If you loved an animal and have felt it loving you back (more than just from trained obedience) you probably wondered how it perceives you and itself. I long to know what my Goldens are thinking.
Philosophers have asked that question. I wish Thomas Nagel had chosen his pet for a challenging article he wrote instead of asking What is it like to be a bat? However, the nub of it is about the general nature of consciousness, not the character of bats!
After skimming the paper, I checked what other philosophers are saying about consciousness. It took me down a rabbit hole to a dark place where there was no general sense of direction and I met strange theories, like epiphenomenalism. The subject attracts thinkers to the hardest problem in biology and psychology. If they are unable to agree about its nature in humans, what hope of understanding animal consciousness?
At least there is wide agreement today that it exists after long being denied, partly on the authority of Descartes. His dualistic philosophy, now happily in retreat, held that animals are automatons with a body but no mind. It is now respectable in science to admit that all mammals and birds have conscious minds, even squids and octopuses whose nervous systems are organized quite differently, and some advocates add species from “lower” phyla, such as insects. Self-awareness is often tested with a mirror for animals whose primary sense is vision, but I can’t tell if a cockroach is conscious because we step on it first!
Consciousness is not the same thing as sentience, although they are related. Robots can be sentient but aren’t conscious and artificial intelligence algorithms are smart but emotionally absent. Nagel’s article spurred a prickly debate that continues today. He stirred controversy by claiming that the nature of the mind cannot be understood through reductive materialism alone, which is so successful in other areas of science. The mind presents a unique problem that I don’t mind calling mysterious, or doubly so in animals whose perceptions of the world and thoughts are unknowable.
The evidence of consciousness in animals gives a rational basis for my affectionate feelings toward furry companions. More than sentimental feelings, our minds connect when they are with me. And acknowledging animal sentience binds our relationship to all mammals and birds and perhaps other creatures to a higher ethical standard than in the past.
Roger musing about Peace with Nature 