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Summary: A philosophy scholar has developed a practical “decision tree” to help scientists and ethicists evaluate which creatures can be conscious. The new framework clarifies decades of debate over whether animals such as crabs, fish or insects can feel pain or emotion.
He distinguishes between two approaches: one that requires clear evidence of consciousness and another that accepts that the absence of markers does not prove the lack of it. The model aims to guide more nuanced decisions in research, conservation and animal welfare.
Key facts:
Decision Tree for Consciousness: Provides a logical framework for deciding which animals can experience consciousness. Symmetry vs. asymmetry: Describes two main philosophical camps: those that require proof of consciousness and those that accept that lack of evidence is not a refutation. Ethical Impact: Provides a clearer basis for animal welfare policies and how humans should value and treat other beings.
Source: Michigan State University
Beyond lively dinner debate, establishing which creatures have sentience is important in terms of animal welfare and conservation policy. A philosophy scholar at Michigan State University has added clarity to a confusing philosophical debate.
In this month’s Biology & Philosophy, PhD candidate Jonah Branding provides a decision tree that can be applied to questions like: Do fish feel pain when they are 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 have no 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 a serious debate about whether chimpanzees are conscious. Today, there is a serious debate about whether plants are conscious.”
Recognizing that creatures have feelings, thoughts, and/or a first-person perspective is complicated. In the article “Can you exclude a marker approach?” Branding establishes a certain order in the different approaches to ethical, scientific and philosophical issues.
“The science of consciousness is known for its twists and turns,” said Kristin Andrews, professor of philosophy at the City University of New York and York Research Chair in Animal Minds. “In his article, Branding offers a roadmap to help us answer some of the most difficult questions about which beings are conscious.”
Andrews, who is not involved in the study, was one of the original signatories of the 2024 New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness.
Branding works with markers: observable characteristics of organisms that are believed to correlate with consciousness. They may include specific brain regions, complex behavioral patterns, or sophisticated cognitive abilities. If an animal has many of the right types of markers, it is probably conscious.
But what if an animal shows few or no markers? Branding divides beliefs in this regard into two groups. On the one hand there is what he calls symmetry, that is, those that need evidence: an adequate number of markers. If the creature falls short, it is not a conscious being.
Those who believe that markers are evidence of consciousness but say that the absence of markers does not militate against consciousness are in the asymmetry camp.
Branding, a member of MSU’s Ecology, Evolution and Behavior Program, points to this as the sticky element of the disagreement and tries to untangle it by asking what it is about that missing marker that is so important in the first place. Create a decision tree to help narrow down the questions.
Invites you to consider the hermit crab. Crabs fail on many markers: They lack brains of considerable size and generally fail to display such sophisticated cognitive abilities. But those crabs select their own shell homes, and when faced with a maze, they have been known to change their shells to better navigate.
“I argue that, depending on which of these approaches you start with and what you think about some other related questions in the field, we can determine where the question of exclusion should be placed,” Branding said, adding that the questions help analyze how beings in the natural world should be valued and treated.
“These are questions about how we interact with the world,” he said. “There are important ethical implications about who we should morally care about.”
Key questions answered:
A: It is a structured tool to assess whether an organism is likely to experience consciousness, based on observable markers such as cognition and brain activity.
A: Understanding what animals can feel or think has important implications for ethics, research, and conservation policy.
A: It reconciles long-standing philosophical disagreements and helps scientists make consistent, evidence-based judgments.
About this consciousness research news.
Author: Sue Nichols
Source: Michigan State University
Contact: Sue Nichols – Michigan State University
Image: Image is credited to Neuroscience News.
Original research: Open access.
“Can a marker approach be excluded?” by Jonas Branding. Biology and Philosophy
Abstract
Can a marker approach be excluded?
If an organism shows enough of the right neural, cognitive, or behavioral “markers,” researchers can generally assume that it is phenomenally conscious. But what if it isn’t?
Recently, there has been substantial disagreement about this “exclusion question.” On one view (what I call the “symmetry” view), organisms that lack markers are probably not conscious (Dennett in Soc Res 62:691–710, 1995; Tye in Tense bees and shellshock Crabs: Are animal conscious?, Oxford University Press, New York, 2016; Birch in Noûs 56:133–153, 2022; Veidt in Biol Theory 17:292–303, 2022).
However, according to another view (the “asymmetry” view), we cannot conclude anything about the presence or absence of consciousness in organisms that lack markers (Prinz Conscious Cogn 9:243–259, 2005; Schwitzgebel in Philos Topics 48:39–64, 2020; Andrews in The animal mind: an introduction to the philosophy of animal cognition, Routledge, New York, 2020, Andrews in animated Submitted 10.51291/2377-7478.1737. 2022, Andrews in Mind Lang 39:415–433, 2024).
Here I argue that this disagreement partially reflects a deeper disagreement about how markers are identified; To this end, I point out three “paths” from specific ideas about marker identification (i.e., theory-based, analogy-based, and feature-based approaches) toward one or another view about exclusion.
Equipped with the right auxiliary assumptions, theory- and analogy-based approaches can motivate the asymmetry view, while function-based approaches can motivate the symmetry view.
However, this relationship is not deterministic, since different auxiliary assumptions will lead to different views on exclusion.
Therefore, my distilled product is a decision tree that links views on marker identification with one or another view on exclusion.
I hope that this tree serves as a means of identifying “fronts” where future debate on this issue can be productively focused.
