Consciousness in Nonhumans

Consciousness in Machines and in Nonhuman Mammals

When one starts thinking about the problem of consciousness, the question of whether or not a machine can be conscious begins to appear rather ridiculous. Some day this question might only be asked by people who are unfamiliar with the essential neuroscientific facts about consciousness. Consciousness has everything to do with being embodied, with awareness of one's bodily state in relation to what is going on around one. Moreover, this mechanism seems to have evolved only because bodies have needs. Consciousness is therefore deeply rooted in a set of ancient biological values. These values are what feelings are, and consciousness is feeling. It is therefore very difficult to imagine how, why, and where a disembodied machine would generate consciousness. This does not rule out the possibility of an artificial system with self-monitoring properties. But the self that it monitors would have to be a body (and preferably one with a long evolutionary history( if it is really going to generate feelings.

This argument has interesting implications, too, for the question of consciousness in other animals. It suggests that any animal with a brainstem designed roughly like our own – that is, a brainstem that modulates visceral processes and relays its output to cortex – is likely to experience consciousness. As it happens, all mammals have breainstems with nuclei that are structured and connected in roughly the same way as are those of humans – their brainstem nuclei even excrete the same chemicals (and deliver them to roughly the same places) as their human counterparts. There is therefore very good reason to believe that dogs, cats, dolphins, whales – even laboratory rats and mice – possess “core consciousness”. This implies that all mammals share our most basic (biologically rooted) values.

The same elementary things are likely to male a mouse and human being feel “good” and “bad”. We now that mice, no less than men, most probably feel pleasurable excitement when anticipating the consummation of a need, fear in the presence of an enemy, anger when prevented from having what they want, distress on being separated from loved ones, and so on. Recognizing these facts has profound ethical implications for humanity.

There are, however, “higher” levels of consciousness which involve neural structures that we do not share with other mammals. As a result, the nature of the cognitive aspects of their consciousness is likely to differ quite dramatically from our experience.

There is very good reason to believe that cats possess core consciousness. Photo by Elena.