Oct 9, 2025 11:27 PM
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1101267
INTRO: Beyond spirited dinner party debate, establishing which creatures have consciousness matters in terms of animal welfare and conservation policy. A Michigan State University philosophy scholar has added clarity to a messy philosophical debate.
In this month’s journal Biology & Philosophy, PhD candidate Jonah Branding contributes a decision tree that can be applied to questions such as, do fish feel pain when they’re on a hook? Does an ant feel alarm when protecting its colony? Do banana slugs feel anything when they eat dead leaves on the forest floor? Or are these simpler organisms more like stimulus-response machines, which don’t have any mental experience?
“There has been a lot of work on the question of animal consciousness in recent years and claims about consciousness are starting to be taken seriously for more and more organisms,” Branding said. “In the 1990s, there was serious debate over whether chimpanzees are conscious. Today, there is serious debate over whether plants are conscious.”
Acknowledging that creatures have feelings, thoughts and/or a first-person perspective is messy. In the paper “Can a marker approach exclude?” Branding sets some order to different approaches to ethical, scientific, and philosophical questions... (MORE - details, no ads)
INTRO: Beyond spirited dinner party debate, establishing which creatures have consciousness matters in terms of animal welfare and conservation policy. A Michigan State University philosophy scholar has added clarity to a messy philosophical debate.
In this month’s journal Biology & Philosophy, PhD candidate Jonah Branding contributes a decision tree that can be applied to questions such as, do fish feel pain when they’re on a hook? Does an ant feel alarm when protecting its colony? Do banana slugs feel anything when they eat dead leaves on the forest floor? Or are these simpler organisms more like stimulus-response machines, which don’t have any mental experience?
“There has been a lot of work on the question of animal consciousness in recent years and claims about consciousness are starting to be taken seriously for more and more organisms,” Branding said. “In the 1990s, there was serious debate over whether chimpanzees are conscious. Today, there is serious debate over whether plants are conscious.”
Acknowledging that creatures have feelings, thoughts and/or a first-person perspective is messy. In the paper “Can a marker approach exclude?” Branding sets some order to different approaches to ethical, scientific, and philosophical questions... (MORE - details, no ads)