The Question of Consciousness

I have been debating with myself on what my first official, substantive post in this blog should be about. Should I do a standard "getting to know you" introduction, or perhaps tell a story about daily life in a veterinary practice? No, maybe a piece on shelter animals would be a good opener. I was thoroughly torn- that is, until I stumbled across this:

Scientists Conclude That Nonhuman Animals Are Conscious Beings

I knew that I had to write about the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness for my first post, because this breakthrough in the scientific community embodies the premise of my blog: animals do have an inner life. They do possess emotions, thoughts and feelings, just as much you and I. Although this may seem obvious to most anyone who has worked closely with animals or shared their lives with them, this topic that has been the center of hot debate for decades. Many people, both in the scientific community and society as a whole, have the smug tendency to think of animals as nothing more than biological machines, even when anecdotal and researched evidence has suggested otherwise. Even people who I have known to be fond of animals have openly scoffed at me when I relayed my experience that some of the abused animals that I have worked with have showed great gratitude, calling my assertion ridiculous since animals could not possibly be capable of such a complex emotion.

The various respected neuroscientists at the first annual Francis Crick Memorial Conference seem to agree with my observations, however. The subject of the 2012 conference was "Consciousness in Human and Non-Human Animals," and the key speakers included renowned physicist Stephen Hawking and Dr. Irene Pepperberg, the psychologist who amazed the world with her study of Alex the African Grey parrot. The findings put forth by the presenters all boil down to this: many complexities that were once thought to be the sole product of the human neocortex have been shown to exist and operate in the less developed brains of nonhuman animals. The same neural patterns that produce phenomena such as self-recognition and REM patterns during sleep have been shown to exist in subcortical neural pathways in both human and nonhuman animals. Behaviors and abilities that show a parallel evolution of consciousness with humans have been demonstrated not only in mammals, but in birds, mollusks and even insects.

The attendees of the conference signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness which declares:

“The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”

So, what does this all mean? At the very least, these unequivocal findings mean that we need to develop a deeper respect for the animals we share this planet with and start developing better ways to co-exist with them. For many people, the antiquated idea of animals as unthinking, unfeeling automatons is the only thing that allows them to eat meat, or on the scientific end, to use animals for experimentation. We need to start examining ourselves and pinpointing how we can afford to be kinder to animals and eliminate their abuse from our everyday lives. I encourage everyone not only to read the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, but to visit the Francis Crick Memorial Conference website and view the material that was presented on animal consciousness. Having knowledge of facts such as these and discussing their ethical implications is the only way that anything is going to change for our animal friends.