There are some people who feel you don't actually need evidence. All you need is a kind of relationship with animals, such as your dog, and you just know that it's conscious. You don't need any evidence. Anybody who says the dog isn't conscious is just blurring the issues and hindering progress. So it's a kind of given. I think that people like Marc Bekoff actually feel that all you need, and if you deny that, you are doing something as a disservice to animals. My argument is exactly the opposite way around.
My argument is saying, because we don't understand animal consciousness, we ought to be opening our eyes to the possibility that a great range of animals, not just mammals, not just birds, maybe invertebrates are conscious as well. It seems to me that by saying we don't understand consciousness, you're not closing off animals' consciousness. You're not denying animal consciousness altogether. You're just simply saying we don't know and therefore it might exist in a much wider range of animals.
It's a difference between saying it's a kind of gut feeling, that's all you need, and anything else is to be anti-animal welfare, or it's saying well, no, wait a minute, we don't know that. We don't know that in any animal. We don't even know that in humans. And it's much better to acknowledge our ignorance and to rest our case on things that we can actually find out; namely, the science of what actually affects animals' health and animal well fair as well.
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My argument is saying, because we don't understand animal consciousness, we ought to be opening our eyes to the possibility that a great range of animals, not just mammals, not just birds, maybe invertebrates are conscious as well. It seems to me that by saying we don't understand consciousness, you're not closing off animals' consciousness. You're not denying animal consciousness altogether. You're just simply saying we don't know and therefore it might exist in a much wider range of animals.
It's a difference between saying it's a kind of gut feeling, that's all you need, and anything else is to be anti-animal welfare, or it's saying well, no, wait a minute, we don't know that. We don't know that in any animal. We don't even know that in humans. And it's much better to acknowledge our ignorance and to rest our case on things that we can actually find out; namely, the science of what actually affects animals' health and animal well fair as well.
-More Here
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