Human and Animal Minds

The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest

Peter Carruthers

An original theory of conscious experience by a leading expert in the field
Defends the global workspace theory of consciousness
Argues that there is no fact of the matter about consciousness in animals
Makes findings from cognitive science accessible to philosophers
Written in a clear and engaging style

Human and Animal Minds

The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest

Peter Carruthers

Description

The continuities between human and animal minds are increasingly well understood. This has led many people to make claims about consciousness in animals, which has often been taken to be crucial for their moral standing. Peter Carruthers argues compellingly that there is no fact of the matter to be discovered, and that the question of animal consciousness is of no scientific or ethical significance.

Carruthers offers solutions to two related puzzles. The first is about the place of phenomenal--or felt--consciousness in the natural order. Consciousness is shown to comprise fine-grained nonconceptual contents that are "globally broadcast" to a wide range of cognitive systems for reasoning, decision-making, and verbal report. Moreover, the so-called "hard" problem of consciousness results merely from the distinctive first-person concepts we can use when thinking about such contents. No special non-physical properties--no so-called "qualia"--are involved. The second puzzle concerns the distribution of phenomenal consciousness across the animal kingdom. Carruthers shows that there is actually no fact of the matter, because thoughts about consciousness in other creatures require us to project our first-person concepts into their minds; but such projections fail to result in determinate truth-conditions when those minds are significantly unlike our own. This upshot, however, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for science, because no additional property enters the world as one transitions from creatures that are definitely incapable of phenomenal consciousness to those that definitely are (namely, ourselves). And on many views it doesn't matter for ethics, either, since concern for animals can be grounded in sympathy, which requires only third-person understanding of the desires and emotions of the animals in question, rather than in first-person empathy.

Human and Animal Minds

The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest

Peter Carruthers

Human and Animal Minds

The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest

Peter Carruthers

Author Information

Peter Carruthers, University of Maryland

Peter Carruthers is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland. He is the author of numerous articles and books in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and has co-edited seven volumes of interdisciplinary essays in cognitive science. Recent publications include The Opacity of Mind (Oxford 2011) and The Centered Mind (Oxford 2015). In 2018, he won the annual Romanell Prize awarded by the American Philosophical Association.

Human and Animal Minds

The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest

Peter Carruthers

Reviews and Awards

"Ironically, we are presented with a book whose well-structured chapters offer a series of complex conceptual analyses and empirically-informed arguments about different aspects of consciousness in humans and animals just to recommend readers that 'they should stop thinking about consciousness and start investing their time in more important things.' It is a worthy and enlightening reading, though." -- David Villena, Metapsychology

"In this well-argued and engaging book, Peter Carruthers makes a comprehensive case for a first-order global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness, and then considers the upshot for animals: are they phenomenally conscious, and does it matter morally? Answer: there is no fact of the matter about whether animals are phenomenally conscious, but this doesn't change anything morally, because consciousness is not what matters morally. ... Conclusion: this is a great book, written with Carruthers' characteristic insight, lucidity, and open-mindedness. Everyone should read it." -- Jonathan Simon, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"Peter Carruthers stands out among philosophers for having previously argued that most animals lack conscious experiences. He returns to the question of non-human consciousness in Human and Animal Minds with another striking view. Where he once proposed that the capacity for higher-order thoughts is essential to phenomenal consciousness and restricted to a small number of species, he now regards its significance as indeterminate. He infers that for many species, there is no fact of the matter either way. ... While Carruthers makes a compelling case, many details remain to be filled in." -- Derek Shiller, Philosophical Quarterly