Hey Julia! I partially address that point in the section that Linch indicated. As you say, whether snails have a capacity for valenced experience is still uncertain. When compared to bivalves, snails have more diverse and specialized sensory organs. As snails are motile and active foragers, they display a wider range of behaviors, and that is reflected in greater neural complexity. For instance, snails show nociceptive responses, like avoidance behavior in response to high temperatures (not surprisingly, several sources that provide instructions for cooking snails mention the attempts of snails to escape boiling water). However, relatively little is known about the anatomical organization and actual functions of most neurons in their ganglionic regions.
I must admit that I haven’t investigated any bivalves in detail. Still, for what I know, the case for snail sentience is much better than the evidence for bivalve sentience.
Daniela R. Waldhorn
Invertebrate Sentience Table
Snails used for human consumption: The case of meat and slime
Coronavirus and non-humans: How is the pandemic affecting animals used for human consumption?
Invertebrate Sentience: Summary of findings, Part 2
Next Steps in Invertebrate Welfare, Part 1: Fundamental Research
Invertebrate Sentience: Summary of findings, Part 1
Next Steps in Invertebrate Welfare, Part 2: Possible Interventions
Next Steps in Invertebrate Welfare, Part 3: Understanding Attitudes and Possibilities
What Do Unconscious Processes in Humans Tell Us About Sentience?
Hi Ula! I agree with you. I myself stopped working directly as an animal advocate after being mobbed, harassed, and listening to regular discriminatory comments for being a woman, an immigrant, and because of my origin. I’ve seen so many activists going through the same.
In my case, the continued support of other advocates, especially of the Encompass community (www.encompassmovement.org), has been invaluable. I highly recommend it.
Second, I also believe that it’s time to stop normalizing activists’ mistreatment and discriminatory practices, especially in organizations where there is evidence that these issues are structural. In this regard, it’s very disappointing that organizations with ongoing and severe management and leadership problems continue to receive large grants or support from the EA community.
Third, I think organizations should develop active policies to prevent these situations from happening in the very first place. We should not have more advocates burning out or leaving the movement to take this issue seriously.
I’m glad that you’re also concerned about this problem, and I’d be happy to talk about this further with you :). I’m also open to discussing it with Lewis– if he considers it appropriate.
Thanks for pointing this out, Ula. I’m aware that several activists in other organizations have also suffered similar situations, along with derogatory comments because of their origin and gender.
Hi Tobias!
Thanks again for sharing your views. Regarding the role of further research, first, we should keep in mind that the scientific literature in invertebrate sentience is still scarce, and the extent to which invertebrates have been investigated varies. Thus, there are some particular species about which there is a comparatively great deal of knowledge (e.g., fruit flies). But for several other taxa, potentially consciousness-indicating features have not been investigated at all. It is unknown if many invertebrate taxa display particular anatomical, physiological, or behavioral functions that seem to be necessary for consciousness (e.g., nociceptors in honey bees). Especially in these cases, I think further research may significantly reduce current uncertainty.
Additionally, we should consider that the scientific community does not agree that many invertebrate taxa are sentient. Probably, the only exception are cephalopods. In this case, we have seen how further research has led to relevant ethical discussions and specific welfare measures on the use of live cephalopods in science (at least, in Europe). Some researchers believe that in the future, other invertebrate taxa will face similar challenges, and additional research will promote further discussions on invertebrate welfare. Similarly, new research would also contribute to identify the most determining factors in invertebrates’ quality of life and prioritize forms of intervention.
Nevertheless, lack of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent potential suffering –especially in cases of potential threats of serious or irreversible harms. Do you have other ideas about this?
Your question about society’s lack of moral concern for invertebrates is very interesting. In general, existing knowledge about our attitudes towards invertebrates mostly looks into occurrent, spontaneous, or superficial responses that people tend to experience in the course of their everyday life (e.g., disgust, as you say). But, importantly, those attitudes do not necessarily reflect people’s views on the moral consideration of invertebrates, or their actual behavior towards these animals. For example, even if someone feels disgust towards insects, that does not necessarily entail that she believes they are not sentient, that their pain does not matter or that using insecticide is morally innocuous. Apparently, most people have not even thought about these issues as moral problems and, in turn, may hold a collection of unreflected ideas. If you’re interested in this, I’ve just published a new post about our attitudes towards invertebrates and challenges.
I do think that the chances of bivalves being sentient are quite low. However, I do not eat them because I’m already used to a plant-based diet, and given our uncertainty, I adhere to the precautionary principle in this case.
In general, I would not recommend consuming marine invertebrates produced in countries where trawling is not banned, given its impact on other aquatic animals for whom there is a high probability that they are sentient (i.e., fish and other vertebrates).
Still, I’m unsure about the consequences of promoting bivalve consumption, even if they are farmed. I’m concerned about how some people might interpret such a message –e.g., they may assume, without much thought, that consuming other more complex invertebrates (e.g., shrimps) is equivalent.
I agree with Jason. Additionally, I probably wouldn’t be a researcher if I didn’t work for an organization like RP because of operational costs, security/risk, and well-being reasons. But more importantly, since I’m at an early stage of my career as a researcher, if I worked independently, I wouldn’t count on the support of my team and researchers with more experience. That would make it very difficult for me to improve and develop professionally as a researcher.
Hi JoshYou. Thanks for your very pertinent comment.
We are aware of the possibility of hidden qualia. It is a valuable hypothesis. Nevertheless, we found no empirical evidence to support it, at least in the literature on invertebrate sentience. If you will, you can view our project as a compilation and analysis of the existing evidence about the sentience of individual invertebrate organisms, as opposed to subroutines within those systems. Under this reading, what we call ‘unconscious processes’ would be understood as processes which are inaccessible to the organisms’s first-person perspective.
We are also aware that, on some accounts, one really does not need empirical evidence to determine whether a process (or subroutine or algorithm) is conscious. All of them are. On such an account, the relevant distinction is between processes that matter morally and those who don’t. Someone who endorsed this view should interpret our position as agnostic about (but compatible with) the thesis that there are hidden qualia.
I applied to RP when I decided to make an important change in my career. If RP hadn’t hired me, I’d have kept trying it at different EA organizations, maybe as an intern. Yet, I would likely have ended up working in a management position at a local NGO.
Hi, gavintaylor. Thanks for your comment. Research in patients with vegetative or minimally consciousness states –different from dementia or delirium, which should be better described as acute disturbances in consciousness– would probably shed some light on this matter. However, this area of research might be challenging by itself.
Disorders of consciousness are heterogeneous, and judging the level of actual awareness has proved a complicated process. Traditional tests and observations have been criticized since they require some level of subjective interpretation –such as deciding whether a patient’s movements are purposeful or not. In fact, recent research has revealed that about 40% of vegetative state diagnoses is incorrect.
We know, for instance, that some vegetative patients and other individuals in a minimally conscious state are capable of simple learning (i.e., classical conditioning). In a study, it was observed that the amount of learning correlated with the degree of cortical damage and was a good indicator of future recovery. But none of these effects were found in control subjects under the effect of anesthesia.
Furthermore, integrative brain processing, a proposed prerequisite of awareness, has been observed in minimally conscious state patients as well. Previous neuroimaging work has shown that some vegetative patients, when asked to imagine performing physical tasks such as playing tennis, still had activity in premotor areas. In other patients, verbal cues sparked language sectors.
Hence, these results have two interpretations. First, individuals with disorders of consciousness may have partially preserved conscious processing, which cannot be exhibited clearly via voluntary movement or verbal responses. Or, a second interpretation is that conditioning, for example, can indeed be acquired in the absence of consciousness.
Given that (i) individuals in a pharmacologically controlled unconscious state were incapable of displaying signs of learning, and (ii) learning was a good predictor of recovery, researchers consider that the first interpretation is more likely. However, this comparison must be made cautiously and complementary evidence about these processes–including neuroimaging studies–should also be taken into account.
As you suggest, more research in this field may pave the way for more definitive and accurate assessments of consciousness in humans, and probably, in non-human individuals as well.
We were aware of that study, thanks for sharing it!
However, that paper is published by a potentially predatory journal, and no further evidence on this matter was found. Hence, we maintain our current response (‘unknown’), but will introduce a clarificatory commentary mentioning this study and its reliability limitations.
Hey Lewis!
What kind of work would you like to see done for invertebrates?
What kind of work would you like to see done for animals living in the wild?
Are there key research questions that you think would contribute to advance these two areas’ tractability?
Thanks!