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Dimensions of Animal Consciousness.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Birch, Jonathan 
Schnell, Alexandra K 
Clayton, Nicola S 

Abstract

How does consciousness vary across the animal kingdom? Are some animals 'more conscious' than others? This article presents a multidimensional framework for understanding interspecies variation in states of consciousness. The framework distinguishes five key dimensions of variation: perceptual richness, evaluative richness, integration at a time, integration across time, and self-consciousness. For each dimension, existing experiments that bear on it are reviewed and future experiments are suggested. By assessing a given species against each dimension, we can construct a consciousness profile for that species. On this framework, there is no single scale along which species can be ranked as more or less conscious. Rather, each species has its own distinctive consciousness profile.

Description

Keywords

animal consciousness, animal sentience, cephalopods, corvids, dimensions of consciousness, levels of consciousness, Animals, Consciousness

Journal Title

Trends Cogn Sci

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1364-6613
1879-307X

Volume Title

24

Publisher

Elsevier BV