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Understanding science: what we cannot know
Understanding science: what we cannot know

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5.2 Animals and babies

It’s commonly understood that animals have less advanced brains than humans, but do they demonstrate any form of consciousness? We might like to believe that animals – whether it’s gorillas, cats or dolphins – have rich internal worlds of thought and emotion, but how can we really know? Animals like squid and octopuses have been shown to have pain receptors, but we just don’t know if they ‘experience’ pain in the same way as us, accompanied by emotional distress, or if their physical response is an unconscious reflex directed by their nervous system.

Think back to how we humans have this feeling of being an individual person, seeing the world from behind our eyes. How can we know this about animals? Can we be sure there is ‘someone there’ inside their heads, and that it’s not completely ‘dark’?

It’s not (yet) possible to ask animals what it’s like to be them. Instead, scientists have to work within the limitations and devise ways to discern this indirectly. For example, recognising yourself in the mirror demonstrates that you’re aware of your existence as an individual being. Scientists have so far been able to observe this characteristic of self-consciousness in only a few animals, including chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins and magpies. They do this by putting a mark on the animal, then seeing how they react to their reflection. If they try to wipe the mark off, the argument can be made that they realise the animal in the mirror with the strange mark is themselves. You can find footage of such tests online (there’s an example linked in the Further Reading section). This method does come in for criticism, however. For one thing, it is biased towards animals whose vision is their primary sense.

Humans don’t pass this test until they are around 18 months old. This could well be the source of a common superstition, which says that it’s bad luck for a baby to see its own reflection.

In terms of measurable brain activity, the brain patterns in mammals and birds have been measured by EEG. They have been shown to be analogous to those in parts of the human brain. However, this doesn’t prove that they’re thinking like a human. There is still much investigation to be done here.

So, what about consciousness in non-living things?