Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine
are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent femininity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is conceptually distinct from both the female biological sex and from womanhood, as all humans can exhibit feminine and masculine traits, regardless of sex and gender.
Traits traditionally cited as feminine include gracefulness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and sensitivity,
though traits associated with femininity vary across societies and
individuals, and are influenced by a variety of social and cultural
factors.
Despite the terms femininity and masculinity being in common usage, there is little scientific agreement about what femininity and masculinity are. Among scholars, the concept of femininity has varying meanings.
Professor of English Tara Williams has suggested that modern notions of femininity in English-speaking society began during the medieval period at the time of the bubonic plague in the 1300s. Women in the Early Middle Ages were referred to simply within their traditional roles of maiden, wife, or widow. After the Black Death in England wiped out approximately half the population, traditional gender roles of wife and mother changed, and opportunities opened up for women in society. The words femininity and womanhood are first recorded in Chaucer around 1380.
In 1949, French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir
wrote that "no biological, psychological or economic fate determines
the figure that the human female presents in society" and "one is not
born, but rather becomes, a woman". The idea was picked up in 1959 by Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman and in 1990 by American philosopher Judith Butler,
who theorized that gender is not fixed or inherent but is rather a
socially defined set of practices and traits that have, over time, grown
to become labelled as feminine or masculine.
Goffman argued that women are socialized to present themselves as
"precious, ornamental and fragile, uninstructed in and ill-suited for
anything requiring muscular exertion" and to project "shyness, reserve
and a display of frailty, fear and incompetence".
Scientific efforts to measure femininity and masculinity were pioneered by psychologists Lewis Terman and Catherine Cox Miles in the 1930s. Their M–F model
was adopted by other researchers and psychologists. The model posited
that femininity and masculinity were innate and enduring qualities, not
easily measured, opposite to one another, and that imbalances between
them led to mental disorders.
Alongside the women's movement of the 1970s, researchers began to move away from the M–F model, developing an interest in androgyny. The Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire
were developed to measure femininity and masculinity on separate
scales. Using such tests, researchers found that the two dimensions
varied independently of one another, casting doubt on the earlier view
of femininity and masculinity as opposing qualities.
Second-wave feminists,
influenced by de Beauvoir, believed that although biological
differences between females and males were innate, the concepts of
femininity and masculinity had been culturally constructed, with traits
such as passivity and tenderness assigned to women and aggression and
intelligence assigned to men.
Girls, second-wave feminists said, were then socialized with toys,
games, television, and school into conforming to feminine values and
behaviors. In her significant 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, American feminist Betty Friedan wrote that the key to women's subjugation lay in the social construction of femininity as childlike, passive, and dependent, and called for a "drastic reshaping of the cultural image of femininity."
Traits such as nurturance, sensitivity, sweetness, supportiveness, gentleness, warmth, passivity, cooperativeness, expressiveness, modesty, humility, empathy, affection, tenderness, and being emotional, kind, helpful, devoted, and understanding have been cited as stereotypically feminine. The defining characteristics of femininity vary between and even within societies.
The relationship between feminine socialization and heterosexual relationships has been studied by scholars, as femininity is related to women's and girls' sexual appeal to men and boys. Femininity is sometimes linked with sexual objectification.
Sexual passiveness, or sexual receptivity, is sometimes considered
feminine while sexual assertiveness and sexual desire are sometimes
considered masculine.
Scholars have debated the extent to which gender identity and gender-specific behaviors are due to socialization versus biological factors. Social and biological influences are thought to be mutually interacting during development.Studies of prenatal androgen exposure have provided some evidence that femininity and masculinity are partly biologically determined. Other possible biological influences include evolution, genetics, epigenetics, and hormones (both during development and in adulthood).
In 1959, researchers such as John Money and Anke Ehrhardt
proposed the prenatal hormone theory. Their research argues that sexual
organs bathe the embryo with hormones in the womb, resulting in the
birth of an individual with a distinctively male or female brain; this
was suggested by some to "predict future behavioral development in a
masculine or feminine direction". This theory, however, has been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds and remains controversial. In 2005, scientific research investigating sex differences in psychology showed that gender expectations and stereotype threat affect behavior, and a person's gender identity can develop as early as three years of age. Money also argued that gender identity is formed during a child's first three years.
People who exhibit a combination of both masculine and feminine characteristics are considered androgynous, and feminist philosophers have argued that gender ambiguity may blur gender classification.
Modern conceptualizations of femininity also rely not just upon social
constructions, but upon the individualized choices made by women.
Philosopher Mary Vetterling-Braggin argues that all
characteristics associated with femininity arose from early human sexual
encounters which were mainly male-forced and female-unwilling, because
of male and female anatomical differences. Others, such as Carole Pateman, Ria Kloppenborg, and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, argue that the definition of femininity is the result of how females must behave in order to maintain a patriarchal social system.
In his 1998 book Masculinity and Femininity: the Taboo Dimension of National Cultures, Dutch psychologist and researcher Geert Hofstede
wrote that only behaviors directly connected with procreation can,
strictly speaking, be described as feminine or masculine, and yet every
society worldwide recognizes many additional behaviors as more suitable
to females than males, and vice versa. He describes these as relatively
arbitrary choices mediated by cultural norms and traditions, identifying
"masculinity versus femininity" as one of five basic dimensions in his theory of cultural dimensions.
Hofstede describes as feminine behaviors including service,
permissiveness, and benevolence, and describes as feminine those
countries stressing equality, solidarity, quality of work-life, and the resolution of conflicts by compromise and negotiation.
In Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, the anima and animus are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind. The anima and animus are described by Jung as elements of his theory of the collective unconscious,
a domain of the unconscious that transcends the personal psyche. In the
unconscious of the male, it finds expression as a feminine inner
personality: anima; equivalently, in the unconscious of the female, it
is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus.
In Western cultures, the ideal of feminine appearance has
traditionally included long, flowing hair, clear skin, a narrow waist,
and little or no body hair or facial hair.
In other cultures, however, some expectations are different. For
example, in many parts of the world, underarm hair is not considered
unfeminine.
Today, the color pink is strongly associated with femininity, whereas
in the early 1900s pink was associated with boys and blue with girls.
In many Muslim countries, women are required to cover their heads with a hijab (veil). It is considered a symbol of feminine modesty and morality. Some, however, see it as a symbol of objectification and oppression.
In history
In some cultures, cosmetics are associated with femininity.
Cultural standards vary on what is considered feminine. For example, in 16th century France, high heels were considered a distinctly masculine type of shoe, though they are currently considered feminine.
In Ancient Egypt, sheath and beaded net dresses were considered female clothing, while wraparound dresses, perfumes, cosmetics, and elaborate jewelry were worn by both men and women. In Ancient Persia, clothing was generally unisex, though women wore veils and headscarves. Women in Ancient Greece wore himations; and in Ancient Rome women wore the palla, a rectangular mantle, and the maphorion.
The typical feminine outfit of aristocratic women of the Renaissance was an undershirt with a gown and a high-waisted overgown, and a plucked forehead and beehive or turban-style hairdo.
Body alteration is the deliberate altering of the human body for aesthetic or non-medical purpose. One such purpose has been to induce perceived feminine characteristics in women.
For centuries in Imperial China, smaller feet were considered to be a more aristocratic characteristic in women. The practice of foot binding was intended to enhance this characteristic, though it made walking difficult and painful.
In a few parts of Africa and Asia, neck rings are worn in order
to elongate the neck. In these cultures, a long neck characterizes
feminine beauty. The Padaung of Burma and Tutsi women of Burundi, for instance, practice this form of body modification.
In China until the twentieth century, tiny, bound feet for women were considered aristocratic and feminine.
The Kayan people of Burma (Myanmar) associate the wearing of neck rings with feminine beauty.
Teacher in a classroom in Madagascar (c. 2008). Primary and secondary school teaching is often considered a feminine occupation.
Femininity as a social construct relies on a binary gender system that treats men and masculinity as different from, and opposite to, women and femininity. In patriarchal
societies, including Western ones, conventional attitudes to femininity
contribute to the subordination of women, as women are seen as more
compliant, vulnerable, and less prone to violence.
Leadership is associated with masculinity in Western culture and women are perceived less favorably as potential leaders.
However, some people have argued that feminine-style leadership, which
is associated with leadership that focuses on help and cooperation, is
advantageous over masculine leadership, which is associated with
focusing on tasks and control. Female leaders are more often described by Western media using characteristics associated with femininity, such as emotion.
Explanations for occupational imbalance
Psychologist Deborah L. Best
argues that primary sex characteristics of men and women, such as the
ability to bear children, caused a historical sexual division of labor
and that gender stereotypes evolved culturally to perpetuate this
division.
The practice of bearing children tends to interrupt the continuity of employment. According to human capital theory, this retracts from the female investment in higher education and employment training. Richard Anker of the International Labour Office
argues human capital theory does not explain the sexual division of
labor because many occupations tied to feminine roles, such as
administrative assistance, require more knowledge, experience, and
continuity of employment than low-skilled masculinized occupations, such
as truck driving. Anker argues the feminization of certain occupations limits employment options for women.
Role congruity theory
Role congruity theory
proposes that people tend to view deviations from expected gender roles
negatively. It supports the empirical evidence that gender
discrimination exists in areas traditionally associated with one gender
or the other. It is sometimes used to explain why people have a tendency
to evaluate behavior that fulfills the prescriptions of a leader role
less favorably when it is enacted by a woman.
Shamanism may have originated as early as the Paleolithic period, predating all organized religions.] Archeological finds have suggested that the earliest known shamans were female, and contemporary shamanic roles such as the Korean mudang continue to be filled primarily by women.
In Hindu traditions, Devi is the female aspect of the divine. Shakti is the divine feminine creative power, the sacred force that moves through the entire universe and the agent of change. She is the female counterpart without whom the male aspect, which represents consciousness or discrimination, remains impotent and void. As the female manifestation of the supreme lord, she is also called Prakriti, the basic nature of intelligence by which the Universe exists and functions. In Hinduism, the universal creative force Yoni is feminine, with inspiration being the life force of creation.
In Taoism, the concept of yin represents the primary force of the female half of yin and yang.
The yin is also present, to a smaller proportion, in the male half. The
yin can be characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cold, wet,
and passive.
Abrahamic theology
Holy Wisdom: Hagia Sophia
Although the Abrahamic God is typically described in masculine terms—such as father or king—many theologians argue that this is not meant to indicate the gender of God. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, God "is neither man nor woman: he is God". Several recent writers, such as feminist theologian Sallie McFague, have explored the idea of "God as mother", examining the feminine qualities attributed to God. For example, in the Book of Isaiah, God is compared to a mother comforting her child, while in the Book of Deuteronomy, God is said to have given birth to Israel.
The Book of Genesis describes the divine creation of the world out of nothing or ex nihilo. In Wisdom literature and in the wisdom tradition, wisdom is described as feminine. In many books of the Old Testament, including Wisdom and Sirach, wisdom is personified and called she. According to David Winston, because wisdom is God's "creative agent," she must be intimately identified with God.
In Christian Kabbalah, Chokhmah (wisdom and intuition) is the force in the creative process that God used to create the heavens and the earth. Binah
(understanding and perception) is the great mother, the feminine
receiver of energy and giver of form. Binah receives the intuitive
insight from Chokhmah and dwells on it in the same way that a mother
receives the seed from the father, and keeps it within her until it's
time to give birth. The intuition, once received and contemplated with
perception, leads to the creation of the Universe.
Communism
Porcelain statue of a woman in communist China - Cat Street Market, Hong Kong
Communistrevolutionaries initially depicted idealized womanhood as muscular, plainly dressed and strong, with good female communists shown as undertaking hard manual labour, using guns, and eschewing self-adornment.
Contemporary Western journalists portrayed communist states as the
enemy of traditional femininity, describing women in communist countries
as "mannish" perversions. In revolutionary China
in the 1950s, Western journalists described Chinese women as "drably
dressed, usually in sloppy slacks and without makeup, hair waves or nail
polish" and wrote that "Glamour was communism's earliest victim in
China. You can stroll the cheerless streets of Peking
all day, without seeing a skirt or a sign of lipstick; without
thrilling to the faintest breath of perfume; without hearing the click
of high heels, or catching the glint of legs sheathed in nylon." In communist Poland, changing from high heels to worker's boots symbolized women's shift from the bourgeois to socialism."
Later, the initial state portrayals of idealized femininity as
strong and hard-working began to also include more traditional notions
such as gentleness, caring and nurturing behaviour, softness, modesty
and moral virtue,
requiring good communist women to become "superheroes who excelled in
all spheres", including working at jobs not traditionally regarded as
feminine in nature.
Communist ideology explicitly rejected some aspects of
traditional femininity that it viewed as bourgeois and consumerist, such
as helplessness, idleness and self-adornment. In Communist countries,
some women resented not having access to cosmetics and fashionable
clothes. In her 1993 book of essays How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed, Croatian journalist and novelist Slavenka Drakulic
wrote about "a complaint I heard repeatedly from women in Warsaw,
Budapest, Prague, Sofia, East Berlin: 'Look at us – we don't even look
like women. There are no deodorants, perfumes, sometimes even no soap or
toothpaste. There is no fine underwear, no pantyhose, no nice
lingerie[']"[97]: 31 and "Sometimes I think the real Iron Curtain
is made of silky, shiny images of pretty women dressed in wonderful
clothes, of pictures from women's magazines ... The images that cross
the borders in magazines, movies or videos are therefore more dangerous
than any secret weapon, because they make one desire that 'otherness'
badly enough to risk one's life trying to escape."
As communist countries such as Romania and the Soviet Union
began to liberalize, their official media began representing women in
more conventionally feminine ways compared with the "rotund farm workers
and plain-Jane factory hand" depictions they had previously been
publishing. As perfumes, cosmetics, fashionable clothing, and footwear
became available to ordinary women in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia and Hungary, they began to be presented not as bourgeois frivolities but as signs of socialist modernity. In China, with the economic liberation started by Deng Xiaoping
in the 1980s, the state stopped discouraging women from expressing
conventional femininity, and gender stereotypes and commercialized
sexualization of women which had been suppressed under communist
ideology began to rise.
Flowers and makeup are stereotypically associated with femininity in Western culture.
In many cultures, men who display qualities considered feminine are often stigmatized and labeled as weak. Effeminate men are often associated with homosexuality, although femininity is not necessarily related to a man's sexual orientation. Because men are pressured to be masculine and heterosexual, feminine men are assumed to be gay or queer because of how they perform their gender. This assumption limits the way one is allowed to express one's gender and sexuality.
Cross-dressing
and drag are two public performances of femininity by men that have
been popularly known and understood throughout many western cultures.
Men who wear clothing associated with femininity are often called
cross-dressers. A drag queen is a man who wears flamboyant women's clothing and behaves in an exaggeratedly feminine manner for entertainment purposes.
Feminist philosophers such as Judith Butler and Simone de Beauvoir
contend that femininity and masculinity are created through repeated
performances of gender; these performances reproduce and define the
traditional categories of sex and/or gender.
Many second-wave feminists
reject what they regard as constricting standards of female beauty,
created for the subordination and objectifying of women and
self-perpetuated by reproductive competition and women's own aesthetics.
Others, such as lipstick feminists and some other third-wave feminists,
argue that feminism should not devalue feminine culture and identity,
and that symbols of feminine identity such as make-up, suggestive
clothing and having a sexual allure can be valid and empowering personal
choices for both sexes.
Julia Serano
notes that masculine girls and women face much less social disapproval
than feminine boys and men, which she attributes to sexism. Serano
argues that women wanting to be like men is consistent with the idea
that maleness is more valued in contemporary culture than femaleness,
whereas men being willing to give up masculinity
in favour of femininity directly threatens the notion of male
superiority as well as the idea that men and women should be opposites.
To support her thesis, Serano cites the far greater public scrutiny and
disdain experienced by male-to-female cross-dressers
compared with that faced by women who dress in masculine clothes, as
well as research showing that parents are likelier to respond negatively
to sons who like Barbie dolls and ballet or wear nail polish than they are to daughters exhibiting comparably masculine behaviours.
Serano notes that some behaviors, such as frequent smiling or
avoiding eye contact with strangers, are considered feminine because
they are practised disproportionately by women, and likely have resulted
from women's attempts to negotiate through a world which is sometimes
hostile to them.
Serano argues that because contemporary culture is sexist, it
assigns negative connotations to, or trivializes, behaviours understood
to be feminine such as gossiping, behaving emotionally or decorating. It
also recasts and reimagines femininity through a male heterosexual
lens, for example interpreting women's empathy and altruism as
husband-and-child-focused rather than globally focused, and interpreting
women's interest in aesthetics as intended solely to entice or attract
men.
Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the quality or state of self-awareness within an animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself. In humans, consciousness has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, qualia, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind.
Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe there
is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.
The topic of animal consciousness is beset with a number of difficulties. It poses the problem of other minds in an especially severe form because animals, lacking the ability to use human language, cannot tell us about their experiences.
Also, it is difficult to reason objectively about the question, because
a denial that an animal is conscious is often taken to imply that they
do not feel, their life has no value, and that harming them is not
morally wrong. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes,
for example, has sometimes been criticised for providing a rationale
for the mistreatment of animals because he argued that only humans are
conscious.
Philosophers who consider subjective experience the essence of
consciousness also generally believe, as a correlate, that the existence
and nature of animal consciousness can never rigorously be known. The
American philosopher Thomas Nagel spelled out this point of view in an influential essay titled What Is it Like to Be a Bat?.
He said that an organism is conscious "if and only if there is
something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for
the organism"; and he argued that no matter how much we know about an
animal's brain and behavior, we can never really put ourselves into the
mind of the animal and experience their world in the way they do
themself. Other thinkers, such as the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, dismiss this argument as incoherent.
Several psychologists and ethologists have argued for the existence of
animal consciousness by describing a range of behaviors that appear to
show animals holding beliefs about things they cannot directly perceive—Donald Griffin's 2001 book Animal Minds reviews a substantial portion of the evidence.
Animal consciousness has been actively researched for over one hundred years. In 1927, the American functional psychologist Harvey Carr
argued that any valid measure or understanding of awareness in animals
depends on "an accurate and complete knowledge of its essential
conditions in man".
A more recent review concluded in 1985 that "the best approach is to
use experiment (especially psychophysics) and observation to trace the
dawning and ontogeny of self-consciousness, perception, communication,
intention, beliefs, and reflection in normal human fetuses, infants, and
children". In 2012, a group of neuroscientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness,
which "unequivocally" asserted that "humans are not unique in
possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.
Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other
creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neural substrates."
Philosophical background
René Descartes argued that only humans are conscious, and not other animals.
The mind–body problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain. A variety of approaches have been proposed. Most are either dualist or monist.
Dualism maintains a rigid distinction between the realms of mind and
matter. Monism maintains that there is only one kind of stuff, and that
mind and matter are both aspects of it. The problem was addressed by
pre-Aristotelian philosophers, and was famously addressed by René Descartes in the 17th century, resulting in Cartesian dualism. Descartes believed that humans only, and not other animals have this non-physical mind.
The rejection of the mind–body dichotomy is found in French Structuralism, and is a position that generally characterized post-war French philosophy.
The absence of an empirically identifiable meeting point between the
non-physical mind and its physical extension has proven problematic to
dualism and many modern philosophers of mind maintain that the mind is
not something separate from the body. These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology, and the neurosciences.
Epiphenomenalism is the theory in philosophy of mind
that mental phenomena are caused by physical processes in the brain or
that both are effects of a common cause, as opposed to mental phenomena
driving the physical mechanics of the brain. The impression that
thoughts, feelings, or sensations cause physical effects, is therefore
to be understood as illusory to some extent. For example, it is not the
feeling of fear that produces an increase in heart beat, both are
symptomatic of a common physiological origin, possibly in response to a
legitimate external threat.
The history of epiphenomenalism goes back to the post-Cartesian attempt to solve the riddle of Cartesian dualism, i.e., of how mind and body could interact. La Mettrie, Leibniz and Spinoza
all in their own way began this way of thinking. The idea that even if
the animal were conscious nothing would be added to the production of
behavior, even in animals of the human type, was first voiced by La
Mettrie (1745), and then by Cabanis (1802), and was further explicated by Hodgson (1870) and Huxley (1874).
Huxley (1874) likened mental phenomena to the whistle on a steam
locomotive. However, epiphenomenalism flourished primarily as it found a
niche among methodological or scientific behaviorism. In the early
1900s scientific behaviorists such as Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner
began the attempt to uncover laws describing the relationship between
stimuli and responses, without reference to inner mental phenomena.
Instead of adopting a form of eliminativism or mental fictionalism,
positions that deny that inner mental phenomena exist, a behaviorist
was able to adopt epiphenomenalism in order to allow for the existence
of mind. However, by the 1960s, scientific behaviourism met substantial
difficulties and eventually gave way to the cognitive revolution. Participants in that revolution, such as Jerry Fodor,
reject epiphenomenalism and insist upon the efficacy of the mind. Fodor
even speaks of "epiphobia"—fear that one is becoming an
epiphenomenalist.
Thomas Henry Huxley defends in an essay titled On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History
an epiphenomenalist theory of consciousness according to which
consciousness is a causally inert effect of neural activity—"as the
steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is
without influence upon its machinery". To this William James objects in his essay Are We Automata?
by stating an evolutionary argument for mind-brain interaction implying
that if the preservation and development of consciousness in the
biological evolution is a result of natural selection,
it is plausible that consciousness has not only been influenced by
neural processes, but has had a survival value itself; and it could only
have had this if it had been efficacious. Karl Popper develops in the book The Self and Its Brain a similar evolutionary argument.
Animal ethics
Bernard Rollin
of Colorado State University, the principal author of two U.S. federal
laws regulating pain relief for animals, writes that researchers
remained unsure into the 1980s as to whether animals experience pain,
and veterinarians trained in the U.S. before 1989 were simply taught to
ignore animal pain.
In his interactions with scientists and other veterinarians, Rollin
asserts that he was regularly asked to prove animals are conscious and
provide scientifically acceptable grounds for claiming they feel pain. The denial of animal consciousness by scientists has been described as mentophobia by Donald Griffin.
Academic reviews of the topic are equivocal, noting that the argument
that animals have at least simple conscious thoughts and feelings has
strong support, but some critics continue to question how reliably animal mental states can be determined. A refereed journal Animal Sentience launched in 2015 by the Institute of Science and Policy of The Humane Society of the United States is devoted to research on this and related topics.
Defining consciousness
About forty meanings attributed to the term consciousness can be identified and categorized based on functions and experiences. The prospects for reaching any single, agreed-upon, theory-independent definition of consciousness appear remote.
Consciousness is an elusive concept that presents many difficulties when attempts are made to define it.
Its study has progressively become an interdisciplinary challenge for
numerous researchers, including ethologists, neurologists, cognitive
neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists.
In 1976 Richard Dawkins
wrote, "The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have
culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened
is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology". In 2004, eight neuroscientists felt it was still too soon for a definition. They wrote an apology in "Human Brain Function":
"We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the
physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness
can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers... At this
point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of
consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet
become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we
all use the term consciousness in many different and often
ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of
consciousness will emerge ... but to make precise definitions at this
stage is premature."
Consciousness is sometimes defined as the quality or state of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined somewhat vaguely as: subjectivity, awareness, sentience, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind.
Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that
there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness
is. Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness:
"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our
consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and
most mysterious aspect of our lives."
Related terms, also often used in vague or ambiguous ways, are:
Awareness: the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.
Self-awareness: the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.
Self-consciousness: an acute sense of self-awareness. It is a preoccupation with oneself, as opposed to the philosophical state of self-awareness,
which is the awareness that one exists as an individual being; although
some writers use both terms interchangeably or synonymously.
Sentience: the ability to be aware (feel, perceive, or be conscious)
of one's surroundings or to have subjective experiences. Sentience is a
minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which is otherwise commonly
used to collectively describe sentience plus other characteristics of
the mind.
Sapience: often defined as wisdom, or the ability of an organism or entity to act with appropriate judgment, a mental faculty which is a component of intelligence or alternatively may be considered an additional faculty, apart from intelligence, with its own properties.
Sentience (the ability to feel, perceive, or to experience
subjectivity) is not the same as self-awareness (being aware of oneself
as an individual). The mirror test
is sometimes considered to be an operational test for self-awareness,
and the handful of animals that have passed it are often considered to
be self-aware. It remains debatable whether recognition of one's mirror image can be properly construed to imply full self-awareness, particularly given that robots are being constructed which appear to pass the test.
Much has been learned in neuroscience about correlations between
brain activity and subjective, conscious experiences, and many suggest
that neuroscience will ultimately explain consciousness;
"...consciousness is a biological process that will eventually be
explained in terms of molecular signaling pathways used by interacting
populations of nerve cells...". However, this view has been criticized because consciousness has yet to be shown to be a process, and the so-called "hard problem" of relating consciousness directly to brain activity remains elusive.
Scientific approaches
Since Descartes's proposal of dualism, it became a general consensus that the mind had become a matter of philosophy
and that science was not able to penetrate the issue of consciousness –
that consciousness was outside of space and time. However, in recent
decades many scholars have begun to move toward a science of
consciousness. Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman
are two neuroscientists who have led the move to neural correlates of
the self and of consciousness. Damasio has demonstrated that emotions
and their biological foundation play a critical role in high level
cognition,
and Edelman has created a framework for analyzing consciousness through
a scientific outlook. The current problem consciousness researchers
face involves explaining how and why consciousness arises from neural
computation. In his research on this problem, Edelman has developed a theory of consciousness, in which he has coined the terms primary consciousness and secondary consciousness.
Eugene Linden, author of The Parrot's Lament
suggests there are many examples of animal behavior and intelligence
that surpass what people would suppose to be the boundary of animal
consciousness. Linden contends that in many of these documented
examples, a variety of animal species exhibit behavior that can only be
attributed to emotion, and to a level of consciousness that we would
normally ascribe only to our own species.
Consciousness requires a certain
kind of informational organization that does not seem to be 'hard-wired'
in humans, but is instilled by human culture. Moreover, consciousness
is not a black-or-white, all-or-nothing type of phenomenon, as is often
assumed. The differences between humans and other species are so great
that speculations about animal consciousness seem ungrounded. Many
authors simply assume that an animal like a bat has a point of view, but
there seems to be little interest in exploring the details involved.
Consciousness in mammals (including humans) is an aspect of the mind generally thought to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, sentience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Some philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal
consciousness, which is subjective experience itself, and access
consciousness, which refers to the global availability of information to
processing systems in the brain. Phenomenal consciousness has many different experienced qualities, often referred to as qualia. Phenomenal consciousness is usually consciousness of something or about something, a property known as intentionality in philosophy of mind.
In humans, there are three common methods of studying
consciousness, i.e. verbal report, behavioural demonstrations, and
neural correlation with conscious activity. Unfortunately these can only
be generalized to non-human taxa with varying degrees of difficulty.
While animals cannot speak their minds, a new study employed a very
unique way that enabled neuroscientists to separate conscious awareness
from non-conscious perception in animals.
In this study conducted in rhesus monkeys, Ben-Haim and his team used a
process dissociation approach that predicted opposite behavioral
outcomes towards the two modes of perception. They found that monkeys
displayed the very same opposite behavioral outcomes as did humans when
they were aware vs. unaware of the stimuli presented.
The sense in which animals (or human infants) can be said to have consciousness or a self-concept
has been hotly debated; it is often referred to as the debate over
animal minds. The best known research technique in this area is the mirror test devised by Gordon G. Gallup,
in which the skin of an animal (or human infant) is marked, while they
are asleep or sedated, with a mark that cannot be seen directly but is
visible in a mirror. The animal is then allowed to see their reflection
in a mirror; if the animal spontaneously directs grooming behaviour
towards the mark, that is taken as an indication that they is aware of
themself.
Over the past 30 years, many studies have found evidence that animals
recognise themselves in mirrors. Self-awareness by this criterion has
been reported for:
Birds: magpies, pigeons (can pass the mirror test after training in the prerequisite behaviors).
Until recently it was thought that self-recognition was absent from animals without a neocortex,
and was restricted to mammals with large brains and well developed
social cognition. However, in 2008 a study of self-recognition in corvids reported significant results for magpies. Mammals and birds inherited the same brain components from their last common ancestor
nearly 300 million years ago, and have since independently evolved and
formed significantly different brain types. The results of the mirror
and mark tests showed that neocortex-less magpies
are capable of understanding that a mirror image belongs to their own
body. The findings show that magpies respond in the mirror and mark test
in a manner similar to apes, dolphins and elephants. This is a
remarkable capability that, although not fully concrete in its
determination of self-recognition, is at least a prerequisite of
self-recognition. This is not only of interest regarding the convergent
evolution of social intelligence; it is also valuable for an
understanding of the general principles that govern cognitive evolution
and their underlying neural mechanisms. The magpies were chosen to study
based on their empathy/lifestyle, a possible precursor for their
ability of self-awareness.
However even in the chimpanzee, the species most studied and with the
most convincing findings, clear-cut evidence of self-recognition is not
obtained in all individuals tested. Occurrence is about 75% in young
adults and considerably less in young and old individuals.
For monkeys, non-primate mammals, and in a number of bird species,
exploration of the mirror and social displays were observed. However,
hints at mirror-induced self-directed behavior have been obtained.
According to a 2019 study, cleaner wrasses have become the first fish ever observed to pass the mirror test.
However, the test's inventor Gordon Gallup has said that the fish were
most likely trying to scrape off a perceived parasite on another fish
and that they did not demonstrate self-recognition. The authors of the
study retorted that because the fish checked themselves in the mirror
before and after the scraping, this meant that the fish had
self-awareness and recognized that their reflections belonged to their
own bodies.
The mirror test has attracted controversy among some researchers
because it is entirely focused on vision, the primary sense in humans,
while other species rely more heavily on other senses such as the olfactory sense in dogs. A study in 2015 showed that the "sniff test of self-recognition (STSR)" provides evidence of self-awareness in dogs.
Another approach to determine whether a non-human animal is conscious derives from passive speech research with a macaw (see Arielle).
Some researchers propose that by passively listening to an animal's
voluntary speech, it is possible to learn about the thoughts of another
creature and to determine that the speaker is conscious. This type of
research was originally used to investigate a child's crib speech by Weir (1962) and in investigations of early speech in children by Greenfield and others (1976).
Zipf's law
might be able to be used to indicate if a given dataset of animal
communication indicate an intelligent natural language. Some researchers
have used this algorithm to study bottlenose dolphin language.
Further arguments revolve around the ability of animals to feel pain or suffering.
Suffering implies consciousness. If animals can be shown to suffer in a
way similar or identical to humans, many of the arguments against human
suffering could then, presumably, be extended to animals. Others have
argued that pain can be demonstrated by adverse reactions to negative
stimuli that are non-purposeful or even maladaptive. One such reaction is transmarginal inhibition, a phenomenon observed in humans and some animals akin to mental breakdown.
Carl Sagan, the American cosmologist, points to reasons why humans have had a tendency to deny animals can suffer:
Humans – who enslave, castrate,
experiment on, and fillet other animals – have had an understandable
penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction
between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our
will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them – without any
disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often
behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans
can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions
specious. They are just too much like us.
John Webster, a professor of animal husbandry at Bristol, argues:
People have assumed that
intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals
have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic
piece of logic, sentient animals have the capacity to experience
pleasure and are motivated to seek it, you only have to watch how cows
and lambs both seek and enjoy pleasure when they lie with their heads
raised to the sun on a perfect English summer's day. Just like humans.
However, there is no agreement where the line should be drawn between organisms that can feel pain and those that cannot. Justin Leiber, a philosophy professor at Oxford University writes that:
Montaigne
is ecumenical in this respect, claiming consciousness for spiders and
ants, and even writing of our duties to trees and plants. Singer and Clarke
agree in denying consciousness to sponges. Singer locates the
distinction somewhere between the shrimp and the oyster. He, with rather
considerable convenience for one who is thundering hard accusations at
others, slides by the case of insects and spiders and bacteria, they
pace Montaigne, apparently and rather conveniently do not feel pain. The
intrepid Midgley, on the other hand, seems willing to speculate about the subjective experience of tapeworms ...Nagel ... appears to draw the line at flounders and wasps, though more recently he speaks of the inner life of cockroaches.
There are also some who reject the argument entirely, arguing that
although suffering animals feel anguish, a suffering plant also
struggles to stay alive (albeit in a less visible way). In fact, no
living organism 'wants' to die for another organism's sustenance. In an
article written for The New York Times, Carol Kaesuk Yoon argues that:
When a plant is wounded, its body
immediately kicks into protection mode. It releases a bouquet of
volatile chemicals, which in some cases have been shown to induce
neighboring plants to pre-emptively step up their own chemical defenses
and in other cases to lure in predators of the beasts that may be
causing the damage to the plants. Inside the plant, repair systems are
engaged and defenses are mounted, the molecular details of which
scientists are still working out, but which involve signaling molecules
coursing through the body to rally the cellular troops, even the
enlisting of the genome itself, which begins churning out
defense-related proteins ... If you think about it, though, why would we
expect any organism to lie down and die for our dinner? Organisms have
evolved to do everything in their power to avoid being extinguished. How
long would any lineage be likely to last if its members effectively
didn't care if you killed them?
Cognitive bias in animals is a pattern of deviation in judgment,
whereby inferences about other animals and situations may be drawn in an
illogical fashion. Individuals create their own "subjective social reality" from their perception of the input. It refers to the question "Is the glass half empty or half full?",
used as an indicator of optimism or pessimism. Cognitive biases have
been shown in a wide range of species including rats, dogs, rhesus
macaques, sheep, chicks, starlings and honeybees.
The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux advocates avoiding terms derived from human subjective experience when discussing brain functions in animals. For example, the common practice of calling brain circuits
that detect and respond to threats "fear circuits" implies that these
circuits are responsible for feelings of fear. LeDoux argues that
Pavlovian fear conditioning should be renamed Pavlovian threat
conditioning to avoid the implication that "fear" is being acquired in
rats or humans.
Key to his theoretical change is the notion of survival functions
mediated by survival circuits, the purpose of which is to keep organisms
alive rather than to make emotions. For example, defensive survival
circuits exist to detect and respond to threats. While all organisms can
do this, only organisms that can be conscious of their own brain's
activities can feel fear. Fear is a conscious experience and occurs the
same way as any other kind of conscious experience: via cortical
circuits that allow attention to certain forms of brain activity. LeDoux
argues the only differences between an emotional and non-emotion state
of consciousness are the underlying neural ingredients that contribute
to the state.
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. It is a highly active interdisciplinary science that collaborates with many other fields. The scope of neuroscience has broadened recently to include molecular, cellular, developmental, structural, functional, evolutionary, computational, and medical aspects of the nervous system. Theoretical studies of neural networks are being complemented with techniques for imaging sensory and motor tasks in the brain.
According to a 2008 paper, neuroscience explanations of psychological
phenomena currently have a "seductive allure", and "seem to generate
more public interest" than explanations which do not contain
neuroscientific information.
They found that subjects who were not neuroscience experts "judged that
explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were
more satisfying than explanations without.
The neural correlates of consciousness constitute the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms sufficient for a specific conscious percept. Neuroscientists use empirical approaches to discover neural correlates of subjective phenomena. The set should be minimal
because, if the brain is sufficient to give rise to any given conscious
experience, the question is which of its components is necessary to
produce it.
Visual sense and representation was reviewed in 1998 by Francis Crick and Christof Koch. They concluded sensory neuroscience
can be used as a bottom-up approach to studying consciousness, and
suggested experiments to test various hypotheses in this research
stream.
A feature that distinguishes humans from most animals is that we
are not born with an extensive repertoire of behavioral programs that
would enable us to survive on our own ("physiological prematurity").
To compensate for this, we have an unmatched ability to learn, i.e., to
consciously acquire such programs by imitation or exploration. Once
consciously acquired and sufficiently exercised, these programs can
become automated to the extent that their execution happens beyond the
realms of our awareness. Take, as an example, the incredible fine motor
skills exerted in playing a Beethoven piano sonata or the sensorimotor
coordination required to ride a motorcycle along a curvy mountain road.
Such complex behaviors are possible only because a sufficient number of
the subprograms involved can be executed with minimal or even suspended
conscious control. In fact, the conscious system may actually interfere
somewhat with these automated programs.
The growing ability of neuroscientists to manipulate neurons
using methods from molecular biology in combination with optical tools
depends on the simultaneous development of appropriate behavioural
assays and model organisms amenable to large-scale genomic analysis and
manipulation.
A combination of such fine-grained neuronal analysis in animals with
ever more sensitive psychophysical and brain imaging techniques in
humans, complemented by the development of a robust theoretical
predictive framework, will hopefully lead to a rational understanding of
consciousness.
Neocortex
Previously researchers had thought that patterns of neural sleep exhibited by zebra finches needed a mammalian neocortex.
The neocortex is a part of the brain of mammals. It consists of the grey matter, or neuronal cell bodies and unmyelinated fibers, surrounding the deeper white matter (myelinatedaxons) in the cerebrum. The neocortex is smooth in rodents and other small mammals, whereas in primates
and other larger mammals it has deep grooves and wrinkles. These folds
increase the surface area of the neocortex considerably without taking
up too much more volume. Also, neurons within the same wrinkle have more
opportunity for connectivity, while neurons in different wrinkles have
less opportunity for connectivity, leading to compartmentalization of
the cortex. The neocortex is divided into frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes, which perform different functions. For example, the occipital lobe contains the primary visual cortex, and the temporal lobe contains the primary auditory cortex.
Further subdivisions or areas of neocortex are responsible for more
specific cognitive processes. The neocortex is the newest part of the cerebral cortex to evolve (hence the prefix "neo"); the other parts of the cerebral cortex are the paleocortex and archicortex, collectively known as the allocortex. In humans, 90% of the cerebral cortex is neocortex.
Researchers have argued that consciousness in mammals arises in
the neocortex, and therefore cannot arise in animals which lack a
neocortex. For example, Rose argued in 2002 that the "fishes have
nervous systems that mediate effective escape and avoidance responses to
noxious stimuli, but, these responses must occur without a concurrent,
human-like awareness of pain, suffering or distress, which depend on
separately evolved neocortex." Recently that view has been challenged, and many researchers now believe that animal consciousness can arise from homologoussubcortical brain networks.
Attention
Attention is the cognitive process
of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while
ignoring other things. Attention has also been referred to as the
allocation of processing resources.
Attention also has variations amongst cultures. Voluntary attention
develops in specific cultural and institutional contexts through
engagement in cultural activities with more competent community members.
Most experiments show that one neural correlate
of attention is enhanced firing. If a neuron has a certain response to a
stimulus when the animal is not attending to the stimulus, then when
the animal does attend to the stimulus, the neuron's response will be
enhanced even if the physical characteristics of the stimulus remain the
same. In many cases attention produces changes in the EEG. Many animals, including humans, produce gamma waves (40–60 Hz) when focusing attention on a particular object or activity.
Extended consciousness
Extended consciousness
is an animal's autobiographical self-perception. It is thought to arise
in the brains of animals which have a substantial capacity for memory
and reason. It does not necessarily require language. The perception of a
historic and future self arises from a stream of information from the
immediate environment and from neural structures related to memory. The
concept was popularised by Antonio Damasio and is used in biological psychology. Extended consciousness is said to arise in structures in the human brain described as image spaces and dispositional spaces. Image spaces imply areas where sensory impressions of all types are processed, including the focused awareness of the core consciousness.
Dispositional spaces include convergence zones, which are networks in
the brain where memories are processed and recalled, and where knowledge
is merged with immediate experience.
Metacognition
Metacognition is defined as "cognition about cognition", or "knowing about knowing."
It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use
particular strategies for learning or for problem solving. It has been suggested that metacognition in some animals provides evidence for cognitive self-awareness. There are generally two components of metacognition: knowledge about cognition, and regulation of cognition. Writings on metacognition can be traced back at least as far as De Anima and the Parva Naturalia of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Metacognologists believe that the ability to consciously think about thinking is unique to sapient species and indeed is one of the definitions of sapience. There is evidence that rhesus monkeys and apes can make accurate judgments about the strengths of their memories of fact and monitor their own uncertainty, while attempts to demonstrate metacognition in birds have been inconclusive. A 2007 study provided some evidence for metacognition in rats, but further analysis suggested that they may have been following simple operant conditioning principles, or a behavioral economic model.
Mirror neurons
Mirror neurons are neurons that fire both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.
Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the
observer were themself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed
in primate and other species including birds.
The function of the mirror system is a subject of much speculation.
Many researchers in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology
consider that this system provides the physiological mechanism for the
perception action coupling (see the common coding theory).
They argue that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the
actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. Some
researchers also speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed
actions, and thus contribute to theory of mind skills, while others relate mirror neurons to language abilities.
Neuroscientists such as Marco Iacoboni (UCLA) have argued that mirror
neuron systems in the human brain help us understand the actions and
intentions of other people. In a study published in March 2005 Iacoboni
and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern if another
person who was picking up a cup of tea planned to drink from it or
clear it from the table. In addition, Iacoboni and a number of other
researchers have argued that mirror neurons are the neural basis of the
human capacity for emotions such as empathy. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran has speculated that mirror neurons may provide the neurological basis of self-awareness.
Consciousness is likely an evolved adaptation since it meets George Williams' criteria of species universality, complexity, and functionality, and it is a trait that apparently increases fitness. Opinions are divided as to where in biological evolution
consciousness emerged and about whether or not consciousness has
survival value. It has been argued that consciousness emerged (i)
exclusively with the first humans, (ii) exclusively with the first mammals, (iii) independently in mammals and birds, or (iv) with the first reptiles. Donald Griffin suggests in his book Animal Minds a gradual evolution of consciousness. Each of these scenarios raises the question of the possible survival value of consciousness.
In his paper "Evolution of consciousness," John Eccles argues that special anatomical and physical adaptations of the mammalian cerebral cortex gave rise to consciousness.
In contrast, others have argued that the recursive circuitry
underwriting consciousness is much more primitive, having evolved
initially in pre-mammalian species because it improves the capacity for
interaction with both social and natural environments by providing an energy-saving "neutral" gear in an otherwise energy-expensive motor output machine.
Once in place, this recursive circuitry may well have provided a basis
for the subsequent development of many of the functions that
consciousness facilitates in higher organisms, as outlined by Bernard J. Baars. Richard Dawkins suggested that humans evolved consciousness in order to make themselves the subjects of thought.
Daniel Povinelli suggests that large, tree-climbing apes evolved
consciousness to take into account one's own mass when moving safely
among tree branches. Consistent with this hypothesis, Gordon Gallup found that chimpanzees and orangutans, but not little monkeys or terrestrial gorillas, demonstrated self-awareness in mirror tests.
The concept of consciousness can refer to voluntary action,
awareness, or wakefulness. However, even voluntary behaviour involves
unconscious mechanisms. Many cognitive processes take place in the
cognitive unconscious, unavailable to conscious awareness. Some
behaviours are conscious when learned but then become unconscious,
seemingly automatic. Learning, especially implicitly learning a skill,
can take place outside of consciousness. For example, plenty of people
know how to turn right when they ride a bike, but very few can
accurately explain how they actually do so.
Neural Darwinism is a large scale theory of brain function initially proposed in 1978 by the American biologist Gerald Edelman. Edelman distinguishes between what he calls primary and secondary consciousness:
Primary consciousness: is the ability, found in humans and some animals, to integrate observed events with memory to create an awareness
of the present and immediate past of the world around them. This form
of consciousness is also sometimes called "sensory consciousness". Put
another way, primary consciousness is the presence of various subjective sensory contents of consciousness such as sensations, perceptions,
and mental images. For example, primary consciousness includes a
person's experience of the blueness of the ocean, a bird's song, and the
feeling of pain. Thus, primary consciousness refers to being mentally
aware of things in the world in the present without any sense of past
and future; it is composed of mental images bound to a time around the
measurable present.
Secondary consciousness:
is an individual's accessibility to their history and plans. The
concept is also loosely and commonly associated with having awareness of
one's own consciousness. The ability allows its possessors to go beyond the limits of the remembered present of primary consciousness.
Primary consciousness can be defined as simple awareness that includes perception and emotion.
As such, it is ascribed to most animals. By contrast, secondary
consciousness depends on and includes such features as self-reflective
awareness, abstract thinking, volition and metacognition.
Edelman's theory focuses on two nervous system organizations: the brainstem and limbic systems on one side and the thalamus and cerebral cortex
on the other side. The brain stem and limbic system take care of
essential body functioning and survival, while the thalamocortical
system receives signals from sensory receptors and sends out signals to
voluntary muscles such as those of the arms and legs. The theory asserts
that the connection of these two systems during evolution helped
animals learn adaptive behaviors.
Other scientists have argued against Edelman's theory, instead
suggesting that primary consciousness might have emerged with the basic
vegetative systems of the brain. That is, the evolutionary origin might
have come from sensations and primal emotions arising from sensors and receptors,
both internal and surface, signaling that the well-being of the
creature was immediately threatened—for example, hunger for air, thirst,
hunger, pain, and extreme temperature change. This is based on
neurological data showing the thalamic, hippocampal, orbitofrontal, insula, and midbrain sites are the key to consciousness of thirst.
These scientists also point out that the cortex might not be as
important to primary consciousness as some neuroscientists have
believed.
Evidence of this lies in the fact that studies show that systematically
disabling parts of the cortex in animals does not remove consciousness.
Another study found that children born without a cortex are conscious.
Instead of cortical mechanisms, these scientists emphasize brainstem
mechanisms as essential to consciousness.
Still, these scientists concede that higher order consciousness does
involve the cortex and complex communication between different areas of
the brain.
While animals with primary consciousness
have long-term memory, they lack explicit narrative, and, at best, can
only deal with the immediate scene in the remembered present. While they
still have an advantage over animals lacking such ability, evolution
has brought forth a growing complexity in consciousness, particularly in
mammals. Animals with this complexity are said to have secondary
consciousness.
Secondary consciousness is seen in animals with semantic capabilities, such as the four great apes. It is present in its richest form in the human species, which is unique in possessing complex language made up of syntax
and semantics. In considering how the neural mechanisms underlying
primary consciousness arose and were maintained during evolution, it is
proposed that at some time around the divergence of reptiles into mammals and then into birds, the embryological development of large numbers of new reciprocal connections allowed rich re-entrant
activity to take place between the more posterior brain systems
carrying out perceptual categorization and the more frontally located
systems responsible for value-category memory.
The ability of an animal to relate a present complex scene to their own
previous history of learning conferred an adaptive evolutionary
advantage. At much later evolutionary epochs, further re-entrant
circuits appeared that linked semantic and linguistic performance to
categorical and conceptual memory systems. This development enabled the emergence of secondary consciousness.
Ursula Voss of the Universität Bonn believes that the theory of protoconsciousness
may serve as adequate explanation for self-recognition found in birds,
as they would develop secondary consciousness during REM sleep.
She added that many types of birds have very sophisticated language
systems. Don Kuiken of the University of Alberta finds such research
interesting as well as if we continue to study consciousness with animal
models (with differing types of consciousness), we would be able to
separate the different forms of reflectiveness found in today's world.
For the advocates of the idea of a secondary consciousness, self-recognition
serves as a critical component and a key defining measure. What is most
interesting then, is the evolutionary appeal that arises with the
concept of self-recognition. In non-human species and in children, the mirror test (see above) has been used as an indicator of self-awareness.
Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
The absence of a neocortex
does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective
states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the
neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of
conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates
that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals
and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess
these neurological substrates.
In 2012, a group of neuroscientists attending a conference on "Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals" at the University of Cambridge in the UK, signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (see box on the right).
In the accompanying text they "unequivocally" asserted:
"The field of Consciousness research is rapidly
evolving. Abundant new techniques and strategies for human and non-human
animal research have been developed. Consequently, more data is
becoming readily available, and this calls for a periodic reevaluation
of previously held preconceptions in this field. Studies of non-human
animals have shown that homologousbrain circuits
correlated with conscious experience and perception can be selectively
facilitated and disrupted to assess whether they are in fact necessary
for those experiences. Moreover, in humans, new non-invasive techniques
are readily available to survey the correlates of consciousness."
"The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical
neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also
critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals.
Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding
behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals.
Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in
non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with
experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are
rewarding and punishing. Deep brain stimulation of these systems in
humans can also generate similar affective states. Systems associated
with affect are concentrated in subcortical regions where neural homologies abound. Young human and non-human animals without neocortices retain these brain-mind functions. Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological
states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have
arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being
evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus)."
"Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in grey parrots.
Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries
appear to be far more homologous than previously thought. Moreover,
certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neurophysiological patterns previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex. Magpies in particular have been shown to exhibit striking similarities to humans, great apes, dolphins, and elephants in studies of mirror self-recognition."
"In humans, the effect of certain hallucinogens
appears to be associated with a disruption in cortical feedforward and
feedback processing. Pharmacological interventions in non-human animals
with compounds known to affect conscious behavior in humans can lead to
similar perturbations in behavior in non-human animals. In humans, there
is evidence to suggest that awareness is correlated with cortical
activity, which does not exclude possible contributions by subcortical
or early cortical processing, as in visual awareness. Evidence that
human and non-human animal emotional feelings arise from homologous
subcortical brain networks provide compelling evidence for
evolutionarily shared primal affective qualia."
Examples
Theories of brain evolution in animals. The old scala naturae model versus the modern approach.
A common image is the scala naturae, the ladder of nature on which animals of different species occupy successively higher rungs, with humans typically at the top.
A more useful approach has been to recognize that different animals may
have different kinds of cognitive processes, which are better
understood in terms of the ways in which they are cognitively adapted to
their different ecological niches, than by positing any kind of
hierarchy.
Dogs were previously listed as non-self-aware animals. Traditionally, self-consciousness was evaluated via the mirror test. But dogs, and many other animals, are not (as) visually oriented.
A 2015 study claims that the "sniff test of self-recognition" (STSR)
provides significant evidence of self-awareness in dogs, and could play a
crucial role in showing that this capacity is not a specific feature of
only great apes, humans and a few other animals, but it depends on the
way in which researchers try to verify it. According to the biologist
Roberto Cazzolla Gatti (who published the study), "the innovative
approach to test the self-awareness with a smell test highlights the
need to shift the paradigm of the anthropocentric idea of consciousness
to a species-specific perspective". This study has been confirmed by another study.
Research with captive grey parrots, especially Irene Pepperberg's work with an individual named Alex,
has demonstrated they possess the ability to associate simple human
words with meanings, and to intelligently apply the abstract concepts of
shape, colour, number, zero-sense, etc. According to Pepperberg and
other scientists, they perform many cognitive tasks at the level of
dolphins, chimpanzees, and even human toddlers. Another notable African grey is N'kisi, which in 2004 was said to have a vocabulary of over 950 words which she used in creative ways. For example, when Jane Goodall
visited N'kisi in his New York home, he greeted her with "Got a chimp?"
because he had seen pictures of her with chimpanzees in Africa.
In 2011, research led by Dalila Bovet of Paris West University Nanterre La Défense,
demonstrated grey parrots were able to coordinate and collaborate with
each other to an extent. They were able to solve problems such as two
birds having to pull strings at the same time to obtain food. In another
example, one bird stood on a perch to release a food-laden tray, while
the other pulled the tray out from the test apparatus. Both would then
feed. The birds were observed waiting for their partners to perform the
necessary actions so their behaviour could be synchronized. The parrots
appeared to express individual preferences as to which of the other test
birds they would work with.
It was recently thought that self-recognition was restricted to
mammals with large brains and highly evolved social cognition, but
absent from animals without a neocortex. However, in 2008, an investigation of self-recognition in corvids
was conducted revealing the ability of self-recognition in the magpie.
Mammals and birds inherited the same brain components from their last
common ancestor
nearly 300 million years ago, and have since independently evolved and
formed significantly different brain types. The results of the mirror
test showed that although magpies
do not have a neocortex, they are capable of understanding that a
mirror image belongs to their own body. The findings show that magpies
respond in the mirror test in a manner similar to apes, dolphins, killer
whales, pigs and elephants. This is a remarkable capability that,
although not fully concrete in its determination of self-recognition, is
at least a prerequisite of self-recognition. This is not only of
interest regarding the convergent evolution of social intelligence, it
is also valuable for an understanding of the general principles that
govern cognitive evolution and their underlying neural mechanisms. The
magpies were chosen to study based on their empathy/lifestyle, a
possible precursor for their ability of self-awareness.
A 2020 study found that carrion crows show a neuronal response that correlates with their perception
of a stimulus, which they argue to be an empirical marker of (avian)
sensory consciousness – the conscious perception of sensory input – in
the crows which do not have a cerebral cortex.
The study thereby substantiates the theory that conscious perception
does not require a cerebral cortex and that the basic foundations for it
– and possibly for human-type consciousness – may have evolved before
the last common ancestor >320 Mya or independently in birds. A related study showed that the birds' pallium's neuroarchitecture is reminiscent of the mammalian cortex.
Invertebrates
Octopus travelling with shells collected for protection
Octopuses are highly intelligent, possibly more so than any other order of invertebrates. The level of their intelligence and learning capability are debated, but maze and problem-solving studies show they have both short- and long-term memory. Octopus have a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in their brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of their arms. Octopus arms show a variety of complex reflex actions that persist even when they have no input from the brain. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses are not organized in their brain using an internal somatotopic map of their body, instead using a non-somatotopic system unique to large-brained invertebrates. Some octopuses, such as the mimic octopus, move their arms in ways that emulate the shape and movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory studies, octopuses can easily be trained to
distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They reportedly use observational learning, although the validity of these findings is contested. Octopuses have also been observed to play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. Octopuses often escape from their aquarium and sometimes enter others. They have boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs. At least four specimens of the veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter.
Shamanistic and religious views
Shamanistic and other traditional cultures and folk tales speak of animal spirits and the consciousness of animals. In India, Jains consider all the jivas (living organisms including plants, animals and insects) as conscious. According to Jain scriptures, even nigoda (microscopic creatures) possess high levels of consciousness and have decision-making abilities.
![The Kayan people of Burma (Myanmar) associate the wearing of neck rings with feminine beauty.[61]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Kayan_woman_with_neck_rings.jpg/80px-Kayan_woman_with_neck_rings.jpg)
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![The Kayan people of Burma (Myanmar) associate the wearing of neck rings with feminine beauty.[61]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kayan_woman_with_neck_rings.jpg)
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