Consciousness, Fish, and Uncertainty

Neko Case - "I Wish I Was the Moon"

Death Valley

Recently, I received pushback on this piece regarding fish and suffering from a very big name in animal advocacy. One of the things they said was:

[Y]ou are risking doing serious harm if you, an animal advocate, suggest that it is unlikely that fish are conscious.

To be honest, I'm flattered that they think my opinion has any bearing at all in the world. However, the post actually says:

I'm not making a statement about whether fish experience suffering. I'm just pointing out that there are good-faith questions about what creatures have conscious experience, and to what extent those experiences matter relative to the suffering of others.

As covered extensively (e.g., this piece), we vastly underestimate how mysterious consciousness is. Very often, we ascribe consciousness when it is not there. This is true of robots, large language models, and even shapes on a computer screen. 

But just about everything can be explained without requiring consciousness. This is why David Chalmers can posit "Zombie World" where people act as they do in our world, but without consciousness. That isn't quite right; as I say in Losing, the zombies wouldn't hypothesize Zombie World. Nothing in that world would ever have known consciousness, so they wouldn't be able to think about it.

However, AIs in our world can draw on all our musings on and writings about consciousness. Thus, they will be able to appear conscious without actually being conscious. There will be absolutely no way for us to know if they are conscious.

Importantly, we need to recognize that this is true of other animals. A clam with something like "nerve" cells is not conscious. I am conscious. Somewhere between those levels of neuronal complexity, consciousness emerges. But we don't know where. (And with regards to ethics, we wouldn't know how to weigh different levels of consciousness, even if we could measure it. Regular readers know this and other philosophical issues are real problems.)

If I had to bet my life one way or another on a finned fish's ability to have morally-relevant subjective experiences, I honestly don't know how I'd bet. 

Of course, many (but not all) animal advocates say we should take the conservative approach and ascribe consciousness where there is doubt. But we've been doing this for at least half a century, ever since Peter Singer published the article "Animal Liberation." Yet today, vastly more animals are being used and abused than ever before, even on a per-capita basis.

If we care about suffering and recognize these clear and simple facts, maybe it is time to reconsider how we approach advocacy. Maybe we should be more concerned with actually reducing suffering than being cautious and thorough.