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MOSCOW, June 10Research into the consciousness and feelings of animals can develop the ethics of human treatment of them and become the key to a scientific understanding of the phenomenon of consciousness, the director of the Institute for Advanced Brain Research at Moscow State University named after M.V. said in an interview. Lomonosov, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, neurophysiologist Konstantin Anokhin.
He was the scientific organizer of the First International Scientific Conference on Animal Consciousness with the participation of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in northern India in May 2023. And in May of this year, together with the Moscow Foundation for Promoting Humane and Responsible Treatment of Animals “Cat of the Wind”, Academician Anokhin gathered in the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, the Second International Forum “How to study and understand consciousness in non-humans” with the participation of dozens of leading experts in this field with all over the world.
“The study of animal consciousness may turn out to be a key moment for a fundamental understanding of consciousness in general. And then this topic no longer becomes local – what is with the inner world of our cats and dogs or whether crayfish experience pain when they are thrown into boiling water – but what is consciousness in general, including among us, people. Is there something common and special that permeates our entire animal world, and which we have not yet reached? And can a new expanded view of the animal world suggest and help us understand? our own consciousness,” said Anokhin, answering a question about the global goals of research into animal consciousness and holding conferences on this topic.
The topic of animal consciousness, he said, also concerns the place of man in the world. “If the animal world has properties that are very close to us, and if we understand consciousness as the ability to feel, experience, suffer, experience pleasure, then questions arise: what is the special place of man in this entire sentient world and how to relate this to the rest of the animal world, if they also suffer and are aware?”, noted the agency’s interlocutor.
Once, he recalled, the “Darwinian revolution” had already occurred, when man was removed from the pedestal of an exceptional being and found himself part of a large living world, but then it seemed that in the field of consciousness man was a unique being. “If it is proven that animals really have consciousness, it turns out that they also have subjective feelings, experiences of pain, jealousy, joy and other emotions, this will be the second shock for humanity – we will go down another step in our exclusivity,” Anokhin explained .
Equally important is that if animals are conscious and suffer, then changes in the policy towards them are required. “Perhaps there will be changes similar to those that have occurred in human history with the understanding that slaves or serfs are the same people, that women have the same rights as men. If we understand that animals have such with the same feelings as we do, our ethics of interaction with them will change,” the academician is sure.
At the same time, according to him, science does not yet confirm the presence of consciousness in all animals. “Today it would be premature to say that scientists have come together and declared that all animals have consciousness. That the moth that you crushed in your closet experienced the same suffering from it as if a piano fell on you. Scientists do not know this yet Scientists argue, as we saw at the conference, there is very great disagreement even on such a seemingly simple aspect of subjective feelings and experiences as pain. Some scientists say that fish have a feeling of pain and cannot be cut into pieces of live tuna, but. others write articles justifying “why fish do not experience pain.” This situation makes it necessary to study and discuss these issues,” Anokhin added.
Read the full text of the interview with Konstantin Anokhin > ;>
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