Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ASENT (Foundations of Animal Sentience)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-07-01 bis 2022-12-31
Sentience, in a broad sense, is the capacity to feel. In a narrower sense, it refers to the capacity to have feelings with a positive or negative quality, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, boredom, excitement, frustration, anxiety and joy. These feelings have the elusive property that philosophers like to call “phenomenal consciousness”. It feels like something to have them.
In recent years, an interdisciplinary community of animal sentience researchers, drawn from neuroscience, comparative psychology, evolutionary biology, animal welfare science and philosophy, has begun to emerge. However, the field is characterized by foundational controversy over the nature of sentience and the criteria for its attribution, leading to heated debate over the presence or absence of sentience in fish and in invertebrates such as cephalopods (e.g. octopods, squid) and arthropods (e.g. bees, crabs).
The Foundations of Animal Sentience project (ASENT), led by Dr Jonathan Birch, aims to find ways to resolve these debates. What is needed is a conceptual framework for thinking about sentience as an evolved phenomenon that varies along several dimensions, a deeper understanding of how these dimensions of sentience relate to measurable aspects of animal behaviour and the nervous system, and a richer picture of the links between sentience, welfare and the ethical status of animals.
In recent years, an interdisciplinary community of animal sentience researchers, drawn from neuroscience, comparative psychology, evolutionary biology, animal welfare science and philosophy, has begun to emerge. However, the field is characterized by foundational controversy over the nature of sentience and the criteria for its attribution, leading to heated debate over the presence or absence of sentience in fish and in invertebrates such as cephalopods (e.g. octopods, squid) and arthropods (e.g. bees, crabs).
The Foundations of Animal Sentience project (ASENT), led by Dr Jonathan Birch, aims to find ways to resolve these debates. What is needed is a conceptual framework for thinking about sentience as an evolved phenomenon that varies along several dimensions, a deeper understanding of how these dimensions of sentience relate to measurable aspects of animal behaviour and the nervous system, and a richer picture of the links between sentience, welfare and the ethical status of animals.
In its first two and half years, the ASENT team has been producing agenda-setting work in all its areas of activity.
The team, based the LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, has been focusing on three big questions. The first is: how can we develop better methods for a mature science of animal sentience? The PI, Birch, has developed a distinctive methodological approach to animal sentience based on a minimal commitment about the relationship between consciousness and cognition (the “facilitation hypothesis”). This aims to strike a middle path between “theory-heavy” approaches that make speculative theoretical commitments and “theory-neutral” approaches that try to dispense with theory altogether.
ASENT postdoc Andrew Crump has led a sub-project putting this approach into action, using bumblebees as the first test case. Crump’s collaborative work with researchers at Queen Mary, University of London has resulted in important results that add to the case for thinking bees are sentient.
The second big question is: how should we conceptualize variation in sentience across the animal kingdom? Birch (in collaboration with Alexandra Schnell and Nicola Clayton) has argued against the idea that we should try to construct a single scale on which some animals are “more conscious” than others. We should instead conceptualize variation in terms of “consciousness profiles” with many dimensions.
The third big question is: how can we use the emerging science of animal sentience to design better policies and laws for protecting animal welfare? The team, in collaboration with Schnell and Charlotte Burn, has developed a pragmatic framework for assessing the current state of the evidence in relation to any particular order of animals. They have applied this framework to two contested taxa (cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans), leading to major policy impact in the UK, where the recent Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 legally recognized the sentience of these animals for the first time, as a direct consequence of Birch and colleagues’ research.
The team, based the LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, has been focusing on three big questions. The first is: how can we develop better methods for a mature science of animal sentience? The PI, Birch, has developed a distinctive methodological approach to animal sentience based on a minimal commitment about the relationship between consciousness and cognition (the “facilitation hypothesis”). This aims to strike a middle path between “theory-heavy” approaches that make speculative theoretical commitments and “theory-neutral” approaches that try to dispense with theory altogether.
ASENT postdoc Andrew Crump has led a sub-project putting this approach into action, using bumblebees as the first test case. Crump’s collaborative work with researchers at Queen Mary, University of London has resulted in important results that add to the case for thinking bees are sentient.
The second big question is: how should we conceptualize variation in sentience across the animal kingdom? Birch (in collaboration with Alexandra Schnell and Nicola Clayton) has argued against the idea that we should try to construct a single scale on which some animals are “more conscious” than others. We should instead conceptualize variation in terms of “consciousness profiles” with many dimensions.
The third big question is: how can we use the emerging science of animal sentience to design better policies and laws for protecting animal welfare? The team, in collaboration with Schnell and Charlotte Burn, has developed a pragmatic framework for assessing the current state of the evidence in relation to any particular order of animals. They have applied this framework to two contested taxa (cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans), leading to major policy impact in the UK, where the recent Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 legally recognized the sentience of these animals for the first time, as a direct consequence of Birch and colleagues’ research.
The ASENT project has already invigorated debates around animal sentience, providing new ways forward for the science of animal sentience over both the short- and long-term, and generating results with significant implications for animal welfare policy and law.
In the second half of the project, we will continue to pursue our core objectives. The empirical, science-facing side of the project will gather more data about bumblebees, using a variety of new experimental paradigms developed to provide evidence relevant to questions of their sentience. The welfare-relevant, policy-facing side will continue to analyse how this data, and the emerging science of animal sentience, more generally, may allow us to design better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals.
In the second half of the project, we will continue to pursue our core objectives. The empirical, science-facing side of the project will gather more data about bumblebees, using a variety of new experimental paradigms developed to provide evidence relevant to questions of their sentience. The welfare-relevant, policy-facing side will continue to analyse how this data, and the emerging science of animal sentience, more generally, may allow us to design better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals.