Well, my cynical reaction to questions about
consciousness is, "You tell me what it is,
and I tell you if an elephant has it."
And that usually shuts people up, because
you will not be able to tell me what it is
and how I should measure it.
That is not a good reaction, because I actually
believe that animals have some level of consciousness.
So for example, the approach that I sometimes
take is that there are certain things that
we humans cannot do without consciousness.
If we find these kind of actions also in other
species, we must assume that they also involve
consciousness.
So for example, you cannot plan a party for
tomorrow for your friends without consciously
thinking about how much beer you need, what
kind of music you're going to play, who's
going to be invited.
You have to consciously think about the event
before you can plan it.
Now we have very good evidence that animals
can plan.
We have lots of experiments now on it.
And we have nature observations.
For example, chimpanzees will collect tools
on one location and then walk for three miles.
And so then an hour later, they're going to
use these tools to fish for termites or to
open a beehive, meaning that they probably
had been planning the action.
And we test that out in the laboratory.
And we have evidence for planning in birds,
for planning in apes.
So if they can plan, and we plan consciously,
it's very hard to imagine that they can do
these same things that we do unconsciously.
I find that hard to imagine.
We have other things, like thinking back in
time, thinking back to events that happened
a year ago.
Can you do that?
We have now ways of testing that it's called
episodic memory in animals.
And animals have that capacity.
You cannot think back to a specific event
in time, let's say your wedding or whatever
it is, you cannot think back to a specific
event without consciously thinking about that.
And so there are certain things that animals
do and that we have now evidence for that
require in humans consciousness, and I think
that's a good indicator that the animals must
also have that kind of consciousness.
