The Problem of Animal Consciousnes

¶ … Animal Consciousness. Do Horses Gallop in Their Sleep? By Matt Cartmill The article is an incisive look at the issue of consciousness and the human and animal brain. It attempts to show how the human consciousness is construed by human beings themselves and how the animal lack of the same it argued out.

The writer presents a case scenario where the human brain section that deals with conscious memory is numbed out by some special drug that has been discovered such that he will not have a recollection of what they did in the past, then he poses to ask if such will change the human to animal.

The article goes on to draw attention to the activities that animals often do like a dog rummaging through the many toys to retrieve a given favorite toy and bringing it to the owner for them to play. The writer then asks if this can be construed as conscious action by the animal. He further draws analogy of the computer programs that have over the years evolved to try challenge the human mind but with no ultimate success in manipulating the human conscious even with repeated actions.

The analysis is a well balanced and the arguments present facts and challenges from various angles. The article recognizes that the human brain could be superior in terms of consciousness and that attributing the same level of consciousness to the animals would be anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the act of attributing the human behavior, qualities and character to animals or other non-human objects.

He however indicates in a rejoinder to this that absolute discarding and disregarding of the fact that animals may have some conscious could be misleading if the actions by the animals is anything to go by. To explain this, he questions whether the human somnambulist who engages in an action while sleeping loses his human nature and consciousness.

He contrasts this to the galloping of the horse and the hunting wolves who do such in full consciousness, a portrayal of how human beings can give surprisingly complex behavior even without consciousness.

The writer further distinguishes the uniqueness of the human mind and the consciousness from the complex programs that are of late installed in computers and how it is the human mind that engages in giving the instructions to the computer, which cannot hence be anthropomorphized to compete with the human being no matter how advanced the programming can be. The article further points out the role of sleep in rejuvenating the depleted brain materials during the conscious time.

He indicates that human beings need the sleep and would break down if forced to stay awake over a long period of time, indeed they would lose consciousness and dies ultimately. He draws a parallel to the need for sleep by the animals possibly with the same purpose in their make up. This points out to the fact that when the animals are not asleep, then they could be conscious hence, by totally thrashing aside the fact that animals have.