Join me for a discussion with Maja Spener, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, for the season 7 finale as we do a deep dive into the reliability of introspection for the mind sciences.
Join me for a discussion with Andrei Buckareff, Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Cognitive Science Program at Marist University, as we discuss skateboarding, pantheism, and more! This episode was recorded live as part of LaGuardia Community College’s Undergraduate Philosophy Conference. The intro starts at 3 minutes in (sorry, it is live after all!)
Andei’s website: https://www.marist.edu/liberal-arts/faculty/andrei-buckareff
Every once in a while I get an idea for a short story. Usually they pop in and out rather quickly and I just let them go but I recently decided to jot them down when they come. I don’t think I’m a great writer, and definitely not a great story teller, but it is fun to write badly in another genre. My first two attempts are below.
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Doug leaned his head around the doorframe calling out, “it’s time! George! Let’s go! I am starving over here!’
George called back, “I’m almost ready, just give me a minute!”
Doug began pacing back and forth, waiting for George to be ready. Typical George! He’s always lagging, Doug thought to himself as he paced back and forth.
“What time is dinner?” George came out, adjusting the belt on his pants. “I can wait to eat as much as I can! This belt may have to be loosened out by the end of the night”
George was patting his stomach with a big grin on his face. “You and me both!” Doug laughed back. They clapped each other on the back and headed out into the snowy night. Yes, it was the night of the big Annual Feast. This year there was a bountiful harvest and there would be a lot of food to eat. The entire community was gathering to celebrate and there was a lot to celebrate, even if times had been hard in other ways.
It had now been several generation since the wars of the 2030s. The Earth had become a massive battleground and all of the natural animal life on the planet had been largely decimated. The established world-wide food chain had been severely disrupted, with all of the factory farms being collateral damage in the Wars. People had survived on insects and what plants continued to grow until they had come to the Pact, which was now the organizing force of their society. The Pact had allowed Human Beings to survive the wars and now they were thriving. Why, tonight alone there would be a gathering of 10,000 hungry Humans coming to partake in The Feasting. It made George feel proud to be a part of this tradition.
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“I’ve got to log-off! The dinner ceremonies will be starting soon!’ Timothy was also buzzing because of the Feasting celebrations about to occur, but he was also nervous. He had just turned 19 and so he was one of the Guests of Honor at the Feast. There were hundreds of guests of honor at tonight’s feast, everyone who had just turned 19 would join him in being celebrated.
“I know you do son, and I just want you to know how proud I am of you” Andy, Timothy’s dad, was standing in front of his home in the virtual world.
“I know you are dad,” Timothey’s avatar looked sheepish and blushed. This was because Timothy, in the non-virtual environment was blushing and the VR suit he was in did a good job communicating those things to the Avatars in the virtual environment. It made being in the simulated world feel very real. It’ll be even real-er in an hour or two, Timothy thought to himself.
Timothy looked up at his dad and said “I can’t wait to see you, so we can all be together again!”
“Me too, son” Andy smiled and took his son’s virtual had. “The uploading isn’t as scary as you think it is and it happens really fast and then you’ll be here with me.”
“Dad!” Timothy rolled his eyes as he spoke. “I know, I know! We’ve been learning about this since 3rd grade! I just wish it were done already!”
“What’s the first thing you want to do?” His dad asked, trying to change the subject.
“I think I want to try a beer! Or maybe fried food!”
“yes!” Timothy’s dad replied, “I’ll make sure we have some on hand for you!”
Timothy smiled and the logged out of the virtual environment and back into the non-simulated world. “Wow, a beer and maybe some French Fries or Onion Rings?” Can you imagine? Since the Wars humans had one big Feast and then the leftovers until the next Feast. They had to grow the vegetables from scratch and prepare the meat. It was very important that they had enough to make it until the next Feasting Day. Timothy had been so busy with preparing for his big day that he had completely forgot to check on when the next Feating Day after today would be. The next group turning 19 would to be that far off.
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Timothy came out and ran into Fred who was also on the way to the dinner. “Hey there Timothy! Are you ready for this?”
“yeah, I ca’t wait” said Timothy “I just got done talking with my dad,” he went on excitedly, “and he says I can have a beer and some fried food when I get there!”
“Wow, that sounds great!” Fred said “I’ve been reading a lot about soda and I asked for Root Beer so we can have a beer together when we get there.” Fred was smiling, and Timothy thought he actually winked at him as he said ‘root beer’. That thought disappeared as they walked into the dinning hall and saw all of the tables and chairs arranged around the large Dias in the center with the seats for the Guests of Honor. He had been coming to the event his entire life, but today it was his turn to be the Guest of Honor! Fred had already made his way up to the seats for the guests of Honor and Timothy joined him there, feeling really nervous now. He had made sure to go to the bathroom earlier and had not eaten beforehand as instructed, but he hoped he did not have any embarrassing accidents on stage. He would never live that down!
A hush had fallen over the room and the Ceremony began. “Ladies and Gentleman, I give you tonight’s Guests of Honor!” boomed a voice over the loudspeaker. The entire room burst into applause. Everyone in the room, most of them under 19 years of age, was smiling and clapping. Then the lights dimmed and people took their seats. Leader Martha came out. Leader Martha was one of the Elders, one of the council of learned people who ran the society. Leader Martha was in her mid-forties.
“Who is ready to be Thankful?” she asked. Everyone raised their hand. “Very good. Yes, very good indeed” she cooed. “As is our custom there will be plenty of activities while we prepare dinner, so please stand and salute our Guests of Honor. Dinner will be served in 8 hours time”
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The crowed burst not applause and the Guests of Honor stood at attention as the Dias they were on was lowered below to the Kill Room. As the Guests were lowered the crowed started happily chatting and talking amongst themselves. “Nervous?” asked Timothy?
“Not really,” replied Fred, “I hear it is really quick”
The Dias for the Guests of Honor had reached the bottom floor and they were lead to their final room. They marched in single file and then things happened very quickly. There was first a blinding light which disoriented them, followed quickly by an electrical zap which rendered them unconscious. As this was happening a mechanical arm swept up the Guests of Honor and slit their throat as they were hung upside down to bleed out. Once this was done a conveyor line took the bodies to the next room where the head was severed from the body and sent for brain scanning. The rest of the body was sent for processing and would be the main course at tonight’s Feast, with bits and pieces reserved for other uses. The chef’s were waiting for the machine to process the meat into useable sections and then they would begin cooking.
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George and Doug came racing back into the dinning hall. “I want leg meat!” shouted Doug.
“And I want a rib!” shouted George.
“Kids, there is enough for everyone so just be patient,” replied Leader Martha as she sliced a hunk of Fred’s body. They had stuffed him with a delicious spiced stuffing and Leader Martha was really looking forward to digging in. This was the way things had been done for Martha’s whole life, and her ancestors before. In the Wars the animals had been destroyed and this was the only way that they could still have meat. Some select few were not eaten but the rest were butchered at 19 and then uploaded to the digital world where they could live out their lives for as long as they wanted. Martha planned to upload once she died of natural causes but for now she also wanted some ribs!
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Timothy opend his eyes and looked around. There was his dad and his older brother smiling at him. “You made it!” shouted Brandon, Timothy’s older brother. “It’s about time! We were waiting all day long!”
‘What happened? All I remember is this bright light and now I am here”
“Me too” said someone to his left. Timothy looked over to see his friend Amanda and a little further down Fred and the rest of the Guests of Honor.
“Wow, so we really made it?” asked Timothy incredulously.
“You sure did!”
Timothy hugged his dad and was surprised to find himself crying.
“I’m so proud of you! Now c’mon, there’ someone I want you to meet!” Andy had put his arm around his oldest son and was smiling from ear-to-ear.
“What do you mean, someone to meet?” asked Timothy as he was drying his eyes, “I already know everyone here from Meatspace.”
“Well, not everyone,” started Brandon, “you see, I have a son and many people here do as well”
Timothy was looking right at Brandon but wasn’t sure he had heard him right.
“A son? How is that possible?”
Andy was smiling again and looking at Brandon “tell him, he can know now”
“What they don’t exactly tell you is that you are allowed to raise two infants in Meatspace but after that they upload them and process the bodies for specialties.”
“What?!? So, I have a nephew? Where is he? I can’t wait to meet him!!”
“Great! Let’s go, we’re late for dinner! They are simulating the exact meal of the Feast, with a couple special additions,” Andy added looking at Timothy before continuing, “and I don’t want to miss out on that stuffing!”
“Me either!” yelled Fred sprinting off towards the house in the distance.
Join me for a discussion with Jake Quilty-Dunn, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, as we discuss the cognitive science and philosophical psychology of perception and cognition
Jake’s website: https://sites.google.com/site/jakequiltydunn/home
Join me for a discussion with Arnold Zuboff as we discuss his views on the nature of the self -universalism or the idea that there is just one subject of experience: everyone.
I am coming up on the 20th anniversary of starting this blog. I started blogging over at Brain in 2007 and then started this blog shortly afterwards, so in has been about 19 years of blogging at this point. Over that time I have written very little about my views on animals and in particular my vegetarianism/veganism. This has always been hard for me to argue about with a calm and cool head. You think I get agitated talking abut Kripke’s skeptical argument against meaning? Wait until you see someone say that they can’t stop eating meat because it “tastes too good” or that they “feel bad” for me because I have never tasted a steak. There is just something too gross about trying to justify the way we treat animals all so that we can enjoy a certain taste or experience.
I had also over the years lost many friends over this and had even gotten into a drunken argument over vegetarianism with some graduate students that led me to transfer schools (I’ll spare the details). Then at the new school I transferred to I soon got into another drunken argument about this where I brazenly declared that eating meat was at least as bad as some forms of sexual assault, which caused quite some stir (I stand by this statement to this day). I went home that night and tried to write a short paper justifying my claim. That paper, “The Case against Carnivores” is, as far as I know, lost to time. I remember writing it in a fit of rage and if I had had a blog back then it most certainly would have been an epic blog post. As it is I think I put it on my early website and found out someone was using it in a class they were teaching. Anyway that would have probably been 2005 or so. It would be very interesting to see that paper but sadly we may never know what the case against carnivores was!
Then when I started writing this blog I wrote a couple of early blogposts on this (the first two below) but then had a really negative interaction with a commenter. That is when I realized that I needed to chill on this particular issue until I could learn to engage in a reasonable way. I don’t think I am all the way there yet, to be honest, but over the years I have tried to become a less annoying vegan who lives by way of setting an example through action rather than debate. As veganism started to become somewhat mainstream things seemed to be getting better but I still see the same tendencies that have always haunted this debate. I am trying to reach the point where I can at least engage in some arguments in this space without loosing my mind but it continues to be a work in progress.
Below are the eight posts I have written that are relevant to this issue, and I am working on one about animals in research.
I recently realized that I am coming up on the 100th episode of Consciousness Live! The frequency of these has varied from year to year, sometimes having weekly conversations, sometime bi-weekly, or monthly, etc., but overall I have been averaging one discussion a month for the last eight years. This made me start to think that I should do something fun for the 100th episode.
I also happen to have a book which just came out and I was thinking of organizing an ‘Author meets Reader/Critic’ type session as part of the next season of Consciousness Live. As I was thinking about who it would be fun to invite I suddenly thought that maybe this would make a fun 100th episode for Consciousness Live! I have spent hours grilling my guests on their work, maybe they might want to get some get back and grill me a bit on my new book.
Things are still in the planning stages but so far it is shaping up to be a real Brown-a-palooza with commentary and discussion of themes from my book Consciousness as Representing One’s Mind featuring past guests on Consciousness Live! As far as timing is concerned, May 14th 2026 is seeming to be the day for it. Check this space for details and updates.
I am also open to the possibility those who haven’t been a past guest on Consciousness Live! commenting on some aspect of my book, so if you have something you would like to say send me and email with a proposal! In the meantime the countdown continues with Graham Priest (#93) coming up later today!
Things are about to get really (I mean really) busy for me and so I probably won’t be doing much besides running around frantically until August 2026 (seriously even by my standards it’s going to be a rough ride for a while). Of course I will post the Consciousness Live! discussions once they start (Sept 18) and I am looking forward to Block’s presentation at the NYU Philosophy of Mind discussion group so may try to get to something here and there. At any rate we have been having some very interesting discussions in the philosophy of animal consciousness and society class. We have been discussing the markers and ‘tests’ approach and we read Bayne et al Tests for Consciousness in Humans and Beyond and Hakwan Lau’s The End of Consciousness (there was another paper but I’ll leave it aside for now). There were a lot of good points that came up in the class but I want to focus on the issue that is important to me, which is the methodological/evidential one I discussed in the previous post on this class.
Andrews seems to be trying to frame things by making a distinction between two positions you might have towards animals. The first is that we assume that animals, or a particular organism, is not conscious at all and then we look for markers that would raise our credence that the animal was conscious. So, we look at fish and see if they behave a certain way with respect to tissue damage, etc. If the fish is damaged and seeks a pain reliever then probably that indicates it is conscious and if it doesn’t then not. The second issue assumes that animals are conscious but that we need to establish that they have this or that specific conscious experience. As I am understanding this at this point she sees that marker approach as belonging to the first camp and the tests approach belonging to the second, though I might have misunderstood that point.
I can see why, if you are arguing with a certain type of philosopher/scientist, this may be how you are thinking of tings but I do not think it helps with the methodological challenge to studying animal consciousness. This can bee seen by the response to the argument that I gave in the previous post. That argument relied on the empirical claim that anything that you associated with consciousness could likely be done without consciousness. So when I point out that blindsight seems to suggest that you can have sophisticated behavior without consciousness one response was to say, ‘yeah but that doesn’t show that the blindsight patient has no conscious experience’. Another was ‘yeah but the blindsight subject is a conscious subject’. These are subtly different.
The first is taking the blindsight argument to be suggesting the conclusion that animals are not conscious. The second is suggesting the conclusion that being conscious played an important role in the process that led to the now unconscious behavior. So, the blindsight subject was normally sighted for a period of their life and they had normal visual perception and consciousness. Perhaps that played an important role in their learning how to do what they did and now, even though the process is automatic and can be done unconsciously, that doesn’t mean it could always be done unconsciously. These are good and interesting points but they do not defuse the methodological tension that I am pressing.
As I have said before, I don’t take the issue to be whether animals are conscious or not since I take that to be intuitively obvious; and you may take it to be intuitively obvious that they are not conscious. That is irrelevant since I do not base my beliefs in animal consciousness on science. If you were to ask me if science does support my belief about animals I would say that we at this point do not have scientific evidence that animals are, or are not, conscious because of this methodological issue.
Suppose there is a behavior, neural process, or function, which you take to be associated with consciousness (as either a test, marker, or whatever). Suppose that you think this is a marker or a test, or whatever. I will take as my example a certain pattern of neural activation in the fusiform face area. Suppose that we found that pattern when people looked at faces but not when they looked at houses. Does that indicate that finding that pattern is good evidence that they consciously saw the face? No. The reason is that we have found that same pattern of activation in cases that we have good reason to think are unconscious. (side note: that could be disputed and it is interesting to think about those arguments but lets save that for later). So, this pattern shows up when the subject consciously sees the face and also when the subject does not consciously see the face (but the face is present). Now suppose that someone finds this kind of pattern in a non-human animal. Is that evidence that the animal consciously sees a face? Or is it evidence that this process occurs unconsciously as it did in some human cases? Unless we had some way of telling the two kinds of neural activations apart we should conclude neither that the animal consciously nor that it unconsciously saw the face.
More to the point it would be irresponsible to loudly proclaim that this is evidence that the animal did consciously see the face until the issue above was resolved. None of this suggests that the animal is unconscious. It only suggests that the proposed marker/test is insufficient to establish that until we know the extent of the unconscious mind.
From there one might want to mount the more general argument that anything could be done unconsciously. That is an empirical question that the field should take seriously. Most reasonable people I know of are not saying we should think animals are unconscious, or that science suggests that only mammals/birds are conscious. We are saying that we don’t really know how powerful the unconscious mind is, this hasn’t fully investigated empirically. We have some reason to think it is quite powerful indeed, and some reason to think maybe not. Until we resolve this issue we should be cautious about grand declarations about what science has shown about animals and seriously address these methodological issues.
The fall 2025 semester is off and running. I have a lot going on this semester, with Consciousness Live! kicking off in September, and teaching my usual 5 classes at LaGuardia. Since the Graduate Center Philosophy Program recently hired Kristen Andrews I have been sitting in on her philosophy of animal consciousness and society class she is offering. We are very early in the the semester but the class is very interesting and I think that Andrews will have a positive impact on the culture at the Grad Center, which is very nice!
It also allows me to address some issues that have long bothered me. As those who know me are aware, I was raised vegetarian and am now vegan. I strongly believe in animal rights and yet also reluctantly accept the role that animals play in scientific research (at least for now). I have always considered it beyond obvious that animals are conscious and that vegetarianism/vegainsim is required on moral grounds because of the suffering of animals (but also I would say there are other reasons to not eat meat).
At the same time I have long argued that we have a conundrum on our hands when it comes to animals. All we have are third-person methods to address their psychological states and they cannot verbally report. In addition we know that many things that seemingly involve consciousness can be done unconsciously. More specifically we can see in the human case that there seem to be instances where people can do things without being able to report on them (like blindsight). Given this the question opens up as to whether any particular piece of evidence one offers in support of the claim that animals are conscious truly supports that claim (given that it might be done unconsciously).
These two claims are not in tension since the first is a moral claim and the second is an epistemic/evidential/methodological claim.
To be honest I have largely avoided talking about animals and consciousness since to me it is hot-button topic that has caused many fights and loss of friends over the years. When one grow up the way I did one sees a great moral tragedy taking place right out in the open as though it is perfectly normal. It is mind-numbingly hard to “meet people where they are” on this issue (for me; to be clear I view this as a shortcoming on my part). Trying to convince people that animals are conscious or trying to convince them that since they are they should be treated in a certain way, and to met with the lowest level of response over and over takes a very special personality type to endure (and I lack it).
Then I met and started working with Joe LeDoux, who has very different views about animals. When I first met Joe he seemed to think that animals did not have experience at all. He also seemed to think that people like Peter Carruthers and Daniel Dennett shared his view, and so that it was somewhat mainstream in philosophy. I remember once he said “there is no evidence that any rat has ever felt fear,” and I was like, but you study fear in rats, so…uh, ????
Over the course of much discussion (and only slightly less whiskey) we gradually clarified that his view was that mammals are most likely conscious but we cannot say what their consciousness is like since they done’t have language. In particular they don’t have the concept ‘fear’ and so can’t be aware of themselves as being afraid. So, whatever their experience is like in a threatening condition it is probably wrong to say that it is fear, since that does seem to involve an awareness of oneself as being in danger. Joe thinks rats can’t have this kind of mental state but I am not so sure. This is an interesting question and I’ll return to it below.
Joe and I largely agreed on the methodological issue, even if we disagreed on which animals might be conscious. The way this has shown up in my own thinking is that I have tried to use this methodological argument to suggest that we won’t learn much about human consciousness from animal models. This suggests we should stop using them in this kind of research until we have a theory of phenomenal consciousness in the human case. Then we can see how far it extends.
This now brings me to Andrews. She has been arguing that we need to change the default assumption in science from one that holds we need to demonstrate that animals are conscious to just accepting this as the background default view: All animals are conscious. Her argument for this is, in part, that we don’t have any good way to determine if animals are conscious (i.e. the marker approach fails). She also argues that we need what she calls a “secure” theory of consciousness which could answer these questions. Since we don’t have that we should just assume that animals are consciousness. This, she continues, would allow us to make progress on other issues in the science of consciousness.
So it seems we agree on quite a bit. We both think that only a well-established “secure” theory of consciousness would allow us to definitively answer the question about animals. We both agree that the marker approach isn’t successful (though for slightly different reasons). We also both agree that the “demarcation” problem of trying to figure out which animals are conscious or where to draw the line between animals that are and are not conscious should be put aside for now.
But I don’t agree that we should change the default assumption. This is because I don’t think the default assumption is that animals are not conscious. The default assumption is this: any behavior that can be associated with consciousness can be produced without consciousness. That should not be changed without good empirical reason because we have good empirical reasons to accept it. However, even if we did change that default assumption we would still face the methodological challenge above with respect to the particular qualities, or what it is like for the animal. So, for now at least, I still think the science of consciousness is best done in humans.
Summer is unofficially over and I am happy to announce the starting lineup for the Fall 2025 series of Consciousness Live! (Season 8). I am still in the midst of putting things together so stay tuned for updates! (all times giving Eastern Standard)
Richard Brown 