Do Animals Have Consciousness?

So far, I have dealt with numerous animal thought processes that are good candidates for attribution of consciousness. These are thought processes that are usually not possible in humans without consciousness; they include logical reasoning, creative tool use and production, causal understanding and insightful problem-solving, volitional action, time travel (episodic memory, planning), metacognition, and perspective taking. (This list is not exhaustive; one could add imitation, teaching, mirror self-recognition, quantity estimation, abstraction, categorisation, and concept formation to the list.) But before I try to answer the question of whether animals act consciously in the aforementioned thought processes, I should first clarify what I mean by the term “consciousness”. This term has many meanings and, above all, very strong connotations for human science and everyday language.