fish cognition and consciousness：鱼的认知与意识.Image.Marked.pdf

Fish Cognition and Consciousness Colin Allen colallen@ phone: +1-812-855-3622 fax: +1-812-855-3631 Program in Cognitive Science and Department of History Philosophy of Science Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 USA Abstract Questions about fish consciousness and cognition are receiving increasing attention. In this paper, I explain why one must be careful to avoid drawing conclusions too hastily about this hugely diverse set of species. Keywords Fish, learning, cognition, consciousness Submitted to J. Agricultural and Environmental Ethics for special issue on fish welfare. 1 1. Introduction to the controversy In a recent review article, Michel Cabanac and coauthors (Cabanac et al. 2009) argue that consciousness did not emerge until the early Amniota, the group of species that in- cludes mammals, birds, and reptiles. The latter term is in scare quotes because biolo- gists consider it a paraphyletic group that is improper for classification purposes due to its exclusion of the birds, which descended from the saurians. Amniotes are character- ized by an embryonic membrane that makes terrestrial reproduction feasible. The am- phibians, lacking this adaptation, are constrained to place their eggs in an aqueous en- vironment for proper development. These biological details are important because of the nature of some of the evidence that Cabanac et al. bring to bear on the question of consciousness in fish – evidence that I shall maintain seems skewed towards other ad- aptations that have to do with terrestrial life. But before getting into those details, it is important to recognize that Cabanacs is not a consensus view. For instance, in her book Do Fish Feel Pain? Victoria Braithwaite argues that there is as much evidence that fish feel pain and suffer as there is for birds and mammals (2010). What is this evidence? Braithwaite and her colleagues have pursued a number of interes