Fishnition: Developing Models From Cognition Toward Consciousness

Abstract

A challenge to developing a model for testing animal consciousness is the pull of opposite intuitions. On one extreme, the anthropocentric view holds that consciousness is a highly sophisticated capacity involving self-reflection and conceptual categorization that is almost certainly exclusive to humans. At the opposite extreme, an anthropomorphic view attributes consciousness broadly to any behavior that involves sensory responsiveness. Yet human experience and observation of diverse species suggest that the most plausible case is that consciousness functions between these poles. In exploring the middle ground, we discuss the pros and cons of “high level” approaches such as the dual systems approach. According to this model, System 1 can be thought of as unconscious; processing is fast, automatic, associative, heuristic, parallel, contextual, and likely to be conserved across species. Consciousness is associated with System 2 processing that is slow, effortful, rule-based, serial, abstract, and exclusively human. An advantage of this model is the clear contrast between heuristic and decision-based responses, but it fails to include contextual decision-making in novel conditions which falls in between these two categories. We also review a “low level” model involving trace conditioning, which is a trained response to the first of two paired stimuli separated by an interval. This model highlights the role of consciousness in maintaining a stimulus representation over a temporal span, though it overlooks the importance of attention in subserving and also disrupting trace conditioning in humans. Through a critical analysis of these two extremes, we will develop the case for flexible behavioral response to the stimulus environment as the best model for demonstrating animal consciousness. We discuss a methodology for gauging flexibility across a wide variety of species and offer a case study in spatial navigation to illustrate our proposal. Flexibility serves the evolutionary function of enabling the complex evaluation of changing conditions, where motivation is the basis for goal valuation, and attention selects task-relevant stimuli to aid decision-making processes. We situate this evolutionary function within the Temporal Representation Theory of consciousness, which proposes that consciousness represents the present moment in order to facilitate flexible action.

What Is It Like to Be a Bass? Red Herrings, Fish Pain and the Study of Animal Sentience

“…e.g., ( 194 ), citing ( 195 )]: this too occurs in S.P.U.D subjects. Braithwaite and colleagues were therefore right to conclude, in one of Victoria's last papers, “trace conditioning is widespread and by itself does not indicate consciousness” ( 15 ), a conclusion echoed in this Special Topic collection by Droege et al ( 143 ). And the same also holds for instrumental learning, where pre-existing innate responses change in timing or form to become more effective (e.g., at avoiding punishment).…”

“…Biologists and psychologists typically assume that P-consciousness is functional, being somehow crucial for flexible, strategic behavior of a greater complexity than the responses of S.P.U.D. subjects [e.g., ( 25 ), p. 196, 287–292; ( 37 ), p. 186, 189; ( 33 , 65 , 116 , 134 , 143 )]. Baars, for instance, proposes nine functions of P-consciousness that include integrating perception, thought and action, adapting to novel circumstances, and providing information to a “self system” [summarized by Blackmore and Troscianko ( 25 ), p. 196].…”