-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Amidst the ongoing debate over whether artificial intelligence is really sentient , scientists are still trying to figure out the same thing about non-human animals. Amazingly, naturally-produced painkillers have long been considered a key indicator of possible sentience in animals. America can ban all the opioids it wants , but still won’t stop your brain from making them or seeking the relief from suffering they provide, and so they have been seen as a kind of smoking gun for sentience in non-human animals as well.
But a look at the evolutionary role of endorphins really highlights the complexity of conscious experience – especially our own. The field of animal consciousness studies has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of decades. The clearest evidence comes from studies in neuroscience on the neurophysiological basis of behavioral responses to animals’ subjective experiences — such as a dog seeking to relieve its thirst by drinking — definitively overturns the legacy of mid-20th Century behaviorism, in which animals were considered to have a set of automatic behaviors that nevertheless didn’t reflect a sentient mind.
“We are constantly underestimating animals,” David Mellor, a retired professor of applied physiology and bioethics, told Salon from his home in New Zealand. “Every time, we are surprised at how smart animals are. It’s because we have underestimated them, not because they’ve suddenly be.