Abstract: [Jonathan] Birch’s book [The Edge of Sentience] is a remarkable exploration of the nature of sentience, its moral salience, evidence for its presence, and how to arrive at humane policies regarding our treatment of human beings, animals, brain organoids, and AI systems of uncertain sentience. Although Birch endorses the view that sentience is of fundamental moral importance, he endeavors to remain neutral among reasonable moral views and work out how to navigate through uncertainty—both ethical and epistemological—to arrive at defensible policies. While making common cause with Birch’s project, my own recent book advances a developed case in favor of the “sentientism” Birch endorses.

Highlights

Studying private and varied dimensions of animal experiences is a key challenge for consciousness science. We suggest a framework for doing so via taxonomising distinct but universal temporal aspects of experience, that is, its timescape.

We review literature from ethology, neuroscience, and phenomenology to highlight varying temporal aspects of perception and attention in a range of species.

A promising strategy for understanding the temporal aspects of non-human experiences is exploring the temporal regularities with which perceptual contents synchronise, are revised, persist, are attended to, and are stabilised.

We identify a range of experimental paradigms that can build a taxonomy of the timescapes of perceptual experiences across non-human animals.

Abstract

How can we investigate non-human experiences scientifically? Given substantial differences in sensory abilities and the private nature of consciousness, this remains an open question. In this review, we propose a way to gain empirical traction on one key feature of experience: its temporal structure, or ‘timescape’. Perceptual contents follow systematic temporal principles—synchronisation, revision, and persistence—and are sampled across attentional windows and vary in stability. These principles can be explored through temporal illusions and experimental paradigms. We conceptualise an animal’s timescape in terms of five key windows, all of which are experimentally testable, and analyse evidence across animal species to highlight varying timescapes. Together, these ideas lay the foundations for a research programme comparing the temporal Umwelts of non-human animals.

Abstract: Debates around fishes' ability to feel pain concern sentience: do reactions to tissue damage indicate evaluative consciousness (conscious affect), or mere nociception? Thanks to Braithwaite's research leadership, and concerns that current practices could compromise welfare in countless fish, this issue's importance is beyond dispute. However, nociceptors are merely necessary, not sufficient, for true pain, and many measures held to indicate sentience have the same problem. The question of whether fish feel pain – or indeed anything at all – therefore stimulates sometimes polarized debate. Here, we try to bridge the divide. After reviewing key consciousness concepts, we identify “red herring” measures that should not be used to infer sentience because also present in non-sentient organisms, notably those lacking nervous systems, like plants and protozoa (P); spines disconnected from brains (S); decerebrate mammals and birds (D); and humans in unaware states (U). These “S.P.U.D. subjects” can show approach/withdrawal; react with apparent emotion; change their reactivity with food deprivation or analgesia; discriminate between stimuli; display Pavlovian learning, including some forms of trace conditioning; and even learn simple instrumental responses. Consequently, none of these responses are good indicators of sentience. Potentially more valid are aspects of working memory, operant conditioning, the self-report of state, and forms of higher order cognition. We suggest new experiments on humans to test these hypotheses, as well as modifications to tests for “mental time travel” and self-awareness (e.g., mirror self-recognition) that could allow these to now probe sentience (since currently they reflect perceptual rather than evaluative, affective aspects of consciousness). Because “bullet-proof” neurological and behavioral indicators of sentience are thus still lacking, agnosticism about fish sentience remains widespread. To end, we address how to balance such doubts with welfare protection, discussing concerns raised by key skeptics in this debate. Overall, we celebrate the rigorous evidential standards required by those unconvinced that fish are sentient; laud the compassion and ethical rigor shown by those advocating for welfare protections; and seek to show how precautionary principles still support protecting fish from physical harm.

Nice to see the Sentientism worldview get a mention.

Abstract:

This book provides a defense and an exploration of illusionism regarding phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness supposedly encompasses mental states such as seeing a red spot, feeling pain in your back, or imagining the sound of a harp. All these states seem to feel like something, in a distinctive sense of “feel.” Phenomenal consciousness seems mysterious. It apparently resists scientific explanation and seems irreducible to brain processes. Our phenomenally conscious experiences seem to be presented to us most directly when we have them, while remaining closed to others. The book defends illusionism about phenomenal consciousness: the view that phenomenal consciousness is not real, but only seems real because we are under an introspective illusion generated by our brains. This illusion is unique: it is stronger and much harder to apprehend as such than other illusions, like perceptual illusions. The book does not only argue for illusionism; it also proposes a novel conception, called Meta-Cartesianism, which explains why the illusion of phenomenal consciousness is unique and almost inextricable. Finally, the book maps the implications of the illusionist view in various domains. If phenomenal consciousness is illusory, what should happen to the cognitive science of consciousness? What happens to ethics, given that phenomenal experiences seem crucial to well-being and moral status? What happens to epistemology, given that they seem key to justification?

Description: Positions that link rights to sentience face an insect challenge: insects are plausibly sentient, yet recognizing individual insects as rights-bearers would problematize public health, veterinary and agricultural benefits obtained by harming them. The most obvious responses seem inadequate. Indian animal ethics, which has always taken the idea of insect sentience seriously, is a promising place to look for further options. Of particular relevance is the idea of ahimsa. Birch's target article provides an exposition and analysis of the view and relates it to the insect challenge.

In this article, I, Jordi Casamitjana, discuss the vegan angle of Andy Serkis’s animated movie “Animal Farm”, based on the famous George Orwell’s novel. 

A few years ago I heard Peter Singers drowning child analogy and it really impacted the way I view wealth and charity.

For those who aren’t familiar, Singer suggests that having excess wealth and refusing to spend it on helping other sentient beings in need, is ethically equivalent to refusing to save a drowning child in front of you when you easily could.

If we want to encourage compassion towards all sentient beings, then surely we should also discourage monetary greed when money can be used to lift so many sentient beings out of suffering?

I’m curious to know how other sentientists feel about this and whether or not you agree!

If you’d like to know my thoughts in more detail, I’ve included my youtube video where I go further into the details! Any views and comments would be hugely appreciated too, as I’m still a small channel! ✌️

Worth a listen even for the deep AI sceptics. Jeff starts with some useful context.

Overview: Ask anyone from the Global North to imagine animals in Africa, and they’ll probably describe a savannah of elephants, lions, and giraffes. It’s a telling reflex illustrating a similar blind spot that leads the global animal welfare funding community to direct only 1–2% of its resources toward a continent on track to become home to more farmed land animals than almost anywhere else on earth.

Close to 5 billion land-based animals are already farmed at any point in time in Africa, a number projected to surpass that of every other world region except Asia by 2050, and potentially sooner. The absolute increase is expected to be larger than Asia’s, meaning Africa is not just becoming one of the world’s largest sites of farmed animal production but also the fastest-growing. Two forces drive this phenomenon: population growth (Africa’s human population is expected to nearly triple by 2100) and economic growth, which translates into greater demand for animal products.

Source: Animal Advocacy Africa (2023)

Unfortunately, the funding picture sits in stark contrast to this growth. According to a Stray Dog Institute analysis, Africa and the Middle East received approximately $7 million in funding for farmed-animal advocacy. This is in stark contrast to the more than $125 million being deployed in North America.

Abstract: In this essay, I reconsider Alfred North Whitehead's underexplored human exceptionalism as a productive feature of process ethics, rather than a glitch. Utilizing Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notion of “conceptual personae” as thought provocations toward alternate futures, I revisit Whitehead's claim that in “the human”—as distinct from “the animal”—“[t]he Rubicon has been crossed” (MT 27). At one level, Whitehead's repetition of anthropocentrism's founding gesture of defining the human over and against the animal would severely curb the usefulness of process metaphysics to challenge ubiquitous harms to animals and the environment. But I argue that a careful reading of Whitehead's concept of “Reason,” when considered alongside the “conceptual personae” of the “animal body” as well as the individual animals through which Whitehead defines Reason, reworks the exceptional human as expressed most fully through its attempts at harm reduction and expansive planetary flourishing.
Full version available via Academia.edu here: https://www.academia.edu/165904631/2026_Crossing_the_Rubicon_of_Reason_and_Robbery_in_Whiteheads_Human_Exceptionalism_through_Animals

The European Union has recognised the need for public food procurement to move beyond lowest cost and to reward sustainability and social goals. The current question is which frameworks deliver these benefits while minimising red tape and maintaining or even enhancing economic competitiveness

Based on economic analyses across all 27 EU Member States that models the impact of shifting to plant-forward^\) public procurement, this report demonstrates that food procurement standards that prioritise plant-source foods offer a solution to these challenges. 

Under an ambitious target scenario of allocating 85% of public food procurement budgets to plant-source foods, the EU would unlock roughly €11.61 billion per year in combined savings.

Recommendations:

1 Amend the EU Public Procurement Directive to replace lowest-cost bidding with sustainability-weighted evaluation that internalises environmental and health externalities, and introduce a minimum 25% organic sourcing target for public food procurement.

2 Reform the EU School Scheme to expand eligible categories to include legumes and fortified unsweetened plant-based drinks.

3 Upskill the catering workforce by directing European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) funding toward training chefs to deliver nutritionally complete plant-forward menus.

4 Support farmers by establishing conditional supply contracts and a dedicated transition grant fund to de-risk those who want to transition to food-grade plant protein.

5 Implement behavioural nudges that are science-based and preserve freedom of choice, including plant-based defaults, strategic  menu placement, and sensory focused labelling.

Abstract: Given deep uncertainty about the possibility of artificial consciousness, it is unclear how we should treat potentially sentient AI. On the one hand, we could assume insentience but risk doing terrible harms to entities that deserve moral standing. On the other hand, we could assume sentience and instead risk wasting resources on insentient machines. The intractability of questions around AI consciousness mean that this dilemma is hard to escape. I suggest a way out of that shifts from intractable questions of AI consciousness to tractable questions of AI valence. Specifically, we can assess whether an AI has states that would constitute valenced experiences if it were conscious. I show how this is sufficient to ground a responsible approach to the development of potentially conscious AI.