Insects have the capacity for subjective experience
By Colin Klein, Andrew B. Barron. 2016
151 citations recorded by the source corpus.
To what degree are non-human animals conscious? We propose that the most meaningful way to approach this question is from the perspective of functional neurobiology. Here we focus on subjective experience, which is a basic awareness of the world without further reflection on that awareness. This is considered the most basic form of consciousness. Tellingly, this capacity is supported by the integrated midbrain and basal ganglia structures, which are among the oldest and most highly conserved brain systems in vertebrates. A reasonable inference is that the capacity for subjective experience is both widespread and evolutionarily old within the vertebrate lineage. We argue that the insect brain supports functions analogous to those of the vertebrate midbrain and hence that insects may also have a capacity for subjective experience. We discuss the features of neural systems which can and cannot be expected to support this capacity as well as the relationship between our arguments based on neurobiological mechanism and our approach to the "hard problem" of conscious experience.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Sensory Systems
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/835688d3a39bbd2c956c3f45b5b2620eac8e1898
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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
In Cognitive Neuroscience
In Sensory Systems
Citations in the corpus
- Animal sentience and the precautionary principle (2017, unknown): “…in the brain of information from multiple sources (Dehaene 2014; Tononi and Koch 2015; Feinberg and Mallatt 2016) so as to enable its use in sophisticated forms of action-guidance, decision-making, memory and learning (Merker 2005, 2007; Ginsburg and Jablonka 2007a,b; Klein and Barron 2016).”
- Keeping invertebrate research ethical in a landscape of shifting public opinion (2019, background): “The capacity and complexity of invertebrate brains and their resultant cognitive abilities is an area of considerable contemporary study and debate (Barron & Klein, 2016; Chittka & Niven, 2009; Klein & Barron, 2016; Perry, Barron, & Chittka, 2017).”
- Minds without spines: Evolutionarily inclusive animal ethics (2020, background): “Philosophers who have engaged with invertebrate cognition and consciousness (e.g., Schwitzgebel 2018; Klein & Barron 2016; Feinberg & Mallatt 2016/2018; Tye 2016) have typically demurred on the ethical implications of these findings.”