Animal minds

Professor Oliver Turnbull from Bangor University, UK will present this talk.

Opinions differ as to whether non-human animals are conscious and if so, how this state differs from conscious experience in humans.

The lecture will briefly review the issue of what constitutes a human mind, and the likely neuroscientific basis of mind in humans. This talk will address the ways that scientists have sought to evaluate non-human minds: for example through language, self-recognition and the experience of emotion.

In the process, specific examples are presented of animal minds: from various mammal and bird species, and in cephalopods.

The implications that follow from this literature are then briefly discussed, including animal welfare and animal rights. The talk concludes with the interesting question of the likelihood, and nature, of extraterrestrial minds.

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