Towards a Comparative Study of Animal Consciousness

Veit, Walter

doi:10.1007/s13752-022-00409-x

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Meanwhile others argue that certainly intentionality, if not communicative intentionality, is fully present within non‐humans, from Veit's (2022) discussion of ways to proceed with comparative study of consciousness to the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012: https://fcmconference.org/) stating that ‘Convergent evidence indicates that non‐human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviours’. In fact, and most importantly for this discussion, one statement made elsewhere about bonobos ( Pan paniscus ) is that ‘Because the gestures are intentionally produced, these outcomes are not only the gestures' “functions”—they are their “meanings” (Graham et al ., 2018, p. 9; see also Byrne et al ., 2017).…”

Section: The Themes Of Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multifaceted framework to establish the presence of meaning in non‐human communication

Amphaeris

Blumstein²,

Shannon

et al. 2023

Biological Reviews

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Does non‐human communication, like language, involve meaning? This question guides our focus through an interdisciplinary review of the theories and terminology used to study meaning across disciplines and species. Until now, it has been difficult to apply the concept of meaning to communication in non‐humans. This is partly because of the varied approaches to the study of meaning. Additionally, while there is a scholarly acknowledgement of potential meaning in non‐human cognition, there is also scepticism when the topic of communication arises. We organise some of the key literature into a coherent framework that can bridge disciplines and species, to ensure that aspects of meaning are accurately and fairly compared. We clarify the growing view in the literature that, rather than requiring multiple definitions or being split into different types, meaning is a multifaceted yet still unified concept. In so doing, we propose that meaning is an umbrella term. Meaning cannot be summed up with a short definition or list of features, but involves multiple complexities that are outlined in our framework. Specifically, three global facets are needed to describe meaning: a Signal Meaning Facet, an Interactant Meaning Facet, and a Resultant Meaning Facet. Most importantly, we show that such analyses are possible to apply as much to non‐humans as to humans. We also emphasise that meaning nuances differ among non‐human species, making a dichotomous approach to meaning questionable. Instead, we show that a multifaceted approach to meaning establishes how meaning appears within highly diverse examples of non‐human communication, in ways consistent with the phenomenon's presence in human non‐verbal communication and language(s). Therefore, without further recourse to ‘functional’ approaches that circumvent the critical question of whether any non‐human meaning exists, we show that the concept of meaning is suitable for evolutionary biologists, behavioural ecologists, and others to study, to establish exactly which species exhibit meaning in their communication and in what ways.

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Section: The Themes Of Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multifaceted framework to establish the presence of meaning in non‐human communication

Amphaeris

Blumstein²,

Shannon

et al. 2023

Biological Reviews

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“…25 What evidence has been gathered in invertebrates is highly suggestive that this is not a unique vertebrate trait (Gibbons et al 2022). If not for the the possibility of pain in ants, bees, flies, and the like makes sense in the context of their robotic, short, and fast lives (Veit 2022e). By paying close attention to the life histories of animals such as bees, who routinely engage in difficult economic trade-offs, I argue that it will no longer appear as dubious to attribute sentience to them.…”

Section: The Dawn Of Consciousness Explainedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness

Veit

2022

Biol Theory

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This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals.

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“…It is in this context that insects are often claimed to not feel pain, because they would not benefit from carrying such expensive equipment for their survival (see Godfrey-Smith, 2020 ). This could certainly be one way to respond to the pathological complexity of insect life, though I argue elsewhere against the notion that insects do not feel pleasure and pain (Veit, 2022c ). It is true, however, that many insects play a so-called r-strategy as opposed to K-strategy, in which quantity as opposed to quality of offspring is maximized.…”

Section: A State-based Behavioural and Life-history Theory Of The Org...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lastly, those interested in the evolution of consciousness frequently talk of a special lifestyle or mode of being —an animal way of life emerging in the Cambrian that has given rise to minimal sentience (Ginsburg & Jablonka, 2019 ; Godfrey-Smith, 2020 ). Using life-history theory will help us to naturalize this idea in terms of the pathological complexity of this new lifestyle, and to assess the phenomenological complexity of animals around us here and now in terms of their distinct pathological complexity challenges - which I have done elsewhere in the case of insects and gastropods (Veit, 2022c ). Indeed, what we can observe is that organisms with higher pathological complexity are inherently more subject-like, having to make complex decisions that address their conflicting functional needs.…”

Section: A State-based Behavioural and Life-history Theory Of The Org...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While this kind of work may appear speculative at first, this is precisely how the Darwinian revolution began: by careful observation of the natural world and making a distinction between the healthy and pathological. And as I have shown in a series of publications applying the pathological complexity framework to think about the mind (Veit, 2022a , 2022b , 2022c , 2022f ), a thorough ecological understanding of both human and non-human organisms will enable us to progress towards a true Darwinian science of the consciousness.…”

Section: A State-based Behavioural and Life-history Theory Of The Org...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Health, consciousness, and the evolution of subjects

Veit

2022

Synthese

Self Cite

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The goal of this programmatic paper is to highlight a close connection between the core problem in the philosophy of medicine, i.e. the concept of health, and the core problem of the philosophy of mind, i.e. the concept of consciousness. I show when we look at these phenomena together, taking the evolutionary perspective of modern state-based behavioural and life-history theory used as the teleonomic tool to Darwinize the agent- and subject-side of organisms, we will be in a better position to make sense of them both as natural phenomena.

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Towards a Comparative Study of Animal Consciousness

Cited by 17 publications

References 59 publications

A multifaceted framework to establish the presence of meaning in non‐human communication

A multifaceted framework to establish the presence of meaning in non‐human communication

Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness

Health, consciousness, and the evolution of subjects

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