The protection of animal welfare is a fundamental issue for civil society.
Bioethical reflection, in continuous maturation and evolution, influences national and community regulations that today cannot ignore the recognition of animals as sentient beings.
This reflection is also nourished by scientific findings derived from studies on the ability of animals to perceive, represent and memorise the qualitative attributes of environmental stimuli, as well as the demonstration of the existence of central regulatory and control structures and processes of the emotional component of sensations, which no longer allow us to ignore animal integrity and dignity.
Animals, each according to what their own species allows, have cognitive abilities such as to draw experience from their own lives by adapting to the environment or adapting the environment to what for them is the
most favourable condition.
“Sentience”, understood as the capacity to feel, perceive or be conscious, to experience subjectivity, leads to a greater responsibility for humankind, which must guarantee a good quality of life and the ethically acceptable treatment of animals.
It would seem, then, that the time has come to unanimously share the conviction that animals are sentient, since it is clear what they want and what they need; however, there is still reason to rejoice over
the inclusion of animals in the Constitutions of States and over every small step aimed at helping other animals live in a world dominated by humans.
Yet, the bulk of it seemed to have been accomplished just over 10 years ago, on 7 July 2012 at Cambridge University, when a document — the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness — was signed by an accredited group of scientists from various areas of neuroscience. It was born out of the desire to re-evaluate the neurobiological notions underlying the experience of a conscious type and the behaviours that follow from it, both in human beings and in non-human animals.
The document was written by Philip Low and edited, in addition to himself, by Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, David Edelman, Bruno Van Swinderen and Christof Koch. Having rejected the idea that consciousness is limited to cortical structures, the studies revealed that, besides humans, other mammals, birds and other species phylogenetically very distant from our own also possess the neurological substrates responsible for this state.
Emotions, too, are not tied to a particular brain structure, such as our cortex. Scientists have in fact identified several neuronal regions that are activated when one experiences emotions, identifying these structures as the same ones responsible for the emotional behaviours of animals.
Originally, it was not believed that animals had consciousness because it had always been thought that the source of this faculty resided solely and exclusively in the higher cortical areas, and therefore only in human ones.
The truth is that subcortical structures can also give rise to consciousness, and animals possess these functional structures.
It was therefore necessary to forcefully assert, at that moment, something that anyone who has had dealings with an animal for long enough could testify to.
Human beings struggle to recognise animal consciousness because it would mean raising a moral problem with which they have always been confronted. There is still no full awareness that bioculture — that is, the set of institutions, social practices and organised activities in which humans make use of animals to achieve their own ends, systematically exploiting them for their own benefit — requires an ethics that defines its boundaries.
The Cambridge Declaration highlights the moral obligation on the part of humanity to reflect on the meaning of the use we make of animals, since, even though it is clear that certain freedoms our species refuses to relinquish are disrespectful of other beings, research remains the primary tool for expanding knowledge, reminding us that respect for others is directly proportional to our responsibility in influencing the living (and dying) conditions of others.
Starting from this awareness, one of the fundamental points to reflect on with regard to the Cambridge Declaration is whether all living beings are conscious to the same degree.
In recent years, debates on animal consciousness have shifted from the question of whether any non-human animal is aware, to the question of which animals are aware and what form their conscious experiences take. In their list, the signatories of the Declaration included mammals, birds, invertebrates and insects; however, can we state that all living beings are conscious to the same degree?
In reality, not all human beings are conscious in the same way: there are different levels of consciousness among human beings themselves, just as there are among other living species. All animals, even the less evolved ones with a very primitive central nervous system, can experience states of consciousness, but the central point is that they can feel it and even express it only according to their species-specific characteristics. Taking as an example an animal known to most people — the dog, a mammal with defined characteristics also conditioned by a long history of domestication — we will reflect on the fact that it can experience a state of consciousness typical of its own species, not of another animal.
This means that, despite the evolutionary continuity between species, it is necessary to specify each time which brain is being considered, avoiding lumping all experiences into the same category. This reflection must be given due consideration, also to avoid anthropomorphisations (and instrumentalisations) that are just as harmful and disrespectful of animal dignity as reification. In this sense, if we were to try to make sense of the variety in the animal kingdom by using a single scale, classifying species as “more aware” or “less aware” on the basis of a single criterion, seeking to homologise them, we would inevitably overlook other important dimensions.
What is needed instead is a multidimensional framework that allows animal states of consciousness to vary continuously along many different dimensions, so that each species has its own distinctive consciousness profile.
Research on animal consciousness should adopt a multidimensional approach, not a single-scale approach, when thinking about variation in the animal kingdom.
Some scholars (J. Birch, A. K. Schnell, N. S. Clayton) have focused, for example, on various elements, among which memory and the capacity for perception and evaluation.
In conclusion, human beings have struggled to question the fact that they are the only ones to possess consciousness.
It has been almost easier to confuse consciousness with soul and heart, “generously” granting them to animals, sometimes falling into the insidious trap of anthropomorphisation.
The soul, however, is a concept linked to spirituality, while the heart is a muscle of our body that has no feelings, since feelings mature from the brain. It is perhaps more useful to insist on the fact that animals, on the other hand, have consciousness, and that this has been scientifically recognised as well, in support of what has always been maintained on other levels, in particular the philosophical one.
Looking with a critical eye, constantly keeping watch over the consistent application of the principles they proclaim — so, by all means, welcome the Treaty of Lisbon, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, the constitutional protection of animals and all the rest.
But so that it does not remain a dead letter, we need the awareness that attributing consciousness and moral value to non-human animals inevitably brings ethical and social repercussions that force us to redefine the concept of a subject endowed with interests and rights. If, on the one hand, recognising sentience, consciousness and awareness in an animal is the confirmation of what we have instinctively perceived since time immemorial and experienced daily, on the other hand such recognition obliges us to reflect more deeply on how much we are willing to change in the way we consider and treat these beings. If all these proclamations lead to little, even in the medium to long term, we will find ourselves faced with a mere intellectual exercise.
