Abstract

There is no agreement on whether any invertebrates are conscious and no agreement on a methodology that could settle the issue. How can the debate move forward? I distinguish three broad types of approach: theory-heavy, theory-neutral and theory-light. Theory-heavy and theory-neutral approaches face serious problems, motivating a middle path: the theory-light approach. At the core of the theory-light approach is a minimal commitment about the relation between phenomenal consciousness and cognition that is compatible with many specific theories of consciousness: the hypothesis that phenomenally conscious perception of a stimulus facilitates, relative to unconscious perception, a cluster of cognitive abilities in relation to that stimulus. This “facilitation hypothesis” can productively guide inquiry into invertebrate consciousness. What is needed? At this stage, not more theory, and not more undirected data gathering. What is needed is a systematic search for consciousness-linked cognitive abilities, their relationships to each other, and their sensitivity to masking.

Highlights

  • In Nagel’s (1974) “What is it like to be a bat?”, the focal example is well chosen

  • There is a vocal opposition including Adamo (2016a, b), Key et al (2016), AllenHermanson (2008, 2016), and Hill (2016). They argue that the evidence points to insects being “natural zombies”: cognitively sophisticated creatures with no conscious experiences

  • There is a deep methodological problem here, and it arises in all cases where there is serious debate as to whether an animal has any conscious experiences at all

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Summary

The bats and the bees

In Nagel’s (1974) “What is it like to be a bat?”, the focal example is well chosen. A bat navigates the world using a sense entirely foreign to us, echolocation. Bees navigate the world using broadly familiar sensory apparatus: vision and olfaction Because they are so evolutionarily distant from humans, and because their nervous system is so radically differently organized and contains so many fewer neurons (approximately 1 million, compared with our approximately 100 billion), there has been serious debate about whether there is anything it’s like to be a bee. We develop a well-confirmed, complete theory of consciousness in humans, and we take this theory “off the shelf” and apply it to settle the question of whether animals, in disputed cases, are conscious or not This approach was advocated by Dennett in the 1990s: How, though, could we ever explore these “maybes”? The theory-light approach aims to capture what the theory-heavy and theory-neutral approaches get right, while avoiding their pitfalls

The theory-heavy approach
The theory-neutral approach
A way forward
Findings
Back to bees
Full Text
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