousness are inevitably value-laden and must balance the welfare of animals and human society. So, how to resolve this debate?
Aiming for such a resolution, Mona-Marie introduced the idea of distributive epistemic injustice, that she used broadly as the injustice that occurs when certain groups are denied the ability to contribute to pools of knowledge. For example, Elabbar (forthcoming) argues that high evidential standards in climate science often mean that the global south’s contribution is overlooked because it tends to be data poor, neglecting the important contributions it may have. With this idea introduced, Mona-Marie moved to make her main argument.
- Mona-Marie started by arguing that animals are moral subjects that have interests for their own sake. The latter claim is relatively intuitive as animals tend to seek their own survival. Mona-Marie argued that animals can be understood as moral subjects in numerous ways, including through their intrinsic value as subjects that have goals and desires, or relationally through an ethics of care.
- Secondly, Mona-Marie argued that animals are epistemic subjects that can communicate their needs. This communication is likely non-linguistic, but she argued that we should be pluralistic about what communication involves and attune to how animals express their needs.
- As epistemic subjects, Mona-Marie then claimed that animals can suffer from epistemic injustice. She argued that animals possess forms of knowledge through practical skills that can be learned. This means that animals can be wronged as knowers. For example, if an elephant parent dies, their baby’s chance of survival diminishes because they don’t learn vital skills. Mona-Marie argued that epistemic harm is also committed when we overlook animals’ consciousness or ability to express their preferences.
- Finally, Mona-Marie argued that animals are inevitably political subjects because they are impacted by human actions. This means that when considering the public good, we should consider animal interests, including how we set evidential standards in animal consciousness science.
If we accept that animals suffer an epistemic injustice if they are deemed to fall below the threshold for consciousness, Mona-Marie argued that we should set evidential standards as low as possible. This would include following a species sensitive approach. Mona-Marie also argued that we should be aware of animal needs and defend concepts of consciousness that are foundational to animal rights. She therefore provided a convincing argument for considering animals as conscious subjects, showing the moral significance of this conclusion. Mona-Marie effectively headed-off some objections herself, while objections from the audience generally centred around the term “consciousness” and whether it should be used. However, I think Mona-Marie showed that her argument only uses consciousness as this is what scientists and political figures use, but that a term like sentience could be equally substituted in. Other objections questioned how we would ethically navigate a world in which all creatures are conscious, including the issue of how different species’ needs should be prioritised. Mona-Marie could only concede that this is a difficult practical problem but express the hope that considering animals as subjects would lead to improved ethical treatment.
This was a very detailed and interesting talk that incorporated numerous elements of philosophy, which I always find enjoyable. I always appreciate arguments supporting animal rights, so it was great to hear one from a perspective I don’t know much about. Despite its flaws, consciousness is used so often in discourse on whether something is a moral subject, so I think it is great to earnestly engage with the idea. Thank you to Mona-Marie!
Bibliography:
Birch et al. (2021) ‘Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans’, pp.1-108.
Dung, L. and Newen, A. (2023) ‘Profiles of animal consciousness: A species-sensitive, two-tier account to quality and distribution’, Cognition, Vol.235, pp.1-13.
Elabbar, A. (forthcoming) ‘Varying Evidential Standards as a Matter of Justice’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Nagel, T. (1974) What Is It Like to Be a Bat?. Oxford University Press.