0:02

This is an ABC Podcast. What

0:06

exactly is consciousness? That

0:09

is a question humans have been pondering

0:11

since forever. And you've probably

0:13

heard the maxim, I think, therefore I am.

0:16

It was written by French philosopher René Descartes 400

0:19

years ago, and it was a way

0:21

to prove our own existence. If you think you

0:24

exist, you're conscious. That

0:26

is one way of looking at things,

0:28

but researchers are still debating what consciousness

0:30

is 400 years

0:32

later, and there are now about 20

0:35

different theories of consciousness. What

0:38

I'm getting at is we are

0:40

still confused about our own consciousness.

0:43

So what about animals? Non-human

0:46

animals? Are they conscious?

0:49

That question opens up a can of worms,

0:51

and open that can we did at

0:53

a recent All in the Mind live

0:55

event at the World Science Festival in

0:57

Brisbane. Consciousness. So can I get a show of

1:00

hands? Raise your hand if you think that at

1:02

least some animals are probably conscious. Maybe not all

1:04

of them, but at least some. That

1:07

looks like most of the room. Is there anyone

1:09

here who thinks animals are definitely not conscious? Any

1:12

hands for that? Okay, no one. I'm not

1:14

seeing any hands. All right. Okay, I

1:16

want to get specific. I want to know what you think about

1:19

specific animals. Raise your hand if

1:21

you think elephants are conscious. That

1:23

looks like most of the room. Cockroaches?

1:27

Ah, about half-ish the room, sort of.

1:30

Octopus. Oh yeah, everyone's

1:32

got their hands up. Okay, final

1:35

one. Fruit flies. Do you think

1:37

they're conscious? Maybe a third of

1:39

the room, a bit of shaking hands. Okay, okay.

1:41

Not too sure on that one. We're

1:43

going to play a shorter version of that

1:45

event for you today, because we covered some

1:48

fascinating territory in that chat. Thanks

1:50

for watching. either

2:00

for homicides or destruction

2:02

of property. Now, you're going to

2:04

hear from three experts in this

2:06

episode. There's Bruno van Swindren, who

2:08

is a professor at the Queensland

2:10

Brain Institute. He studies consciousness and

2:12

perception in fruit flies. There's also

2:14

Christina Zdenic, a biologist and science

2:16

communicator at the University of Queensland,

2:19

and Deborah Brown, professor of philosophy

2:22

also at the University of Queensland.

2:25

And I start here by asking Deborah to at

2:27

least try and define

2:29

consciousness for us. I'm

2:32

not actually sure you can define consciousness. We have a

2:34

lot of sin... Wrong answer. We need an answer. I

2:38

mean, we have a lot of synonyms for

2:40

it, like subjective awareness or subjective experience or

2:43

what it's like. And not every term in

2:45

science necessarily has a definition, or often if

2:47

you give a definition, it just shifts the

2:49

problem to, you know, explaining what

2:52

the terms are in the definition. So if

2:54

I say subjective awareness, what do I mean

2:56

by awareness? And awareness is ambiguous. I might

2:58

just mean detection in the

3:00

way in which a thermostat detects something.

3:02

We say the thermostat is aware of

3:05

the temperature in the room, but, you

3:07

know, it's not conscious, obviously. But

3:10

I think, you know, the thing about consciousness

3:12

as a term is that it's defined in

3:14

relation to a feeling

3:16

that we all experience. If you all

3:18

pinch yourself right now and if you

3:20

feel pain, I'll say that's what it

3:23

is to be conscious, right? And that's

3:25

actually important because our term consciousness is

3:27

fixed in relation to human

3:29

experience. So when we extrapolate out

3:31

to ask the question whether other animals are conscious,

3:34

that's in a sense what

3:37

fixes the meaning of the term. Bruno,

3:39

do you have a definition of consciousness that

3:41

you work with? How would you

3:43

define it? So I work on fruit flies and it

3:46

has to be something a lot simpler, right? So it

3:48

can be something that involves emotions or, you know, self-awareness.

3:50

It's hard to test and apply. But

3:52

what we can test and apply and measure and apply his brain

3:55

is what's called a prediction error. So

3:57

in a way, every brain is a prediction

3:59

machine. and it wants to predict the future. And

4:01

I would say that most animals kind of want

4:04

to, that that's what they need to do. And

4:06

for me, it's really about detecting

4:08

prediction errors and about

4:11

detecting how surprised the fly is when it makes

4:13

a mistake. And for me,

4:15

consciousness, operationally, is keeping track of

4:17

our mistakes so that we can

4:19

suddenly learn something new and make new models of the

4:21

world. And so based on what you know

4:23

then, can we say whether fruit flies are conscious? I

4:26

think that that question has the human baggage

4:28

associated with it. It has what it needs

4:30

to have to be conscious

4:32

for flies consciousness. And we

4:34

need to be in a way not distracted by what

4:36

it would feel like to have human consciousness. Maybe

4:39

we should backtrack here for a moment because

4:41

the very idea that animals might have

4:43

consciousness is a relatively modern

4:45

one. Renee Descartes, our I

4:47

think therefore I am friend, so

4:50

that animals didn't have consciousness or they didn't have a

4:52

mind. They were essentially mindless

4:54

machines. When did scientists, Christina,

4:56

start to think that that might not be

4:58

totally correct? Well, I

5:00

guess it starts back maybe

5:03

when Darwin came around and published

5:05

Origin of Species. So mid-1850s, it

5:09

sort of debunked the paradigm of the

5:11

time that humans were

5:13

at the top of the pyramid in terms of

5:16

having their own mind and not

5:18

just these mindless machines just reacting

5:20

based on instinct. And it was just

5:22

that we all actually have a common

5:25

ancestor. And so with

5:27

that paradigm shift, scientists

5:29

started to test the

5:32

consciousness and the cognition of

5:34

different species. And so like

5:36

come to Ivan Pavlov with

5:39

his dogs and this associative learning, he

5:42

would notice that as soon as he would

5:44

ring the bell, there was a dinner bell

5:47

for the dogs, that they would start salivating.

5:49

And even in the absence of food being

5:51

present, he would just ring the bell a

5:53

bit. So basically it was proving that the

5:55

animals were learning. So all of a

5:58

sudden, well, they must have a mind because they're... learning.

6:00

And then throughout history, scientists got

6:02

better and better at, like

6:05

you said, Bruno, taking a non-human

6:07

perspective and trying to think about it

6:09

in terms of the species and

6:12

start immersing themselves

6:15

into the environment of the animal rather

6:17

than just taking them out into the

6:19

lab. So you think about Jane Goodall

6:21

going and living with chimpanzees in

6:24

the 1960s to better understand their social

6:26

systems and their cognition. But I

6:28

guess one of these tests that came

6:31

around was the mirror test. And

6:33

that was scientists looking at whether animals

6:35

are able to recognize

6:37

themselves in the mirror. And scientists thought

6:40

that that would be a way to

6:42

measure consciousness and intelligence.

6:45

And so what they would do is they'd mark what

6:48

animal's sleeping, put a red mark on

6:50

their forehead or whatever. And

6:52

then as soon as they were presented with a

6:54

mirror, see whether they would just try to move

6:56

it off or try to inspect. And

6:59

would they? Well, it depends

7:01

on the species. So dolphins can recognize

7:03

themselves in the mirror. We know that.

7:05

We know that chimpanzees and monkeys, but

7:08

dogs, not so much. They tend to

7:10

think it's another dog and start to

7:12

bark at it. And

7:15

so, yeah, there's this variation across

7:18

the tree of life and the

7:20

ability of these animals to test

7:22

these tests that scientists keep trying

7:25

to come up with in order

7:27

to test problem solving, self-awareness, inhibitory

7:29

control, and that sort of thing. I'm

7:32

wondering why is there no single

7:34

definition of consciousness? Why is this such a debated

7:36

term? Why haven't we pinned down what it is?

7:39

There's 20 different theories of consciousness that people

7:42

are putting forward. And I think that's

7:44

just how confusing the field is. And

7:46

in a way, maybe we've been relying

7:48

too much on trying to figure out

7:51

human consciousness. And we should

7:53

be thinking about evolutionarily, why

7:55

would consciousness be adaptive? This

7:57

question of animal consciousness in 2012, Verna, you... you

8:00

were part of a group of

8:02

international scientists that produced the Cambridge

8:04

Declaration on Consciousness. And

8:06

in that declaration there's a line that

8:08

says, the weight of evidence indicates that

8:10

humans are not unique in possessing the

8:13

neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Can you

8:15

talk about that a little bit more? Yes,

8:18

I mean that was a declaration where we

8:20

went through various criteria, one of them being

8:22

pain for example, do animals self-medicate for example

8:24

to alleviate pain. There are several criteria you

8:26

can go through and I think at that point in 2012 it kind of

8:30

ended with octopus and maybe bees. That

8:33

are conscious? That could have consciousness so

8:35

we should seriously be wondering about that and think

8:37

about it in terms of how

8:39

to maybe prove it or test it. And

8:42

now I mean it's moving forward, it's like

8:44

if the architecture, the neural circuits that happen

8:46

in a bee's brain that make them potentially

8:48

have something like metacognition, are

8:50

you allowed, does an animal know when it doesn't

8:53

know? And opt out of an experiment

8:55

for example because it doesn't know. Bees

8:58

have that capacity. Those

9:00

experiments have been done. Bees can count.

9:02

And bees can count. But

9:05

then those are again kind of anthropocentrism, right? There

9:07

are ways of thinking about consciousness in terms of

9:09

how would a human think about consciousness. This is

9:11

such a problem though, like we keep coming back to this

9:13

and we have no other way

9:15

to think about this. Is this really such a

9:17

big problem? I think there is another way

9:20

to think about it and that's what I mentioned

9:22

earlier. What would be evolutionarily adaptive about subjective awareness?

9:24

Why would having somehow a subjective experience

9:27

be something that helps you survive in

9:29

the world? And there are some

9:31

good ideas there that somehow this

9:33

makes you a better learner, that if

9:36

you were unconscious and moving through space

9:38

as a zombie with

9:40

just a classical conditioning, for example like Pablo's

9:42

dogs, you would not be a good learner.

9:44

And it's true that consciousness is

9:47

computationally expensive. But what's expensive

9:49

really is making mistakes. If we

9:51

are a habit driven creature moving through the

9:53

world, predicting everything perfectly, that's

9:55

cheap, right? What happens, what's expensive is when we

9:58

make a prediction and we make a prediction. a

10:00

mistake and need to somehow reevaluate and make a

10:02

new model. And if you measure brain activity, then

10:04

it flares up everywhere because an animal,

10:07

the brain has just made a mistake. So

10:09

what's potentially interesting here is that consciousness is

10:11

about making good predictions but

10:14

not over predicting and becoming a habit-driven zombie,

10:17

but predicting being surprised enough to

10:20

learn new things and kind of keeping our brains

10:22

in that middle ground, making good

10:24

enough predictions but not over predicting so

10:26

that we don't learn anything new. And

10:29

that is adaptive,

10:31

right? We have to be able to learn new things. And

10:35

that was probably true for the simplest

10:37

animals, for arthropods had to do that

10:39

as animals moving through space, making predictions

10:41

about what they might bump into, about

10:43

prey, that they had

10:46

to have a subjective experience of the world,

10:48

a selective attention. And flies have selective attention.

10:50

We can measure that. One issue is, though,

10:52

that you can direct attention

10:55

below the threshold of consciousness. We

10:57

can do that in humans. And also... You

11:00

mean by that? How can we do that? What

11:02

do you mean? Oh, well, you know, so there are

11:05

blindside patients, for example, who, you know, because

11:07

of some lesion in their brain, are

11:09

not aware, but their visual cortex is

11:11

still processing information. And

11:13

they can, you know, learn to make associations even

11:15

though they can't, you know, they're not

11:18

aware of those associations, but their behavior

11:20

will reflect that they are. That

11:22

they might not know that

11:24

they're seeing a wall in front of them, but they'll avoid

11:26

it anyways because they have blindside. Is that what you mean?

11:28

Yeah, I mean, you know, so their visual cortex

11:30

is still processing information. But also,

11:32

I mean, even with other animals, for example,

11:35

you can ablate, that is to remove most

11:37

of the brain of a fish, and

11:39

you can still train it to avoid part

11:41

of the tank where it will

11:43

receive an electrical shock. So a lot

11:45

of, you know, adaptive learning, it's slower than if

11:47

you have a brain, but you

11:49

can still do it, right? So wherever you can

11:52

train an animal to avoid anoxious

11:54

stimulus with most of its brain

11:56

gone, it's hard to infer that,

11:58

you know, that you need consciousness. in order to

12:00

learn, in order to be adaptive. Right, because they're

12:03

doing those things without, yeah, I think nothing

12:05

going on upstairs. Yeah, yeah. There's

12:07

an interesting point here too. There's these planarium

12:09

worms that have been studied for a long

12:11

time in terms of their neurobiology, very simple,

12:14

small worms. And if you

12:16

give them an experience and you show them,

12:19

okay, this is where food is, for

12:21

an example, and it's

12:23

a bit macabre, but if you chop their heads off and

12:26

you think, okay, well, the neural processing

12:28

of information that's stored is

12:30

in their small brain, but

12:32

if you chop the heads off and

12:34

they regrow another one, they still somehow

12:36

remember where to go. And so they have

12:39

the experience of the old head. So

12:41

then it's a

12:44

bit mind blowing. And just, are they machines

12:46

then? Or are they, so where is memory

12:48

stored and where is this cognition happening? Is

12:51

it decentralized more so than what we thought?

12:53

And there's a theory that it's maybe

12:56

somehow related to RNA as

12:58

well. This is

13:00

All in the Mind. I'm Sana

13:02

Kedar and you're listening to a

13:04

live show we recently recorded at

13:06

the World Science Festival, Brisbane with

13:08

evolutionary biologist, Bruno van Swindran, science

13:11

communicator, Christina Zidaneck, and

13:14

philosopher, Deborah Brown. And

13:16

clearly there is still a lot up

13:18

for debate about whether certain animals are

13:21

conscious and what counts as consciousness.

13:24

But it's also the case that for other

13:26

animals, we have quite a bit of evidence

13:28

that there's probably quite a lot going on

13:30

upstairs. Interesting, I just

13:32

wanted to go back to one line that's in

13:35

that Cambridge Declaration that I mentioned a moment ago,

13:37

because it's really striking. In

13:39

that document there's a line that

13:41

reads, evidence of near human-like levels

13:43

of consciousness have been most dramatically

13:45

observed in the African gray parrot.

13:48

That seems pretty big. Can you

13:51

tell me about the African gray parrot? I

13:53

think maybe Christina might have a better experience with the

13:55

African gray parrot. Yeah, sure, I should talk about it.

13:57

So Alex is the famous parrot that

13:59

Professor... Irene Pepperberg studied for over 10

14:01

years, and she

14:03

revealed incredible levels of intelligence with

14:06

this species in particular. And

14:09

like one example, okay, the ability to

14:11

count over like six or something like

14:13

that, but also the

14:15

time that she spent in the lab, something like six hours

14:18

a day for over 10 years, she

14:20

was able to reach a level with

14:23

this bird and be able to test

14:25

its problem solving ability. She taught it

14:27

a language, it knew many words, it

14:29

could tell colors and even texture, and

14:32

was even doing behaviors

14:34

like trying to deceive the trainer.

14:37

And so like, it just

14:39

really started to open up people's minds

14:41

in terms of the levels of intelligence

14:44

and therefore, at a more

14:46

basic level, consciousness that non-human

14:48

animals have. And parrots

14:51

and corvids, now we know,

14:53

have really high levels of

14:55

intelligence. And they're actually comparable

14:57

to possibly a five-year-old child.

15:00

If you were to put some

15:02

problem solving ability, or

15:04

test in front

15:06

of a five-year-old child, and the same thing

15:09

with the corvid, sometimes the corvid, like

15:11

a crow, does better on

15:13

that particular test. So where does that leave us?

15:16

We don't think that crows are more intelligent, we

15:18

think that we have more complex intelligence.

15:20

But there's like this portfolio of

15:23

intelligences, there's multiple intelligences. There's a

15:25

theory out there that there's like

15:27

nine or so different

15:29

intelligence, the social intelligence,

15:31

mathematical, musical, physical. And

15:35

you think, okay, our ability to navigate

15:38

the world, think of it like a shark,

15:40

electroreception, or we definitely don't have

15:42

that, co-location of dolphins,

15:44

or that bats do. We

15:47

certainly can't do that. So all

15:49

of a sudden, it's been a

15:51

really interesting journey that humans have

15:53

taken along our paradigm of

15:55

what we are thinking in terms of where

15:57

humans are, and we always wanna compare it

15:59

ourselves. to animals and I think

16:01

the better we are at testing

16:04

these different levels of consciousness

16:06

and intelligence, it really puts

16:08

into question our original

16:10

thought that we're at the top. It almost feels

16:12

like the question is not, are

16:14

animals conscious? But why do

16:17

we seem to think they're not? Why do

16:19

we have that belief at all? Did

16:21

you want to try and answer that, Deb? Well

16:24

it's interesting because as a historian

16:27

of philosophy, I look back

16:29

at that history and I would

16:31

say predominantly we have thought that animals

16:33

are conscious. If you go

16:35

back to the ancient Greeks and the Stoics

16:38

and they thought animals had a soul in

16:40

the Epicureans and so on and

16:42

that kind of persisted right up until Descartes.

16:44

And then during Descartes' time, I mean he

16:47

was pilloried for that view that animals are

16:49

machines by all his commentators

16:51

and all his critics. And then

16:53

afterwards very few of his followers even

16:55

subscribed to the idea that animals are

16:58

machines and then a lot of

17:00

them reverted back to thinking that animals have emotions

17:03

and so that there's some continuum

17:05

between animals and human beings. So

17:07

I think that from a historical

17:09

perspective, for the most part we

17:11

have thought that other animals are conscious. So have

17:13

we basically, just in terms of over history, how

17:15

we've thought about animals, we've kind of gone back

17:17

and forth in our thinking between they're conscious, they're

17:19

not conscious, they're machines, they are conscious, they have

17:22

emotions, they don't. Kind of go back and forth.

17:24

Is that how it's been? Well,

17:26

I think predominantly we have thought of

17:28

them as being conscious. I have. I

17:30

mean, you think about those animal trials that

17:33

occurred in Europe from the 13th

17:35

century through to the 20th century. These

17:38

were animals who were trials for crimes against

17:40

humanity, either for homicides

17:43

or destruction of property. And these

17:45

trials took place in continental

17:47

Europe, so not in England but across

17:49

the continent. Also even in the United

17:51

States, I think when there was a trial in

17:53

early 20th century in the United

17:55

States of an animal. And

17:58

they were sort of treated as persons under the law. but

18:00

it was assumed that they had intentionally

18:03

committed these crimes. Whereas

18:05

in England they thought that

18:07

animals couldn't intentionally harm people

18:09

and so you could

18:11

only hold their owners responsible

18:14

for the crimes. But in

18:16

Europe they thought no, the animals

18:18

had done something wrong so they

18:20

should be tried and they were

18:22

given lawyers and they would argue

18:24

their case. When

18:26

the animals were found guilty, exiled,

18:28

hanged in some cases and when

18:30

they were hanged they were often

18:32

dressed up in little human clothing.

18:35

People would bring their dogs and cats

18:38

and donkeys along to watch this, you

18:40

know, you better

18:42

behave, I know or else you'll be

18:45

next. But that will presuppose that

18:47

people are thinking of these animals

18:50

as capable, as conscious, as capable

18:52

of forming intentions and

18:55

capable of understanding their punishment as

18:57

well. We've covered a

18:59

lot of animals today. I just want to

19:01

do a rapid fire pick through a few

19:03

more that people have very strong feelings about.

19:06

If you could tell me what we know about their level of

19:08

consciousness that would be great. Let's start with

19:10

cockroaches. We've mentioned cockroaches a couple of times. What

19:12

can we say about their level of consciousness?

19:15

Cockroaches have the basic neural architecture or circuitry

19:17

that flies have that many arthropods have and

19:19

now it's well understood that there is a

19:22

selective attention mechanism in there where these cockroaches

19:24

are paying attention to one thing and ignoring

19:26

something else and that they have the neural

19:28

circuitry to be able to do that. So

19:30

I would say that cockroaches are, you know,

19:33

they have the rudiments of consciousness. I'm still

19:35

going to smash him. Sorry. Basically

19:37

I'm asking because when I see

19:39

a cockroach I get it out of

19:41

the way quickly so I feel really bad about it. When

19:43

I get a cockroach my wife tells me to catch

19:46

it and throw it outside. Don't

19:48

smash it. Don't smash it. I always

19:50

just can say I don't think they

19:52

are conscious. If they are conscious we should

19:54

be able to sort of locate where the

19:56

consciousness is and we tend to think that

19:58

that consciousness has to meet in the eye. But

20:00

the trouble is you can ablate, like

20:02

take out the brain of a cockroach

20:05

and it'll still engage in escape behaviours.

20:07

And you see these behaviours

20:09

that we think are mediated by pain,

20:11

for example. But, you know,

20:13

you take out parts of the brain where you think

20:15

that could, you know, is only reasonably could be

20:18

and they keep engaging in escape behaviours

20:20

or grooming behaviours. It might be a

20:22

reflex rather than a con... Yeah, I

20:24

think that, yeah, a lot of what

20:26

cockroach does is can be explained just in terms

20:28

of a reflex. Okay, sorry. I

20:31

just jump in there with the word reflex. We just use

20:33

the word reflex for things that we do understand, right? So

20:35

when we fully understand consciousness, it'll be potentially

20:37

a bunch of reflexes, right? So

20:40

this is a difficult word, you know, the word reflex.

20:42

It's something that we apply

20:44

to a circuit that has been understood. And

20:47

what we don't understand, we give a fancy

20:49

word like consciousness or subjective awareness. Okay. But

20:51

once we get there, some people

20:53

will then say it's actually a very, very

20:55

sophisticated reflex. And then the question

20:57

in this space like opens the door to a

20:59

billion more questions. It's very hard to pin down.

21:01

But okay, we'll put a pin on cockroaches for now.

21:05

Elephants, they burrow, they're dead. They're

21:07

amazing. Are they conscious? Yeah.

21:10

Yeah? Surely. Yeah.

21:13

What about the animals we have the most contact

21:15

with? Our pets, our dogs and cats? Well, they

21:17

dream too, don't they? Oh yeah, everybody is

21:20

aware that their pets dream, right? So we see

21:22

a dog pawing away in its sleep. We recognise

21:24

behaviour that we recognise in our own kids. Emotions.

21:27

And in a way that's part of the problem, right? Because

21:29

these are animals that to some extent look like us. And

21:32

it's easy for us to imagine that they

21:35

might have the similar thought processes or a

21:37

consciousness. I would say that that's what's been

21:39

kind of holding the field back actually. We're

21:42

looking for something similar to us rather

21:44

than really trying to understand the evolution

21:46

of consciousness way back in time. Well,

21:49

I'm going to ask one more animal. Chickens.

21:51

A lot of us eat chickens. Are

21:53

they conscious? They're conscious. Yeah.

21:57

Well, the question that really underpins all of that is like,

21:59

you know... If animals are conscious, you come back

22:01

to, should we be eating them? Should we be treating

22:03

them better? And I guess maybe I'll

22:05

get a show of hands from the audience here as well again.

22:08

How many of you eat animals or animal products?

22:11

Okay, most hands have gone up. How

22:13

many of you are feeling, oh, my hand as well, yeah. Pretty

22:16

angsty about that? Do you feel angsty about that? Hands

22:18

up, do you feel angsty? A little bit. I

22:21

mean, I eat animal products and animals. I

22:24

certainly would like her farming practices to

22:26

be more humane. But is there

22:28

a way to make peace with that decision or do we

22:30

just sort of have to live with the cognitive dissonance and

22:32

maybe ignore that? Beb, do you have any thoughts on that?

22:36

Well, I think there is some cognitive

22:38

dissonance. If what we value about

22:40

humans is our

22:42

cognitive capabilities, or

22:45

if we think it's wrong to

22:47

cause pain, then obviously causing pain

22:50

in anything else should

22:52

be wrong as well. On the

22:55

other hand, I don't think

22:57

that pain is, first of all,

22:59

I think there are many different kinds of harms. So

23:02

whilst I don't think myself that

23:04

there's enough evidence to establish that

23:06

octopi are conscious, I

23:08

think there are many reasons to not eat octopi.

23:11

Because there are many harms that aren't

23:14

related to consciousness, right? So there's environmental

23:16

reasons, you might have biodiversity reasons to not

23:18

eat a certain kind of animal

23:20

or whatever it might be. So you always have

23:23

lots of reasons to not eat an animal, even

23:25

if you decide that you don't have

23:27

sufficient evidence to conclude they're conscious or not. One

23:29

thing I'm wondering is, obviously there's a lot of

23:31

room for improvement in the food system, but

23:34

what we've learned over the years about consciousness

23:36

in animals changed how we treat them in

23:39

science and scientific study. It has

23:41

changed it tremendously. There's more push for

23:43

research grants, for example, using animals that

23:45

are simpler, for example, like

23:47

group lies or insects and not necessarily

23:49

try to slaughter as many rats as

23:51

possible for questionable research outputs.

23:53

So there really is a push in the

23:55

funding agencies to try to think carefully about

23:58

what animals we're using, how we treat them.

24:00

them for example, how we euthanize them. This

24:02

has all happened in the past 20 to 10 years. And

24:06

also there's almost no monkey research in Australia. And

24:08

that's also a consequence I think of this way

24:10

of thinking. Yeah, and I'm wondering like, so

24:12

we won't test on monkeys in that same way now.

24:14

We feel bad about

24:16

whales being killed or dolphins, but we're not

24:19

so fussed when like a mosquito or a

24:21

fruit fly is swatted. Why

24:23

do we make that distinction? Is it because of

24:25

our perception of their levels of consciousness? Or should

24:27

there not really be a distinction there? Do

24:30

you have anything to say on that? You know, with a

24:32

lot of species that once you

24:34

get beyond mammals, we lose that

24:36

basis for empathy or

24:38

sympathy because they are so

24:40

radically different from us. And I

24:43

think that is a prejudice. I don't think that

24:45

we should exclude the

24:47

possibility of another mind

24:49

on the basis of a radically different

24:51

appearance to us. That's just

24:54

bad reasoning. I guess to close off, we've covered

24:56

a lot of ground, a lot of animals. If

24:59

there is one question or idea

25:01

or thought that you

25:03

want to leave the audience with when it

25:05

comes to thinking about animals and their consciousness,

25:08

what would that be? Deb, maybe I'll start with you. I

25:11

just, I guess, you know, science

25:13

progresses by eliminating alternative hypotheses. And

25:16

when, you know, as a scientist,

25:18

I'm not a scientist, I'm a philosopher,

25:20

but I know this much about scientists, that

25:22

they never just generate one hypothesis. They

25:24

always keep in mind the null hypothesis.

25:26

So if you're generating a hypothesis that,

25:29

you know, you think this animal, you

25:31

know, feels pain or feels emotions or

25:33

whatever it might be, you have to keep alive

25:36

the alternative hypothesis that they don't. So

25:38

we always have to sort of play

25:40

devil's advocate with ourselves. And I think

25:42

the animal consciousness is a debate at

25:45

the moment where there's too little attention

25:47

to the null hypothesis. You

25:49

know, there's too much sort of jumping on

25:51

the bandwagon of these creatures feel pain or

25:54

those creatures feel pain. And nowadays, of course,

25:56

there's a whole field of plant neurobiology where

25:58

people are arguing that plant. feel conscious and

26:00

have memory and communicate and learn

26:02

and so on and so forth. And

26:05

it's a sort of slippery slope from

26:07

there to panpsychism where everything is conscious.

26:11

This chair I'm sitting in. So

26:13

I think we need to explore

26:15

and be curious, but we also

26:19

need to keep alive the null hypothesis.

26:21

Yeah, okay. Christina, are trees conscious? No, I'm

26:23

joking. Your

26:26

final thought or idea to lead the

26:28

audience with? I guess as we've seen

26:30

through our conversation today, it's difficult to

26:32

pin down definitions of things. If we

26:34

look at the history of scientists studying

26:36

different animals around the world for the

26:38

past 150, 200 years, I think one

26:40

theme comes out

26:44

and that is we

26:46

are consistently underestimating animals.

26:50

And that's been convenient for us to be

26:52

able to exploit them, to destroy their habitat, and

26:54

to not care as much when species go extinct

26:56

or whatnot. I think it's

26:58

good to use the precautionary principle in

27:02

our actions and decisions and policies

27:05

toward animals. And I think, yeah,

27:07

just if we can better

27:10

live alongside them and from a

27:12

conservation perspective, enable these species to

27:14

continue in the least. Nice. All

27:17

right, Bruno, final question or thought

27:19

to leave the audience to

27:21

think about? I think it's a very

27:23

exciting time about thinking about what is consciousness? How

27:25

does it develop? How do we build it? You

27:27

know, AI, when will it be conscious? Right,

27:30

this is really something that's going to

27:32

be important in the next few years. And

27:34

I think what's different about approaching

27:36

consciousness, at least from my perspective, is

27:39

it's not a top-down perspective, it's a bottom-up perspective.

27:41

You know, how did it evolve? Which

27:43

animals have active sleep and which animals don't

27:45

have active sleep? Is that correlated

27:47

in some way to their capacity to have a selective

27:50

attention? Can you then imagine how consciousness

27:52

may have evolved from what those animals have

27:54

in common? And I think that's an interesting

27:56

way of potentially imagining how consciousness may

27:59

have been built. built through evolution

28:01

to serve a purpose that was important

28:04

for all animals. And then it doesn't

28:06

end up being human consciousness. It's

28:08

something that is important for every single species in

28:10

its own way to have that. That

28:15

is Bruno van Swindren, professor at the

28:17

Queensland Brain Institute, closing off that

28:19

chat. You also

28:21

heard from biologists and herpetologists

28:23

and science communicator Christina Zdenic,

28:26

as well as philosopher Professor Deborah

28:29

Brown from the University of Queensland.

28:32

This episode was recorded at the World Science

28:34

Festival Brisbane. Thanks to the team

28:37

there for programming this panel and

28:39

to recording engineer Steve Sealdhouse. This

28:42

episode was mixed by Tegan Nichols. It

28:44

was presented by me, Sanneka Dar. And

28:47

that is it for All in the Mind this week. Thank

28:50

you for listening. I'll catch you next time. You've

28:55

been listening to an ABC

28:58

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