simonabbrown.bsky.social
Philosopher of mind/cog sci studying animal minds, memory,
consciousness, temporal representation, & implications for animal ethics/policy. Postdoc @ London School of Economics
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By paying attention to such effects on the dynamics of decision-making, and combining with other consciousness research, future research could find ways of teasing apart mechanisms, thereby providing much stronger trade-off-based evidence for sentience in different animals (11/11)
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One big message here: the role sentience plays in decision-making may be much more subtle and complex than providing a 'common currency' for evaluating different options. It likely has different effects on attention, learning, deliberation etc. over different timescales...(10/11)
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Yet we do sometimes perform trade-offs by weighing up how good and bad experiences feel to us. So a trade-off *can* be evidence for sentience. Key is distinguishing possible mechanisms, and showing this trade-off is explained by a sentience-involving mechanism (9/11)
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Problem 3: As I previously pointed out (doi.org/10.51291/237...), states like pain can make some trade-offs *harder* rather than explaining them: it's easier to rationally weigh up the risks and benefits of a surgical procedure when you are not acutely experiencing the problem (8/11)
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Problem 2: some trade-offs are carried out by extremely simple mechanisms with no connection to sentience. In tiny nematode worms, simple interactions between just 2-3 neurons responding directly to chemical concentrations can explain certain trade-off behaviours (7/11)
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Problem 1: trade-offs suggest processing of stimuli which goes beyond mere reflex responses, but they have yet to be connected directly to other measures of sentience or the mechanisms implicated by different theories of consciousness... (6/11)
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We discuss 3 problems for such findings as evidence for sentience. Ultimately, we show that the strength of evidence a particular trade-off provides depends on which mechanism is likely to explain it, and suggest ways to get stronger evidence on this basis...(5/11)
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Bees tolerate higher levels of heat to feed from a feeder where they have previously received higher levels of sugar. Is this because they consciously feel pain and weigh it up against expected felt pleasure? (4/11)
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Hermit crabs choose their shells according to all kinds of factors. They are less likely to give up a better shell when given mild electric shocks. Do they consciously feel the the shock as painful and weigh it against +ve feelings about the shell? (3/11)
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We don't know which animals are sentient, i.e. consciously experience positive and negative states like pleasure and pain. Recent reports about fish, insects, crustaceans, octopuses etc. combine several lines of evidence, with motivational trade-offs amongst the most prominent (2/11)
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Cases like this go back a long way, e.g. "In 1773, Lord Robert Clive was determined that his zebra mare should mate with an ass. The zebra ‘shewed great disgust’ but Clive persevered: the ass was painted with stripes, ‘whereupon she accepted him’." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
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Put it in your diary: September 17-18th 2025, University of Leicester, political philosophy conference on the theme of ‘forgotten animals’. It’s going to be awesome, CfP some time next year.
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Indeed. www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...
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Because y’all should see a picture of Andy Kim and Pete Buttigieg when they were Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University together.
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Organised by me, Ross Pain (seen here inspecting spiders in the museum's vaults, with various specimens in the background), and Giulia Palazzolo, with funding from the Institute of Philosophy and help from an amazing team of scientists and others! More here: www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/bri...