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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Sentience In Decapods: Difficulties To Surmount, Michael L. Woodruff
Sentience In Decapods: Difficulties To Surmount, Michael L. Woodruff
Animal Sentience
In the target article Crump et al. present 8 criteria to assess whether decapods experience pain. Four of these -- sensory integration, motivational trade-offs, flexible self-protection, and associative learning -- could be used to assess sentience in general. In this commentary I discuss difficulties with using these criteria to provide evidence of sentience in decapods, particularly if this evidence is to change public opinion and policies. These difficulties are lack of evidence, the potential to eventually explain the neurobiological basis of the behaviors chosen as criteria, thereby eliminating any explanatory work for sentience, and the reluctance to bring animals that …
A Framework For Evaluating Evidence Of Pain In Animals, Matilda Gibbons, Lars Chittka
A Framework For Evaluating Evidence Of Pain In Animals, Matilda Gibbons, Lars Chittka
Animal Sentience
Crump et al. define eight criteria indicating sentience in animals, with a focus on pain. Here, we point out the risk of false negative or false positive diagnoses of pain. Criteria of different levels of inclusivity are useful for using the precautionary principle in animal welfare considerations, and for more formal scientific evidence of pain. We suggest tightening the criteria -- from more general evidence of sentience to pain alone -- because crucial evidence for animal welfare decisions might otherwise be missed for animals subjected to invasive and injurious procedures.
The Reality And Prevalence Of Animal Sentience, Antonio Damasio
The Reality And Prevalence Of Animal Sentience, Antonio Damasio
Animal Sentience
Rowan et al use findings from neurobiology, clinical neurology, and general biology to argue for the extensive presence of sentience in animals, but they are wisely cautious concerning when in the phylogenetic scale that emergence occurred.
Defending Human Difference By Raising The Bar, Joe Gough
Defending Human Difference By Raising The Bar, Joe Gough
Animal Sentience
Chapman & Huffman (C&H) offer a theory of why we humans want to believe that we are different: to justify our cruelty to animals. This commentary offers further supporting evidence of this and examines more closely what the claim that humans are ‘different’ amounts to. It also considers some methodological issues in animal psychology closely related to C&H ‘s theory. These problems result from a common strategy for defending hypotheses about human difference.
Inhibition Of Pain Or Response To Injury In Invertebrates And Vertebrates, Matilda Gibbons, Sajedeh Sarlak
Inhibition Of Pain Or Response To Injury In Invertebrates And Vertebrates, Matilda Gibbons, Sajedeh Sarlak
Animal Sentience
In certain situations, insects appear to lack a response to noxious stimuli that would cause pain in humans. For example, from the fact that male mantids continue to mate while being eaten by their partner it does not follow that insects do not feel pain; it could be the result of modulation of nociceptive inputs or behavioural outputs. When we try to infer the underlying mental state of an insect from its behaviour, it is important to consider the behavioural effects of the associated physiological and neurobiological mechanisms.
Sentience In All Organisms With Centralized Nervous Systems, Lori Marino
Sentience In All Organisms With Centralized Nervous Systems, Lori Marino
Animal Sentience
Mikhalevich & Powell (2020) argue for considering the welfare of invertebrates, especially insects, by asking whether invertebrates have the cognitive and neural characteristics necessary for sentience. This approach assumes that human neural and cognitive complexity is the basis of sentience. But insight might also be gained by turning this approach on its head and examining the notion that sentience may be a fundamental biological property, appearing very early in the evolution of life in all organisms with centralized nervous systems.
The Perfecting Of The Octopus, Ila France Porcher
The Perfecting Of The Octopus, Ila France Porcher
Animal Sentience
Cephalopods split away from the phylogenetic tree about half a billion years ago, and octopus evolution has been accelerated by an extremely low survival rate. This helps explain why this unusual animal presents qualities found in no other. It has a radially organized nervous system with a processing centre for each of its eight tentacles. Yet, although this might suggest that each tentacle has its own centre of consciousness, it remains just one animal, with one mouth to feed, and one life to lose, and it behaves as if it is centrally controlled. Its capacity for a range of intelligent …
If It Looks Like A Duck: Fish Fit The Criteria For Pain Perception, Julia E. Meyers-Manor
If It Looks Like A Duck: Fish Fit The Criteria For Pain Perception, Julia E. Meyers-Manor
Animal Sentience
Whereas we have denied the experience of pain to animals, including human babies, the evidence is becoming clearer that animals across a variety of species have the capacity to feel pain (Bellieni, 2012). As converging findings are collected from pain studies and the study of cognition, it is becoming harder to deny that fish are among the species that do feel pain.
Pain In Fish: Evidence From Peripheral Nociceptors To Pallial Processing, Michael L. Woodruff
Pain In Fish: Evidence From Peripheral Nociceptors To Pallial Processing, Michael L. Woodruff
Animal Sentience
The target article by Sneddon et al. (2018) presents convincing behavioral and pharmacological evidence that ray-finned fish consciously perceive noxious stimuli as painful. One objection to this interpretation of the evidence is that the fish nervous system is not complex enough to support the conscious experience of pain. Data that contradict this objection are presented in this commentary. The neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the fish nervous system from the peripheral nerves to the pallium is able to support the sentient appreciation of pain.
Fish Sentience, Consciousness, And Ai, Ila France Porcher
Fish Sentience, Consciousness, And Ai, Ila France Porcher
Animal Sentience
The systematic criticism of articles providing evidence that fish and invertebrates can feel pain is discussed. Beliefs are known to be stronger than evidence in the human mind, and could generate this outcry, while from another perspective, the criticisms appear as a territorial move by fishermen against a perceived threat to their domain. The scientific inconsistency in which consciousness is granted to machines but not to fish and invertebrates, purely due to political bias, is pointed out. No basis exists for denying sentience to any life form as long as science is ignorant of the nature and source of consciousness.
Studying Dog Emotion Beyond Expression And Without Concern For Feeling, Peter F. Cook
Studying Dog Emotion Beyond Expression And Without Concern For Feeling, Peter F. Cook
Animal Sentience
Studies of dog emotion have focused on the expression of social emotion, either because this is taken to suggest human-like feeling states in dogs or because it has been the most accessible signal of dog emotional processing. I argue for an approach grounded in affective neuroscience, relying on direct measures of physiology across different contexts. This work may be particularly fertile in exploring social emotion in the dog, not because dogs necessarily share human emotional states, but because they are unique in having likely evolved to fit a human social niche.
Animal Models, Agendas And Sentience, Thomas Creson
Animal Models, Agendas And Sentience, Thomas Creson
Animal Sentience
Woodruff’s target article on teleost consciousness is a well-organized logical argument for considering the fish as a sentient being. This becomes more important for animal ethical discussion as the fish becomes a more important and legitimate animal model for investigating animal states and traits associated with higher levels of behavior such as learning and memory.
Still Wondering How Flesh Can Feel, Gwen J. Broude
Still Wondering How Flesh Can Feel, Gwen J. Broude
Animal Sentience
Reber believes he has simplified Chalmers’s “hard problem” of consciousness by arguing that subjectivity is an inherent feature of biological forms. His argument rests on the related notions of continuity of mind and gradual accretion of capacities across evolutionary time. These notions need to be defended, not just asserted. Because Reber minimizes the differences in mental faculties among species across evolutionary time, it becomes easier to assert, and perhaps believe, that sentience is already present in early biological forms. The more explicit we are about the differences among these mental faculties and the differences across species, the less persuasive is …
Reber’S Caterpillar Offers No Help, Carl Safina
Reber’S Caterpillar Offers No Help, Carl Safina
Animal Sentience
Reber’s target article “Caterpillars, consciousness and the origins of mind” seems only to shift but not to address the question of where the mind is and how minds occur.
Resolving The Hard Problem And Calling For A Small Miracle, Arthur S. Reber
Resolving The Hard Problem And Calling For A Small Miracle, Arthur S. Reber
Animal Sentience
With the exception of the commentary by Key, the commentaries on Reber have a common feature: the commenters feel, with varying levels of enthusiasm, that there is at least some virtue in the core assumption of the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory that consciousness (or subjectivity or sentience) accompanies the earliest forms of life. The model has two important entailments: (a) it resolves the (in)famous Hard Problem by redirecting the search for the biochemical foundations of sentience away from human consciousness; and (b) it reduces the need for an emergentist miracle to a far simpler scale than is currently …
Unconscious Higher-Order Thoughts (Hots) As Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness?, Rocco J. Gennaro
Unconscious Higher-Order Thoughts (Hots) As Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness?, Rocco J. Gennaro
Animal Sentience
Rowlands argues that many nonhuman animals are “persons,” contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy which rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. He argues that self-awareness bifurcates into two importantly different forms — reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-awareness — and that many animals can have the latter, which is sufficient for personhood. I agree that there is good reason to think that many animals can have pre-reflective self-awareness, but I think Rowlands is mistaken about its nature. His account runs the risk of leading to an infinite regress objection, and his notion of pre-reflective self-awareness …
Insects: Still Looking Like Zombies, Christopher S. Hill
Insects: Still Looking Like Zombies, Christopher S. Hill
Animal Sentience
In arguing that insect brains are capable of sentience, Klein & Barron rely heavily on Bjorn Merker’s claim that activity in the human mid-brain is sufficient for conscious experience. I criticize Merker’s claim by pointing out that the behaviors supported by midbrain activity are much more primitive than the ones that appear to depend on consciousness. I raise a similar objection to Klein & Barron’s contention that insect behaviors are similar to behaviors that manifest consciousness in human beings. The similarity is weak. I also respond to the related view that integrative activity in mid-brain structures is sufficient to explain …
Beginnings: Physics, Sentience And Luca, Carolyn A. Ristau
Beginnings: Physics, Sentience And Luca, Carolyn A. Ristau
Animal Sentience
According to Reber’s model, Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), sentience had its origins in a unicellular organism and is an inherent property of living, mobile organic forms. He argues by analogy to basic physical forces which he considers to be inherent properties of matter; I suggest that they are instead the stuff of scientific investigation in physics. I find no convincing argument that sentience had to begin in endogenously mobile cells, a criterial attribute of the originator cell(s)for sentience according to CBC. Non-endogenously mobile cells, (i.e., plants or precursors) in a moving environment would suffice. Despite my concerns and the …
Subjective Experience In Insects: Definitions And Other Difficulties, Shelley Adamo
Subjective Experience In Insects: Definitions And Other Difficulties, Shelley Adamo
Animal Sentience
Whether insects have the potential for subjective experiences depends on the definition of subjective experience. The definition used by Klein & Barron (2016) is an unusually liberal one and could be used to argue that some modern robots have subjective experiences. From an evolutionary perspective, the additional neurons needed to produce subjective experiences will be proportionately more expensive for insects than for mammals because of the small size of the insect brain. This greater cost could weaken selection for such traits. Minimally, it may be premature to assume that small neuronal number is unimportant in determining the capacity for consciousness.
Bacteria And The Cellular Basis Of Consciousness, Michael L. Woodruff
Bacteria And The Cellular Basis Of Consciousness, Michael L. Woodruff
Animal Sentience
According to Reber’s theory, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), sentience originates as bio-sensitivity in unicellular organisms. For this reason, Reber regards sentience as evolutionarily foundational. Many bacteria show chemotaxis and, thus, according to CBC, they are sentient. Analysis of the genetic mechanisms underlying bacterial chemotaxis indicates that sentience has no explanatory power in this case. Genetic analysis also fails to show species continuity underlying bio-sensitivity in bacteria and bio-sensitivity in species with nervous systems, so it does not seem that sentience is evolutionary foundational. CBC is rejected on these grounds.
Is Cortex Necessary?, Sean Allen-Hermanson
Is Cortex Necessary?, Sean Allen-Hermanson
Animal Sentience
A key contention of Klein & Barron (2016) is that consciousness does not depend on cortical structures. A critical appraisal suggests they have overestimated the strength of their evidence.
Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere
Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere
Animal Sentience
Insects might have been the first invertebrates to evolve sentience, but cephalopods were the first invertebrates to gain scientific recognition for it.
Caterpillars, Consciousness And The Origins Of Mind, Arthur S. Reber
Caterpillars, Consciousness And The Origins Of Mind, Arthur S. Reber
Animal Sentience
A novel framework for the origins of consciousness and mind, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), is presented. The model is based on a simple, perhaps radical axiom: subjectivity is an inherent feature of particular kinds of organic form. Experiential states, including those denoted as "mind" and "consciousness," are present in the most primitive species. The model has several conceptual and empirical virtues, among them: (a) it (re)solves the problem of how minds are created by brains ─ also known as the "Hard Problem" (Chalmers 1995) ─ by revealing that the apparent difficulty results from a category error, (b) it …
Why Fish Do Not Feel Pain, Brian Key
Why Fish Do Not Feel Pain, Brian Key
Animal Sentience
Only humans can report feeling pain. In contrast, pain in animals is typically inferred on the basis of nonverbal behaviour. Unfortunately, these behavioural data can be problematic when the reliability and validity of the behavioural tests are questionable. The thesis proposed here is based on the bioengineering principle that structure determines function. Basic functional homologies can be mapped to structural homologies across a broad spectrum of vertebrate species. For example, olfaction depends on olfactory glomeruli in the olfactory bulbs of the forebrain, visual orientation responses depend on the laminated optic tectum in the midbrain, and locomotion depends on pattern generators …
Should Fish Feel Pain? A Plant Perspective, František Baluška
Should Fish Feel Pain? A Plant Perspective, František Baluška
Animal Sentience
Key (2016) claims fish that fish do not feel pain because they lack the necessary neuronal architecture: their responses to noxious stimuli, according to Key, are executed automatically without any feelings. However, as pointed out by many of his commentators, this conclusion is not convincing. Plants might provide some clues. Plants are not usually thought to be very active behaviorally, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Moreover, in stressful situations, plants produce numerous chemicals that have painkilling and anesthetic properties. Finally, plants, when treated with anesthetics, cannot execute active behaviors such as touch-induced leaf movements or rapid trap closures after localizing …
What Would The Babel Fish Say?, Monica Gagliano
What Would The Babel Fish Say?, Monica Gagliano
Animal Sentience
Starting with its title, Key’s (2016) target article advocates the view that fish do not feel pain. The author describes the neuroanatomical, physiological and behavioural conditions involved in the experience of pain in humans and rodents and confidently applies analogical arguments as though they were established facts in support of the negative conclusion about the inability of fish to feel pain. The logical reasoning, unfortunately, becomes somewhat incoherent, with the arbitrary application of the designated human criteria for an analogical argument to one animal species (e.g., rodents) but not another (fish). Research findings are reported selectively, and questionable interpretations are …
Fish Lack The Brains And The Psychology For Pain, Stuart W.G. Derbyshire
Fish Lack The Brains And The Psychology For Pain, Stuart W.G. Derbyshire
Animal Sentience
Debate about the possibility of fish pain focuses largely on the fish’s lack of the cortex considered necessary for generating pain. That view is appealing because it avoids relatively abstract debate about the nature of pain experience and subjectivity. Unfortunately, however, that debate cannot be entirely avoided. Subcortical circuits in the fish might support an immediate, raw, “pain” experience. The necessity of the cortex only becomes obvious when considering pain as an explicitly felt subjective experience. Attributing pain to fish only seems absurd when pain is considered as a state of explicit knowing.
Going Beyond Just-So Stories, Brian Key
Going Beyond Just-So Stories, Brian Key
Animal Sentience
Colloquial arguments for fish feeling pain are deeply rooted in anthropometric tendencies that confuse escape responses to noxious stimuli with evidence for consciousness. More developed arguments often rely on just-so stories of fish displaying complex behaviours as proof of consciousness. In response to commentaries on the idea that fish do not feel pain, I raise the need to go beyond just-so stories and to rigorously analyse the neural circuitry responsible for specific behaviours using new and emerging technologies in neuroscience. By deciphering the causal relationship between neural information processing and conscious behaviour, it should be possible to assess cogently the …
Cortex Necessary For Pain — But Not In Sense That Matters, Adam J. Shriver
Cortex Necessary For Pain — But Not In Sense That Matters, Adam J. Shriver
Animal Sentience
Certain cortical regions are necessary for pain in humans in the sense that, at particular times, they play a direct role in pain. However, it is not true that they are necessary in the more important sense that pain is never possible in humans without them. There are additional details from human lesion studies concerning functional plasticity that undermine Key’s (2016) interpretation. Moreover, no one has yet identified any specific behaviors that mammalian cortical pain regions make possible that are absent in fish.
Pain-Capable Neural Substrates May Be Widely Available In The Animal Kingdom, Edgar T. Walters
Pain-Capable Neural Substrates May Be Widely Available In The Animal Kingdom, Edgar T. Walters
Animal Sentience
Neural and behavioral evidence from diverse species indicates that some forms of pain may be generated by coordinated activity in networks far smaller than the cortical pain matrix in mammals. Studies on responses to injury in squid suggest that simplification of the circuitry necessary for conscious pain might be achieved by restricting awareness to very limited information about a noxious event, possibly only to the fact that injury has occurred, ignoring information that is much less important for survival, such as the location of the injury. Some of the neural properties proposed to be critical for conscious pain in mammals …