More animal consciousness

The piece at reference 1 caught my eye in the latest number of the (very useful) EAORC bulletin, which can be found at reference 2. A piece in the online magazine called ‘The Conversation’, itself to be found at reference 3. A magazine which I have come across before, and which it might be worth keeping an eye on.

Caught my eye, partly because it was about the consciousness (or not) of animals, partly because the author, a philosophy professor called Patricia MacCormack, comes from the same Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge where my younger brother used to teach music – this in a music department which seemed (from a distance) to be more interested in world music, electronic music and experimental music than in the highly organised music of the western classical tradition which interested him.

And if the long list of activities offered at reference 4 is anything to go by, the philosophy department looks to be a similarly broad church, content to leave the likes of Plato and the early Church Fathers to their colleagues to the west, on the other side of the railway tracks.

I might also say that the Cambridge campus was once known as the Tech. A place which I once thought of for myself for my A-levels, an idea firmly stamped on by my parents. I am pretty sure now that they were right so to do! I did take clarinet lessons in one of the music sheds out back, lessons of which there is now little if any trace. Sheds neither, I dare say. But I do remember that my clarinet teacher had done time in seaside bands, which he told me was just the thing for one’s sight reading skills.

Back with MacCormack, I get the impression that she cares about animal rights and that she is suspicious of main stream neuroscience’s exploration of the consciousness of animals. Partly out of distaste for the sort of things that are still done to animals in the name of science – for example, finding out how surprisingly well rats get on if you remove the top parts of their brains at birth – partly out of a suspicion that it is all a wheeze to sanitise a free-for-all when it comes to animals deemed to be unconscious, or at least so little conscious as not to count, and lastly from a belief that it is likely that some animals have forms of consciousness which we as humans are never going to understand or appreciate. In any case, having respect for other animals in general is more important than the details.

I have more time for the first of these than for the second and third, but it does no harm to be reminded of the issues from an angle other than one’s own. As a species, we do have a long history of treating all animals great and small rather badly. 

Along the way she mentions a book by Carol Adams (reference 5) which I don’t think I will bother with. But she also mentions a paper about animal consciousness (reference 6) which I did bother with. I did no more than skim it, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable effort to provide a scoring system for the consciousness of animals, a system which took both different dimensions (ten of them) and different degrees into account – going rather beyond just saying that this or that animal is conscious or not. 

Which reminded me of a vaguely similar scoring system used in my day in government procurements, organised in terms of mandatory and desirable requirements. One could then argue about whether to score mandatory requirements, whether you either satisfy them or you don’t or whether you allow good and not-so-good satisfaction. Desirable requirements were generally scored by adding up the scores for the various requirements. An important, but sometimes tiresome, part of all this was to ensure fair play by setting out the scoring system in advance – sometimes tiresome because one often learns a good deal during procurements, learning which might otherwise have informed the scoring system.

I also learn of something called trace conditioning, said by some not to work when one is unconscious, or at least when one is not conscious of the stimulus in question. Which, if this were the case, might help provide evidence about the consciousness of an animal. Supporting evidence rather than conclusive evidence; just one element of the score. So I may get around to references 7 and 8 below.

Altogether, an interesting digression.

PS: MacCormack is an Australian. So perhaps a Germaine Greer for the third millennium?

References

Reference 1: Animal consciousness: why it’s time to rethink our human-centred approach - Patricia MacCormack, The conversation – 2023.

Reference 2: http://martinedwardes.me.uk/eaorc/index.html. 

Reference 3: https://theconversation.com/uk. ‘The Conversation is an independent source of news analysis and informed comment written by academic experts, working with professional journalists who help share their knowledge with the world’. Supported by donations from readers.

Reference 4: https://www.aru.ac.uk/people/patricia-maccormack.

Reference 5: Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals – Carol J. Adams – 1994, 2018. Book.

Reference 6: Profiles of animal consciousness: A species-sensitive, two-tier account to quality and distribution – Leonard Dung, Albert Newen – 2023. Open access.

Reference 7: Trace Conditioning and the Hippocampus: The Importance of Contiguity – Debra A. Bangasser, David E. Waxler, Jessica Santollo and Tracey J. Shors – 2006. Open access.

Reference 8: Human Eyeblink Classical Conditioning: Effects of Manipulating Awareness of the Stimulus Contingencies - Robert E. Clark, Larry R. Squire – 1999. Paywalled but available online at JSTOR.