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Cuando los Animales Sueñan. El Mundo Oculto de la Consciencia Animal
Ya sea en tu sofá o en TikTok, seguro que has visto a un perro que mientras duerme mueve las patas, gruñe u olfatea. Habrás pensado que está soñando, pues, ¿por qué íbamos a ser los humanos los únicos soñadores sobre la Tierra? Sin embargo, y aunque cueste creerlo, el primer artículo científico sobre el sueño de los animales se publicó en 2020 y el primer libro sobre el tema lo tienes en las manos. ¿Cómo es posible?
La razón es sencilla: a la manera de un autoengaño colectivo, el grueso de la comunidad científica sigue negando dogmáticamente que los animales sueñen porque ese hecho atentaría contra la divisoria tradicional entre humanidad y animalidad. Y es que soñar no es algo banal: implica el uso de unas facultades que durante milenios hemos considerado propias tan solo de los humanos, y de las cuales se deriva el estatuto ético y los derechos inalienables que nos asignamos en exclusividad. Si reconocemos que los animales sueñan, ya no podremos verlos como simples masas de materia orgánica, sino como seres conscientes y arquitectos de sus propias realidades, plenos e inviolables. El rechazo de la interioridad animal (incluida la onírica) se convierte así fácilmente en desinterés por el bienestar animal.
Centrando su indagación en seres tan distintos como perros, gatos, aves, pulpos, chimpancés o ballenas, David M. Peña-Guzmán, especialista en el ámbito de la zoología y en la teoría de la consciencia, nos guía en un viaje alucinante —que reúne con maestría el rigor investigador, el dinamismo narrativo y la agudeza poética— por la interioridad psíquica de los animales y por los debates científicos, filosóficos y éticos que esta convoca. Es muy probable que después de leer este libro no te preguntes ya más si los animales sueñan o no, sino para qué sirven sus sueños dentro de la gran aventura de la evolución. Y, en cualquier caso, nunca volverás a ver a los animales de la misma manera.
La razón es sencilla: a la manera de un autoengaño colectivo, el grueso de la comunidad científica sigue negando dogmáticamente que los animales sueñen porque ese hecho atentaría contra la divisoria tradicional entre humanidad y animalidad. Y es que soñar no es algo banal: implica el uso de unas facultades que durante milenios hemos considerado propias tan solo de los humanos, y de las cuales se deriva el estatuto ético y los derechos inalienables que nos asignamos en exclusividad. Si reconocemos que los animales sueñan, ya no podremos verlos como simples masas de materia orgánica, sino como seres conscientes y arquitectos de sus propias realidades, plenos e inviolables. El rechazo de la interioridad animal (incluida la onírica) se convierte así fácilmente en desinterés por el bienestar animal.
Centrando su indagación en seres tan distintos como perros, gatos, aves, pulpos, chimpancés o ballenas, David M. Peña-Guzmán, especialista en el ámbito de la zoología y en la teoría de la consciencia, nos guía en un viaje alucinante —que reúne con maestría el rigor investigador, el dinamismo narrativo y la agudeza poética— por la interioridad psíquica de los animales y por los debates científicos, filosóficos y éticos que esta convoca. Es muy probable que después de leer este libro no te preguntes ya más si los animales sueñan o no, sino para qué sirven sus sueños dentro de la gran aventura de la evolución. Y, en cualquier caso, nunca volverás a ver a los animales de la misma manera.
272 pages, Tapa blanda
First published June 21, 2022
85 people are currently reading
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
November 24, 2023
Dreams are the odes the animal mind sings to itself during sleep
This was an interesting book, though more dense than I was anticipating - definitely an academic monograph as opposed to a book for a popular audience. It explores animal dreams - the scientific evidence for animal dreaming, and the significance for understanding animal subjectivity alongside what this means for how we interact with and treat animals (including a long discussion on the moral significance of consciousness). There is a recognition of the difficulty of the sciences of animal minds (and the need for various kinds of inference) as well as the commonalities between ourselves and other types of animals.The tone and content slips between scientific, philosophical and more poetic/rhetorical which can make it hard to pin down at times, but is pretty nonetheless.
This was an interesting book, though more dense than I was anticipating - definitely an academic monograph as opposed to a book for a popular audience. It explores animal dreams - the scientific evidence for animal dreaming, and the significance for understanding animal subjectivity alongside what this means for how we interact with and treat animals (including a long discussion on the moral significance of consciousness). There is a recognition of the difficulty of the sciences of animal minds (and the need for various kinds of inference) as well as the commonalities between ourselves and other types of animals.The tone and content slips between scientific, philosophical and more poetic/rhetorical which can make it hard to pin down at times, but is pretty nonetheless.
October 21, 2022
Really interesting and clearly written. At times I felt he exaggerated the significance of certain findings and sometimes I wondered how relevant or meaningful certain tangents were, but overall really important research and a huge step in how we think about the consciousness and moral status of animals.
May 9, 2023
Trascendemos no porqué seamos humanos, sino porqué somos soñadores... Y no somos los únicos soñadores.
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November 29, 2022When Animals Dream provides a window into the dreaming and vastly unfamiliar world of unconscious animals while exploring the philosophical and moral implications of animal dreaming. The author, David Peña-Guzmán, highlights the recent neuroscientific and behavioral research on nonhuman animal dreaming and unconsciousness to argue that the evidence suggests animals have a dream ego, very similar to humans and our unconscious self-concept of ourselves when we dream. The book presents a compelling argument that animals are much more intelligent and conscious than the moral disadvantages humans allocate them to. This book may spark a new interest in the scientific research highlighted in this book or its tricky discussion about the ethical implications of animals being more intelligent and conscious than we think. I enjoyed this book because it revealed so many stories about interesting species and deepened my curiosity about animals, I highly recommend that anyone with this interest give this book a try.
-- Scarlett Guillermo, Class of 2023
-- Scarlett Guillermo, Class of 2023
March 17, 2025
Do animals have minds? Conscious lives? The answer seems obvious. But it hasn’t always been that way. Animals have at times been popularly thought to be automatons, machine-like, simply responding to stimuli with no intervening or superseding thoughts or feelings.
It’s convenient to think such things, given the treatment that animals receive in the modern food industry or in research labs. But anyone who has lived with animals, not as food or subjects, knows better.
Peña-Guzman takes the investigation a little bit farther than the minimum of consciousness, on to dreaming and then speculations about other conscious modes and functions.
Chapter 1 of his book sketches out the scientific support for the claim that animals do indeed dream. If you’ve ever had a dog or cat in your house, you have seen the twitchings, whimperings, and other not-really-so-subtle signs that your pet is dreaming. Something’s going on, and it looks for all the world like they are having a dream experience.
The studies that Peña-Guzman cites go much further of course, using neural monitoring technology to track brain activities during sleep and waking. Those studies find that animals, not just dogs and cats but rats, octopuses, birds, . . . many different species of animals, undergo brain activities in sleep that mirror activities in their waking lives. Rats trained to solve mazes rerun the associated neural activity they follow in solving the mazes while sleeping. Some studies even show evidence that they run sequences in mazes that they haven’t actually experienced — “imagined” mazes.
Of course, the automaton hypothesis is not disproven by such studies. It’s one thing for neural activities to occur and another for those activities to be conscious, for the rats to be aware, to be consciously experiencing what those neural activities allegedly execute.
Peña-Guzman of course is aware that there is a leap from the scientific observations to the ascription of consciousness, and specifically to the ascription of conscious dream experiences.
As Thomas Nagel’s paper, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” famously pointed out, we lack access to to the subjective experiences of other animals (or other persons, for that matter). We don’t know what it is like to be a bat or a rat, or a dog or a cat. And no scientific experiment will provide direct access to that conscious, subjective experience.
Nevertheless, those scientific data mirror scientific data also gathered for human subjects. The replay and preplay of waking experiences observed in the rats are also observed in human subjects who can verify that those replays and preplays were themselves dream experiences. If the data for the two cases mirror one another, the leap to the conclusion that the rats, and other animals, are dreaming is not so daunting.
In fact, I think Peña-Guzman doesn’t go far enough in his discussion of that leap. He characterizes the leap, the granting of similarities, as an “inference” — one that goes beyond the strictly observable. It does go beyond the strictly observable, but I don’t see it as an “inference” per se but as a “decision.”
That decision is itself a moral decision, to grant a kind of peer status, of some degree at least, to animals, and, accordingly, to enter an intersubjective relationship with them.
When Jane Goodall, with a lot of backlash from her anthropologist colleagues, granted names to the chimpanzees she studied rather than numbers, she crossed a similar boundary. The chimpanzees became something other than mere objects of research. And her adoption of an intersubjective relationship granted her, in turn, a perspective on their behaviors that allowed her to see conscious social and functional behaviors otherwise hidden within strictly objective observations.
Once we’ve made that decision, to regard animals as moral peers at some level, the two claims reinforce one another. if we regard an animal as a moral peer, we interpret their behavior as similar to ours. If we regard their behavior as similar to ours, we regard them as moral peers
Peña-Gomez ends up in a similar position on the moral status of animals. He sees the granting of consciousness to animals as having moral consequences, something similar to peer status. But for him that moral status follows from the inference granting consciousness. As I’m recasting it a bit, the decision to grant moral peer status, to adopt an intersubjective relationship with animals, motivates the granting of consciousness, that animals, in our view, are “like us.”
Peña-Gomez goes on to investigate in more detail what exactly it means to grant that animals are conscious.
He relies on Ned Block’s distinction between “access consciousness” and “phenomenal consciousness.” Access consciousness refers to the having of such things as perceptions and ideas and their being available for cognitive operations — reasoning with them, acting upon them, or linguistically reporting them.
Phenomenal consciousness on the other hand refers to the having of felt experience, such as pains, tastes, smells, or maybe such a thing as peace of mind, where it is not the content of those feelings that comprises consciousness but the felt experience itself, what Nagel meant by “what it is like to be” this or that animal, to live within that animal’s subjective experience of the world.
Peña-Guzman argues that moral status depends upon phenomenal consciousness and not upon access consciousness. Access consciousness could be a characteristic of zombie-like creatures who receive or gather data, act upon it, report it, reason about it, but do not feel their own lives. The lights are on, but no one is home.
In phenomenal consciousness, life is felt, experienced subjectively. This feeling, Peña-Gomez argues, is what makes animals (including ourselves) matter morally.
His argument is meant to ward off the potential objection that true consciousness is inherently linguistic, and so requires access consciousness, not just phenomenal consciousness. I won’t go into arguments out there in philosophy-world about the relationship between language and consciousness. I’m already going long here.
Another counter-argument against granting moral status to animals on the basis of their possessing phenomenal consciousness is simply that nothing compels us to care about their phenomenal consciousness. And that argument is technically open, although it would throw a new onus on distinguishing human phenomenal consciousness as relevantly different from animal phenomenal consciousness, at least assuming it given that we care about and grant moral status to humans other than ourselves.
In the final pages of Peña-Guzman’s book, he opens some further, interesting questions. Coming back to dreams, what role do dreams play in the lives of animals? Do animals remember their dreams? Do their dream experiences influence, consciously or not, their waking lives?
How could we answer those questions, or at least intelligently speculate about them? And how might those answers change our thinking about our own conscious lives, what our dreams are really about and how we could or should integrate them into our own lives?
It’s convenient to think such things, given the treatment that animals receive in the modern food industry or in research labs. But anyone who has lived with animals, not as food or subjects, knows better.
Peña-Guzman takes the investigation a little bit farther than the minimum of consciousness, on to dreaming and then speculations about other conscious modes and functions.
Chapter 1 of his book sketches out the scientific support for the claim that animals do indeed dream. If you’ve ever had a dog or cat in your house, you have seen the twitchings, whimperings, and other not-really-so-subtle signs that your pet is dreaming. Something’s going on, and it looks for all the world like they are having a dream experience.
The studies that Peña-Guzman cites go much further of course, using neural monitoring technology to track brain activities during sleep and waking. Those studies find that animals, not just dogs and cats but rats, octopuses, birds, . . . many different species of animals, undergo brain activities in sleep that mirror activities in their waking lives. Rats trained to solve mazes rerun the associated neural activity they follow in solving the mazes while sleeping. Some studies even show evidence that they run sequences in mazes that they haven’t actually experienced — “imagined” mazes.
Of course, the automaton hypothesis is not disproven by such studies. It’s one thing for neural activities to occur and another for those activities to be conscious, for the rats to be aware, to be consciously experiencing what those neural activities allegedly execute.
Peña-Guzman of course is aware that there is a leap from the scientific observations to the ascription of consciousness, and specifically to the ascription of conscious dream experiences.
As Thomas Nagel’s paper, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” famously pointed out, we lack access to to the subjective experiences of other animals (or other persons, for that matter). We don’t know what it is like to be a bat or a rat, or a dog or a cat. And no scientific experiment will provide direct access to that conscious, subjective experience.
Nevertheless, those scientific data mirror scientific data also gathered for human subjects. The replay and preplay of waking experiences observed in the rats are also observed in human subjects who can verify that those replays and preplays were themselves dream experiences. If the data for the two cases mirror one another, the leap to the conclusion that the rats, and other animals, are dreaming is not so daunting.
In fact, I think Peña-Guzman doesn’t go far enough in his discussion of that leap. He characterizes the leap, the granting of similarities, as an “inference” — one that goes beyond the strictly observable. It does go beyond the strictly observable, but I don’t see it as an “inference” per se but as a “decision.”
That decision is itself a moral decision, to grant a kind of peer status, of some degree at least, to animals, and, accordingly, to enter an intersubjective relationship with them.
When Jane Goodall, with a lot of backlash from her anthropologist colleagues, granted names to the chimpanzees she studied rather than numbers, she crossed a similar boundary. The chimpanzees became something other than mere objects of research. And her adoption of an intersubjective relationship granted her, in turn, a perspective on their behaviors that allowed her to see conscious social and functional behaviors otherwise hidden within strictly objective observations.
Once we’ve made that decision, to regard animals as moral peers at some level, the two claims reinforce one another. if we regard an animal as a moral peer, we interpret their behavior as similar to ours. If we regard their behavior as similar to ours, we regard them as moral peers
Peña-Gomez ends up in a similar position on the moral status of animals. He sees the granting of consciousness to animals as having moral consequences, something similar to peer status. But for him that moral status follows from the inference granting consciousness. As I’m recasting it a bit, the decision to grant moral peer status, to adopt an intersubjective relationship with animals, motivates the granting of consciousness, that animals, in our view, are “like us.”
Peña-Gomez goes on to investigate in more detail what exactly it means to grant that animals are conscious.
He relies on Ned Block’s distinction between “access consciousness” and “phenomenal consciousness.” Access consciousness refers to the having of such things as perceptions and ideas and their being available for cognitive operations — reasoning with them, acting upon them, or linguistically reporting them.
Phenomenal consciousness on the other hand refers to the having of felt experience, such as pains, tastes, smells, or maybe such a thing as peace of mind, where it is not the content of those feelings that comprises consciousness but the felt experience itself, what Nagel meant by “what it is like to be” this or that animal, to live within that animal’s subjective experience of the world.
Peña-Guzman argues that moral status depends upon phenomenal consciousness and not upon access consciousness. Access consciousness could be a characteristic of zombie-like creatures who receive or gather data, act upon it, report it, reason about it, but do not feel their own lives. The lights are on, but no one is home.
In phenomenal consciousness, life is felt, experienced subjectively. This feeling, Peña-Gomez argues, is what makes animals (including ourselves) matter morally.
His argument is meant to ward off the potential objection that true consciousness is inherently linguistic, and so requires access consciousness, not just phenomenal consciousness. I won’t go into arguments out there in philosophy-world about the relationship between language and consciousness. I’m already going long here.
Another counter-argument against granting moral status to animals on the basis of their possessing phenomenal consciousness is simply that nothing compels us to care about their phenomenal consciousness. And that argument is technically open, although it would throw a new onus on distinguishing human phenomenal consciousness as relevantly different from animal phenomenal consciousness, at least assuming it given that we care about and grant moral status to humans other than ourselves.
In the final pages of Peña-Guzman’s book, he opens some further, interesting questions. Coming back to dreams, what role do dreams play in the lives of animals? Do animals remember their dreams? Do their dream experiences influence, consciously or not, their waking lives?
How could we answer those questions, or at least intelligently speculate about them? And how might those answers change our thinking about our own conscious lives, what our dreams are really about and how we could or should integrate them into our own lives?
Read
July 19, 2022"The book joins a recent run of popular science writing that delves into the underappreciated complexities of animal emotion and cognition. While most writing on animal cognition has focused on their waking lives, Peña-Guzmán turns his attention to what their brains might be doing in sleep. Dreams, he proposes, are more than mechanistic sparks of neural activity—they are evidence for the nebulous workings of consciousness itself. Even while stubbornly resisting close analogies with the human mind, scientists have always speculated about the inner worlds of animals; Peña-Guzmán offers a novel, and poetic, way in." — Camille Bromley
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...
August 2, 2023
1. chapter: The science of animal dreams
- we want to think that animals are less than us and that they cannot form an existential bond with the world they exist in
- zebra finches have to learn the song from their parents - they learn / rehearse the song also with replying it in their mind during the night (some argue this is algorithmic) … they observe this is not only a mental state but also they observed contractions in vocal cords
- spacial task for rats, in awake state vs sleeping state- hypocampal activity; when they were awake they were put to a task with a food reward - so the finding is basically that rats were dreaming (measured in rem sleep) about the task- running/spacial orientation (ram & rem were identical mind images)
- PGO waves are important for dream generation (drivers for human dream phenomenology)
- zebra fish have MCH neurons which generate these PGO waves;; equating to the fact that even the simpler creatures have similar sleeping systems than us
- PWS in fish is very similar to REM sleep in humans (distinct brain wave from non-REM (humans) & SPS (fish) sleep )
- however brain states are not enough to claim that animals are dreaming, it should be correlated to bodily state; which we also have evidence for; for example of a dog “running” in their sleep - similar behaviors observed in cats rats and octopuses (Heidi color changes)
- WE NEED TO BE CAREFUL WHEN INTERPRETING BEHAVIORS OF ANIMALS, however IS THE SIMPLEST INTERPRETATION THE MOST APPROPRIATE ONE??
- cuddle fish example
- spike in heart rate in cardiac and respiratory system… which is usually slowed down in REM - animals also have these experiences just like humans ; so why such agnosticticism when comes to animals dreaming
- chimpanzees sleep talking (central washington university, 1995) + finger and hand twitching
- Are there anyway animals (mammals other branches in animal kingdom) who don’t dream? (answer depends on what stance do we take when it comes to relation between REM sleep and dreaming - hard stance would be that dreaming only occurs during REM sleep-in this case many animals are excluded & some are borderline cases, however in the soft stance only cetaceans are excluded ..)
- Cetaceans are the least likely to experience any kind of mental imagery during sleep
2. chapter
Author’s thesis: it is impossible for an organism to dream and to lack have consciousness
- Wittgenstein’s lions; philosophical monster: a non-conscious dreamer
- the SAM model of consciousness; a three part model: 1. subjective (a center of one’s phenomenon reality) 2. affective (emotions, feelings, affects) 3. meta cognitive (forms of cognitive processing that are of some kind of reflexivity)
- dreaming entails consciousness; we dream because we “achieved” consciousness
- consciousness is not binary
- dreams are subjective reality that we live through with the full force of our being, and not some endogenous pictures that we follow with some passive interest of a spectator
- subjective scaffolding of dreams; dreams are subjectively structured, they require a presence of an ego and a feeling of subjective presence and a sense of bodily self awareness
- subjectively is the primary characteristic of dreams
- egoless dreams ? … who would be dreaming? from what perspective would the dream be experienced? who would claim it as theirs? an egoless dream is phenomenologically impossible, because where there is a dream there also must be ego that actualizes, sustains and experiences it. Ego is the ultimate base for its existence
- during golden age of dream research 1950-1970; scientists believed that dreams were created by random activity in the pons, part of brain that connects medulla to midbrain = it was thought that dreams are just “white noise”, random firing of neurons
- Freud; interpretation of dreams = he couldn’t accept pons theory, he didn’t believe that dreams are meaningless organic phenomena, comparable to circulation of blood or rambling of stomach
- The obvious fact is that what we dream about is who we take ourselves to be, Freud concluded that dreams must be connected to our emotional state, echoes of our most private phobias, our most disquieting traumas, and our desires
- torturing rats experiment
- african elephant orphanage = report on baby elephants who witnessed their families being killed, waking up and screaming during the night … nightmare memories of deep trauma?
- gorillas at stanford, a gorilla Michael woke up during the night screaming, and writing in sign language bad people kill gorillas… he witnessed his mother being killed when he was young
- "now and then the dreamer realizes that he is dreaming and continues" Leibniz
- lucid dreaming - only humans capable of this? language the key to abstraction?
* can lucidity manifest itself outside of this linguistic framework?
* linguistic abilities = fetishization of human abilities
3. Chapter: A Zoology of Imagination
first study:
- visual hallucinations in monkeys during REM sleep
- pan banetia and blueberries, and monkey with dead daughter
- great apes are the only ones that scientists would consider capable of deep emotions/understanding/imagining
second study:
- is thought necessary linguistic?
- people with brain damage who still are able to generate abstract thought/mental representations
- rodent cognitive maps study
thomas hills: “if animals can imagine, one can’t help but wonder what kind of cognitive system is required for such a feature, what other implications do imaginings create? Does an animal that can deliberate about its future enjoys some sort of free will? Does an animal who is imagining also knows that it is imagining? Do they know the difference between reality and imagination? Do they know the difference between their real self and what they could be?”
4. Chapter: The Value of Animal Consciousness
Mark Rolands “the quickest way to deny animals moral status is to deny them mental status, it is to deny they are subject of mental states or to deny they have a mental life…”
- do we need to be conscious to matter morally or do we need to have a specific type of consciousness
- access consciousness
- phenomenon consciousness (see, hear, smell, have pains -> hard to describe to another person, our subjective experience, inexpressible experience) we can only describe it metaphorically
- do we matter more because we reached the right level of cognitive functioning or because we have the right phenomenology ?
- what makes us matter rationally or lived experience? Access or phenomenal consciousness
- phenomenal consciousness is what in author’s opinion matter for moral standards
- would you become a zombie? feel no pain, feel no emotions ?
- being phenomenally conscious gives us value and what we value
- Hedonic consequentials say that the only thing that matters is pleasure and pain
- Preference consequentialists say not all pleasures are equivalent; e.g. John S. Mill argued that pleasures that require complex cognitive processes such as appreciating art, cultivating friendships, acquiring knowledge & talents must be ranked higher than those relating to senses such as smelling flowers, sunbathing etc.
- Mill vs Bentham disagree on value of playing a game vs reading poetry. Mill argues that even if playing a game and reading poetry gives someone same amount of happiness, we should still say reading poetry provides higher amount of good bcz it is more intellectual VS Bentham claims that both are equal in terms of utilitarian perspective (Mill: better to be Socratis desatisfied than fool satisfied)
- organisms without access consciousness without a right to life? (animals? humans in vegetative state?)
- we do not reason about the moral status of others, we perceive it - we see it in their way of being in the world
- Edith Stein (the problem of empathy) : “the mode in which one consciousness perceives another”
- Premise 1: the foundation of moral status is phenomenal consciousness
- Premise 2: dreams are phenomenally consciousness states
- conclusion A: therefore dreams can form a moral status
- Premise 3: some animals dream
- conclusion B: therefore at least some animals have moral status
- we want to think that animals are less than us and that they cannot form an existential bond with the world they exist in
- zebra finches have to learn the song from their parents - they learn / rehearse the song also with replying it in their mind during the night (some argue this is algorithmic) … they observe this is not only a mental state but also they observed contractions in vocal cords
- spacial task for rats, in awake state vs sleeping state- hypocampal activity; when they were awake they were put to a task with a food reward - so the finding is basically that rats were dreaming (measured in rem sleep) about the task- running/spacial orientation (ram & rem were identical mind images)
- PGO waves are important for dream generation (drivers for human dream phenomenology)
- zebra fish have MCH neurons which generate these PGO waves;; equating to the fact that even the simpler creatures have similar sleeping systems than us
- PWS in fish is very similar to REM sleep in humans (distinct brain wave from non-REM (humans) & SPS (fish) sleep )
- however brain states are not enough to claim that animals are dreaming, it should be correlated to bodily state; which we also have evidence for; for example of a dog “running” in their sleep - similar behaviors observed in cats rats and octopuses (Heidi color changes)
- WE NEED TO BE CAREFUL WHEN INTERPRETING BEHAVIORS OF ANIMALS, however IS THE SIMPLEST INTERPRETATION THE MOST APPROPRIATE ONE??
- cuddle fish example
- spike in heart rate in cardiac and respiratory system… which is usually slowed down in REM - animals also have these experiences just like humans ; so why such agnosticticism when comes to animals dreaming
- chimpanzees sleep talking (central washington university, 1995) + finger and hand twitching
- Are there anyway animals (mammals other branches in animal kingdom) who don’t dream? (answer depends on what stance do we take when it comes to relation between REM sleep and dreaming - hard stance would be that dreaming only occurs during REM sleep-in this case many animals are excluded & some are borderline cases, however in the soft stance only cetaceans are excluded ..)
- Cetaceans are the least likely to experience any kind of mental imagery during sleep
2. chapter
Author’s thesis: it is impossible for an organism to dream and to lack have consciousness
- Wittgenstein’s lions; philosophical monster: a non-conscious dreamer
- the SAM model of consciousness; a three part model: 1. subjective (a center of one’s phenomenon reality) 2. affective (emotions, feelings, affects) 3. meta cognitive (forms of cognitive processing that are of some kind of reflexivity)
- dreaming entails consciousness; we dream because we “achieved” consciousness
- consciousness is not binary
- dreams are subjective reality that we live through with the full force of our being, and not some endogenous pictures that we follow with some passive interest of a spectator
- subjective scaffolding of dreams; dreams are subjectively structured, they require a presence of an ego and a feeling of subjective presence and a sense of bodily self awareness
- subjectively is the primary characteristic of dreams
- egoless dreams ? … who would be dreaming? from what perspective would the dream be experienced? who would claim it as theirs? an egoless dream is phenomenologically impossible, because where there is a dream there also must be ego that actualizes, sustains and experiences it. Ego is the ultimate base for its existence
- during golden age of dream research 1950-1970; scientists believed that dreams were created by random activity in the pons, part of brain that connects medulla to midbrain = it was thought that dreams are just “white noise”, random firing of neurons
- Freud; interpretation of dreams = he couldn’t accept pons theory, he didn’t believe that dreams are meaningless organic phenomena, comparable to circulation of blood or rambling of stomach
- The obvious fact is that what we dream about is who we take ourselves to be, Freud concluded that dreams must be connected to our emotional state, echoes of our most private phobias, our most disquieting traumas, and our desires
- torturing rats experiment
- african elephant orphanage = report on baby elephants who witnessed their families being killed, waking up and screaming during the night … nightmare memories of deep trauma?
- gorillas at stanford, a gorilla Michael woke up during the night screaming, and writing in sign language bad people kill gorillas… he witnessed his mother being killed when he was young
- "now and then the dreamer realizes that he is dreaming and continues" Leibniz
- lucid dreaming - only humans capable of this? language the key to abstraction?
* can lucidity manifest itself outside of this linguistic framework?
* linguistic abilities = fetishization of human abilities
3. Chapter: A Zoology of Imagination
first study:
- visual hallucinations in monkeys during REM sleep
- pan banetia and blueberries, and monkey with dead daughter
- great apes are the only ones that scientists would consider capable of deep emotions/understanding/imagining
second study:
- is thought necessary linguistic?
- people with brain damage who still are able to generate abstract thought/mental representations
- rodent cognitive maps study
thomas hills: “if animals can imagine, one can’t help but wonder what kind of cognitive system is required for such a feature, what other implications do imaginings create? Does an animal that can deliberate about its future enjoys some sort of free will? Does an animal who is imagining also knows that it is imagining? Do they know the difference between reality and imagination? Do they know the difference between their real self and what they could be?”
4. Chapter: The Value of Animal Consciousness
Mark Rolands “the quickest way to deny animals moral status is to deny them mental status, it is to deny they are subject of mental states or to deny they have a mental life…”
- do we need to be conscious to matter morally or do we need to have a specific type of consciousness
- access consciousness
- phenomenon consciousness (see, hear, smell, have pains -> hard to describe to another person, our subjective experience, inexpressible experience) we can only describe it metaphorically
- do we matter more because we reached the right level of cognitive functioning or because we have the right phenomenology ?
- what makes us matter rationally or lived experience? Access or phenomenal consciousness
- phenomenal consciousness is what in author’s opinion matter for moral standards
- would you become a zombie? feel no pain, feel no emotions ?
- being phenomenally conscious gives us value and what we value
- Hedonic consequentials say that the only thing that matters is pleasure and pain
- Preference consequentialists say not all pleasures are equivalent; e.g. John S. Mill argued that pleasures that require complex cognitive processes such as appreciating art, cultivating friendships, acquiring knowledge & talents must be ranked higher than those relating to senses such as smelling flowers, sunbathing etc.
- Mill vs Bentham disagree on value of playing a game vs reading poetry. Mill argues that even if playing a game and reading poetry gives someone same amount of happiness, we should still say reading poetry provides higher amount of good bcz it is more intellectual VS Bentham claims that both are equal in terms of utilitarian perspective (Mill: better to be Socratis desatisfied than fool satisfied)
- organisms without access consciousness without a right to life? (animals? humans in vegetative state?)
- we do not reason about the moral status of others, we perceive it - we see it in their way of being in the world
- Edith Stein (the problem of empathy) : “the mode in which one consciousness perceives another”
- Premise 1: the foundation of moral status is phenomenal consciousness
- Premise 2: dreams are phenomenally consciousness states
- conclusion A: therefore dreams can form a moral status
- Premise 3: some animals dream
- conclusion B: therefore at least some animals have moral status
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 6, 2024
I took a course on Animal Behavior during my Fall Semester of my Senior Year of College, and it's gotten me interested in learning more about the topic in my free time. While this book doesn't give a definitive "yes" or "no" answer for the question "Do animals dream?", there's enough evidence to believe it's possible, like the first example with Heidi the Octopus changing colors while sleeping, or the baby elephants with night terrors after watching their families be poached.
Something else I really enjoyed about this book was the affirmation that animals are their own beings with their own consciousness, and that human beings are not superior to them. Even if there are barriers between us and other animals, they still have their own consciousness and experiences that are worth studying, even if we will never have a definitive answer as to what goes on in animals' minds.
Whether it's true or not that animals really do dream, whenever I watch one of my dogs sleep, I'll always think of the quote "...dreams are odes the animal mind sings to itself during sleep".
Something else I really enjoyed about this book was the affirmation that animals are their own beings with their own consciousness, and that human beings are not superior to them. Even if there are barriers between us and other animals, they still have their own consciousness and experiences that are worth studying, even if we will never have a definitive answer as to what goes on in animals' minds.
Whether it's true or not that animals really do dream, whenever I watch one of my dogs sleep, I'll always think of the quote "...dreams are odes the animal mind sings to itself during sleep".
Read
October 6, 2023I was surprisingly disappointed in this book and stopped reading around page 40, which is why it would be dishonest to give it a rating. There was a chance it would get better if I read on, though I doubt that. Why was I surprised? Because I love animals and animal behavioral studies when they're written in a clear, entertaining way. For instance, I love Temple Grandin, and even The Secret Lives of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. The difference was that those other authors made the telling interesting, didn't jump around from one species to another so quickly that it was hard to follow the logic or clog the works with scientific terms. So I'm going back to some poetry reviews right now.
I added a fake finished date so I could make a comment, but won't punish the author with a bad rating.
I added a fake finished date so I could make a comment, but won't punish the author with a bad rating.
January 23, 2024
3.5 ⭐️ I really liked the exploration in this book of what it means to be a conscious being and how that manifests itself into studies of dreams. The author asked similar questions to those explored in Sy Montgomery’s book “The Soul of an Octopus” surrounding the moral responsibility that humans have generally assigned to other humans to treat each other with dignity and what this means in our relationships with animals. Can we apply our definition of consciousness on to animals, or is this view shortsighted. Overall, this was a very interesting read though I felt it read a bit like a textbook and would be inaccessible to those without a scientific background.
January 1, 2024
Fascinating science, a little dry. I guess I wish there were more case studies about animals dreaming and less defense of basic animal intelligence.
August 15, 2023
Cualquiera que comparta su vida con un perro (o un gato, un cerdo…) sabe que su compañero peludo (o no tan peludo) sueña: mueve las patas como si corriera, las zarpas como si peleara, emite gruñidos… Sin embargo, durante mucho tiempo los científicos se han negado a usar la palabra sueño en los animales, optando por expresiones similares como experiencias oníricas; de hecho, como se señala en este libro, el primer artículo científico sobre el tema se publicó en 2020.
El motivo es que admitir que los animales sueñan lleva implícito, como expresa David M. Peña-Guzmán en este ensayo, el reconocimiento de varias “proezas” que, desde los conductistas del pasado siglo, se han considerado exclusivas de los seres humanos: imaginar, reconocer una existencia propia con deseos y propósitos, etc. Hay auténtico miedo a considerar a los animales no humanos como criaturas con mente propia porque "este miedo permite considerarlos como alimento que consumir, mano de obra que explotar, recursos que utilizar y especímenes que cultivar y diseccionar; es decir, cualquier cosa menos criaturas que viven, sienten y piensan según sus propios términos".
Hemos convertido a los animales no humanos en “bestias inconscientes”. Y un ser inconsciente no soñaría. El libro se sustenta tanto en pruebas científicas como en postulados filosóficos para hablar del sueño en los animales y todo lo que ello implica. Entre esas pruebas está, por ejemplo, el que muchos animales “ostentan los mismos patrones de actividad motriz y neuronal durante el sueño que se admiten, en general, como indicadores de estar soñando en el caso del ser humano”.
A lo largo de la lectura encontramos varios ejemplos de los sueños, y la imaginación, en animales no humanos: los cambios de coloración observados en pulpos azules (Octopus cyanea) mientras duermen y que siguen el mismo patrón y secuencia que se manifiesta cuando cazan cangrejos durante la vigilia; las ratas que imaginan y sueñan con caminos nuevos e inexistentes en su laberinto; o los polluelos de pinzones cebra (Taeniopygia guttata), que, en sueños, reproducen la melodía que están aprendiendo. Me hubieran gustado más ejemplos de este tipo, sin embargo, no es ese el objetivo del libro, y los casos que se mencionan son suficientes para sustentar las tesis del autor e ilustrar al lector.
A pesar de que dudaría en calificarlo de divulgativo, el libro no es difícil de leer. Lo recomiendo a interesados en el tema de los sueños o en el de la consciencia animal. Y a los no interesados también.
El motivo es que admitir que los animales sueñan lleva implícito, como expresa David M. Peña-Guzmán en este ensayo, el reconocimiento de varias “proezas” que, desde los conductistas del pasado siglo, se han considerado exclusivas de los seres humanos: imaginar, reconocer una existencia propia con deseos y propósitos, etc. Hay auténtico miedo a considerar a los animales no humanos como criaturas con mente propia porque "este miedo permite considerarlos como alimento que consumir, mano de obra que explotar, recursos que utilizar y especímenes que cultivar y diseccionar; es decir, cualquier cosa menos criaturas que viven, sienten y piensan según sus propios términos".
Hemos convertido a los animales no humanos en “bestias inconscientes”. Y un ser inconsciente no soñaría. El libro se sustenta tanto en pruebas científicas como en postulados filosóficos para hablar del sueño en los animales y todo lo que ello implica. Entre esas pruebas está, por ejemplo, el que muchos animales “ostentan los mismos patrones de actividad motriz y neuronal durante el sueño que se admiten, en general, como indicadores de estar soñando en el caso del ser humano”.
A lo largo de la lectura encontramos varios ejemplos de los sueños, y la imaginación, en animales no humanos: los cambios de coloración observados en pulpos azules (Octopus cyanea) mientras duermen y que siguen el mismo patrón y secuencia que se manifiesta cuando cazan cangrejos durante la vigilia; las ratas que imaginan y sueñan con caminos nuevos e inexistentes en su laberinto; o los polluelos de pinzones cebra (Taeniopygia guttata), que, en sueños, reproducen la melodía que están aprendiendo. Me hubieran gustado más ejemplos de este tipo, sin embargo, no es ese el objetivo del libro, y los casos que se mencionan son suficientes para sustentar las tesis del autor e ilustrar al lector.
A pesar de que dudaría en calificarlo de divulgativo, el libro no es difícil de leer. Lo recomiendo a interesados en el tema de los sueños o en el de la consciencia animal. Y a los no interesados también.
August 14, 2023
A couple weeks ago, a US congressional hearing was held on the topic of UFOs. Many articles and reports highlighted the message "We are not alone in the universe!" For me, it was a display of an extreme of human ignorance. Why? Well, humans determined in their ancient past that animals and Earth's "natural resources" in general were subjugated to human needs. "It is there for the taking!" It was enshrined in some of our beloved religious believes. In order to compartmentalize the brutal exploitation of nature, we not only removed all rights from animals, we deemed them empty flesh vessels drifting through their existence steered by instincts and drives, but without purpose, awareness, enjoyment, and meaning. Some religions have always advocated for the unity of the natural world. However, those spiritual ideas were never reflected in Western religious doctrine influencing scientific thought well into the present.
We therefore have never realized that we have in fact "never been alone" on this planet. Far from it!
"When Animals Dream" explores the current state of science on animal dream research. We know that some animals dream. We know that some animals are intelligent. If we could agree on a definition of "consciousness," we would probably determine that some animals are conscious. We know that we are genetically less than 2% different from Chimpanzees. However, we cannot find a way to correct our stance w.r.t. the natural world. The book is very accessible and full of cross references and example that engage the reader and point to follow-on reading. The reader may be disturbed to find that to find out about animal dreams, we applied torture.
I think books like "When Animals Dream" are important! Do animals have the same consciousness as humans? Maybe, maybe not, but we share the same natural world and should therefore embrace our celestial travel buddies. I might had a confirmation bias in my reading selection, however, I think it is a great read for anybody interested in the topic. The audiobook version is highly recommended!
We therefore have never realized that we have in fact "never been alone" on this planet. Far from it!
"When Animals Dream" explores the current state of science on animal dream research. We know that some animals dream. We know that some animals are intelligent. If we could agree on a definition of "consciousness," we would probably determine that some animals are conscious. We know that we are genetically less than 2% different from Chimpanzees. However, we cannot find a way to correct our stance w.r.t. the natural world. The book is very accessible and full of cross references and example that engage the reader and point to follow-on reading. The reader may be disturbed to find that to find out about animal dreams, we applied torture.
I think books like "When Animals Dream" are important! Do animals have the same consciousness as humans? Maybe, maybe not, but we share the same natural world and should therefore embrace our celestial travel buddies. I might had a confirmation bias in my reading selection, however, I think it is a great read for anybody interested in the topic. The audiobook version is highly recommended!
November 7, 2023
While the topic is cute and cuddly, and octopuses are just endlessly fascinating, reader, beware, this is a serious non-fiction philosophy book. I say this in the best possible way, because animals do need conclusive proof of their moral standing for ethical behavior. Pena Guseman proves his thesis in a short 190 pages, but with over 400 references, and 36 pages of Notes in a tiny font.
I’m surprised how little published scientific work exists on animals dreaming, because it seems like a common place occurrence, for anyone who spends any amount of time with animals, as many scientist no doubt have in the last few centuries.
Dreaming has evolved independently at least 3 times, in ancient biological past. Primates, Birds, Rats separated 200-300 million years ago. Mollusks like Octopi and Squid separated xxxxx years ago. So as fundamental as sleep is to Terran life, dreaming seems to be also, whether or not we have access to these mental replays or choose to ignore thme.
Losing language doesn't make someone any less conscious or imaginative.
"phenonenally conscious mental states confer moral status to the organisms that experience them" p177
dreaming is inherenetly one such state, but historically philosophers have not necessarily noticed this, because dreaming is universally human, so was an obvious point not worth mentioning.
Donald Griffin 1970s Animal Thinking
Ned Block "access" vs "phenomenal" consciousness p153
moral value/standing, deserving ethical treatment.
John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism greatly influences modern society.. freedom is to choose what has utility for each of us. Unfortunately, Mill explicitly excluded animal's independent utility, out of prejudice or ignorance. p164
p140-145
reverse replay
remote replay
2010 Univ of MN "never experienced and does not exist" replay
bored rats.. "waking dreaming, active replaying"
Humans had the cognitive error of anthropomorphizing LLMs and other AIs, seeing consciousness where non exists. We make the oppositive mistake with animals.
I’m surprised how little published scientific work exists on animals dreaming, because it seems like a common place occurrence, for anyone who spends any amount of time with animals, as many scientist no doubt have in the last few centuries.
Dreaming has evolved independently at least 3 times, in ancient biological past. Primates, Birds, Rats separated 200-300 million years ago. Mollusks like Octopi and Squid separated xxxxx years ago. So as fundamental as sleep is to Terran life, dreaming seems to be also, whether or not we have access to these mental replays or choose to ignore thme.
Losing language doesn't make someone any less conscious or imaginative.
"phenonenally conscious mental states confer moral status to the organisms that experience them" p177
dreaming is inherenetly one such state, but historically philosophers have not necessarily noticed this, because dreaming is universally human, so was an obvious point not worth mentioning.
Donald Griffin 1970s Animal Thinking
Ned Block "access" vs "phenomenal" consciousness p153
moral value/standing, deserving ethical treatment.
John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism greatly influences modern society.. freedom is to choose what has utility for each of us. Unfortunately, Mill explicitly excluded animal's independent utility, out of prejudice or ignorance. p164
p140-145
reverse replay
remote replay
2010 Univ of MN "never experienced and does not exist" replay
bored rats.. "waking dreaming, active replaying"
Humans had the cognitive error of anthropomorphizing LLMs and other AIs, seeing consciousness where non exists. We make the oppositive mistake with animals.
August 30, 2025
(page 170)
There are the “weather watchers,” who are: conscious, feeling creatures who are incapable of any action [. . .] These are pole-like creatures who are completely immobile, rigidly stuck to the ground, but who nonetheless can sense the ambient temperature, care about it, and take great interest in it. They prefer warm weather, hope for it every morning, and are cheerful when they feel it and disappointed when they do not. They thus have a rudimentary perceptual, cognitive, and emotional life, but crucially, they have no capacity for action, and we may stipulate that their faculty of will has atrophied as a result—they experience no such states as deciding, intending, or choosing.Then, there are the self-ruling robots: Conversely, imagine our world contained certain end-setting automata or zombies. It is beyond doubt that much of our behavior is unconsciously driven, which seemsto entail that we have many purposes and goals—including, presumably, ultimate goals, that is, ends—that are unconscious.
Imagine now a creature all of whose ends are unconscious; indeed, all of its mental life, such as it is, is unconscious. It experiences no feelings or emotions, no thought processes, no bodily or perceptual sensations. Yet its unconscious life is sufficiently robust a duplicate of ours that it engages in sensible, goal-directed behavior. The difference between these two candidates is straightforward. The weather watchers have a subjective and affective experience of their surroundings but perform no cognitive functions. They possess phenomenal consciousness but not access consciousness. The self-ruling robots are just the opposite. They are rational and logical since they make decisions based on a preexisting algorithm, but they lack what the British philosopher Galen Strawson calls “mental reality.” They possess access consciousness but not phenomenal consciousness.
There are the “weather watchers,” who are: conscious, feeling creatures who are incapable of any action [. . .] These are pole-like creatures who are completely immobile, rigidly stuck to the ground, but who nonetheless can sense the ambient temperature, care about it, and take great interest in it. They prefer warm weather, hope for it every morning, and are cheerful when they feel it and disappointed when they do not. They thus have a rudimentary perceptual, cognitive, and emotional life, but crucially, they have no capacity for action, and we may stipulate that their faculty of will has atrophied as a result—they experience no such states as deciding, intending, or choosing.Then, there are the self-ruling robots: Conversely, imagine our world contained certain end-setting automata or zombies. It is beyond doubt that much of our behavior is unconsciously driven, which seemsto entail that we have many purposes and goals—including, presumably, ultimate goals, that is, ends—that are unconscious.
Imagine now a creature all of whose ends are unconscious; indeed, all of its mental life, such as it is, is unconscious. It experiences no feelings or emotions, no thought processes, no bodily or perceptual sensations. Yet its unconscious life is sufficiently robust a duplicate of ours that it engages in sensible, goal-directed behavior. The difference between these two candidates is straightforward. The weather watchers have a subjective and affective experience of their surroundings but perform no cognitive functions. They possess phenomenal consciousness but not access consciousness. The self-ruling robots are just the opposite. They are rational and logical since they make decisions based on a preexisting algorithm, but they lack what the British philosopher Galen Strawson calls “mental reality.” They possess access consciousness but not phenomenal consciousness.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 19, 2024
📖El autor tiene tantas ganas como yo de demostrar que los animales sueñan, que tienen consciencia y que algunas de las afirmaciones científicas que aseguraban la superioridad del ‘homo sapiens’ sobre el resto de especies se tambalean. Y eso es lo que me enganchó.
‘Cuando los animales sueñan’ es un completo ensayo lleno de estudios en torno al sueño en general y al de los animales en particular, en el que el autor presenta distintas teorías sobre el mundo onírico animal y las consecuencias de estas sobre nuestra percepción de las especies no humanas.
🦑La obra desarrolla un debate científico, ético y filosófico en torno a la capacidad de soñar de los animales, un enfoque que en los últimos siglos la ciencia ha puesto en duda, entre otras razones porque esta cualidad que se presume únicamente humana otorgaría un estatus moral si no a los animales en general, al menos a muchas especies.
Sin duda es un libro enfocado a quienes estén interesados en el tema, también por la densidad de citas, estudios y autores. Aún así creo que es una de esas obras necesarias para la evolución de la sociedad humana respecto a su concepcion del resto de especies y el abandono del antropocentrismo.
✨La frase: “[…] podemos darle la bienvenida a la inherente opacidad del mundo natural y así crecer intelectual y espiritualmente. Quizá la experiencia de seguir a los animales hacia el vertiginoso traspaís de los sueños nos libere de nuestras convicciones anquilosadas […]”.
********
📖 ‘Cuando los animales sueñan. El mundo oculto de la consciencia animal’
✒️David M. Peña-Guzmán
🌈Errata Naturae Editores
‘Cuando los animales sueñan’ es un completo ensayo lleno de estudios en torno al sueño en general y al de los animales en particular, en el que el autor presenta distintas teorías sobre el mundo onírico animal y las consecuencias de estas sobre nuestra percepción de las especies no humanas.
🦑La obra desarrolla un debate científico, ético y filosófico en torno a la capacidad de soñar de los animales, un enfoque que en los últimos siglos la ciencia ha puesto en duda, entre otras razones porque esta cualidad que se presume únicamente humana otorgaría un estatus moral si no a los animales en general, al menos a muchas especies.
Sin duda es un libro enfocado a quienes estén interesados en el tema, también por la densidad de citas, estudios y autores. Aún así creo que es una de esas obras necesarias para la evolución de la sociedad humana respecto a su concepcion del resto de especies y el abandono del antropocentrismo.
✨La frase: “[…] podemos darle la bienvenida a la inherente opacidad del mundo natural y así crecer intelectual y espiritualmente. Quizá la experiencia de seguir a los animales hacia el vertiginoso traspaís de los sueños nos libere de nuestras convicciones anquilosadas […]”.
********
📖 ‘Cuando los animales sueñan. El mundo oculto de la consciencia animal’
✒️David M. Peña-Guzmán
🌈Errata Naturae Editores
March 13, 2025
David M. Peña-Guzmán's "When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness" is a thought-provoking exploration of animal sentience, particularly through the lens of dreaming. While the book's academic tone and dense philosophical arguments might prove challenging for some, it offered a profound moral justification for my deeply held beliefs about animal welfare.
Peña-Guzmán meticulously builds a case for animal consciousness, arguing that the capacity for dreaming, even in seemingly "non-rational" creatures, suggests a rich inner life deserving of ethical consideration. This book wasn't just a scientific exploration; it was a philosophical manifesto that resonated with my innate sense of compassion. It provided a framework for understanding animals not as unfeeling robots, but as beings capable of subjective experience, deserving of our love and care.
The author delves into complex philosophical arguments, reminiscent of my undergraduate philosophy studies, which, while occasionally dry, ultimately strengthened the book's persuasive power. He challenges the anthropocentric view that places humans at the pinnacle of consciousness, advocating for a more inclusive and empathetic understanding of the animal kingdom.I picked this up mostly because of the octopus on the cover (I love octopus). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But I think I really learned something and benefitted from reading this.
Peña-Guzmán meticulously builds a case for animal consciousness, arguing that the capacity for dreaming, even in seemingly "non-rational" creatures, suggests a rich inner life deserving of ethical consideration. This book wasn't just a scientific exploration; it was a philosophical manifesto that resonated with my innate sense of compassion. It provided a framework for understanding animals not as unfeeling robots, but as beings capable of subjective experience, deserving of our love and care.
The author delves into complex philosophical arguments, reminiscent of my undergraduate philosophy studies, which, while occasionally dry, ultimately strengthened the book's persuasive power. He challenges the anthropocentric view that places humans at the pinnacle of consciousness, advocating for a more inclusive and empathetic understanding of the animal kingdom.I picked this up mostly because of the octopus on the cover (I love octopus). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But I think I really learned something and benefitted from reading this.
October 16, 2025
Animal Vision
Many animals dream! Scientific studies using brain monitoring during sleep show that mammals and some birds go through sleep stages similar to humans like REM (Rapid Eye Movement). For example, when a dog twitches its paws or whimper in its sleep, it’s likely “dreaming,” probably about chasing or playing. Dreams process memories, learning, and problem-solving. Recent studies also show that invertebrates like octopuses also experience dreaming. It is characterized by two distinct sleep stages: quiet sleep and active sleep. During quiet sleep, they are pale and still. During active sleep, their skin color rapidly changes with arms twitching and eye movements similar to REM sleep of mammals. Some of these are signs of an octopus waking experiences; hunting, exploring, and interacting with their environment.
It should be recognized by the fact life does exist, and animals are independent living entities that struggle to survive, look for food (prey), avoid predators, face challenges of life, reproduce, the ability learn, think, and memorize suggest that they all have consciousness. The author overemphasizes the ethical implications of scientific studies discussed in this book. His calls for a reevaluation of our moral responsibilities toward animals oversteps the boundaries, particularly his philosophical musings.
Many animals dream! Scientific studies using brain monitoring during sleep show that mammals and some birds go through sleep stages similar to humans like REM (Rapid Eye Movement). For example, when a dog twitches its paws or whimper in its sleep, it’s likely “dreaming,” probably about chasing or playing. Dreams process memories, learning, and problem-solving. Recent studies also show that invertebrates like octopuses also experience dreaming. It is characterized by two distinct sleep stages: quiet sleep and active sleep. During quiet sleep, they are pale and still. During active sleep, their skin color rapidly changes with arms twitching and eye movements similar to REM sleep of mammals. Some of these are signs of an octopus waking experiences; hunting, exploring, and interacting with their environment.
It should be recognized by the fact life does exist, and animals are independent living entities that struggle to survive, look for food (prey), avoid predators, face challenges of life, reproduce, the ability learn, think, and memorize suggest that they all have consciousness. The author overemphasizes the ethical implications of scientific studies discussed in this book. His calls for a reevaluation of our moral responsibilities toward animals oversteps the boundaries, particularly his philosophical musings.
December 21, 2023
The writing of this book is just gorgeous. Poetic. By far the most lyrical nonfiction book I have ever read. I felt so smart, and while the vernacular is complex, it had the most beautiful descriptions and concepts. I loved this book. 10/10
I thought it was going to be mostly about octopus because of the cover, and because octopus are my current hyperfixation (octopi and octopus are both correct plurals) but instead was drawn into the philosophical and ethical debate of “moral value”, which was fascinating. I don’t read much philosophy or about consciousness, but you never know how much you don’t know.
I’m really considering emailing my high school psychology teacher and recommending him this book.
It wasn’t too long, so engaging, a little dense and information-y, but I felt so educated. So intellectual in the best way. In the way where you love learning, love reading something you can tell the author is passionate about. That’s what I love about good books, when you can tell the author is really invested in the subject. Ugh, I just loved this book, I already want to read it again because I know I missed so much and it’ll feel like the first time all over again. I love reading!
I thought it was going to be mostly about octopus because of the cover, and because octopus are my current hyperfixation (octopi and octopus are both correct plurals) but instead was drawn into the philosophical and ethical debate of “moral value”, which was fascinating. I don’t read much philosophy or about consciousness, but you never know how much you don’t know.
I’m really considering emailing my high school psychology teacher and recommending him this book.
It wasn’t too long, so engaging, a little dense and information-y, but I felt so educated. So intellectual in the best way. In the way where you love learning, love reading something you can tell the author is passionate about. That’s what I love about good books, when you can tell the author is really invested in the subject. Ugh, I just loved this book, I already want to read it again because I know I missed so much and it’ll feel like the first time all over again. I love reading!
March 12, 2024
Un libro interesante, te hace cuestionar muchas cosas que das por sentado o ni siquiera te tomas el tiempo de pensar. Más allá de la parte científica nos adentramos a un pasaje filosófico en dónde los animales sueñan y son conscientes. El autor intenta hacernos pensar de formas diferentes a través de los animales y no a través del homo sapiens quien se cree el único universo y que todo gira a su alrededor, cuando la realidad es que existen un sin fin de ellos con sus propios matices y no por ello de menor importancia. Con esto quiero dejar el mensaje que más marco, los animales son seres que merecen respeto y vivir dignamente porque la línea que creíamos nos hace superiores realmente es cuestionable puesto que todo ser es inteligente, consciente y siente en varios aspectos, claro no igual que nosotros u otros animales, y es ahí donde muchos autores nos recalcan que la conciencia fenoménica (que sientan y perciban) los deben hacer dignos de un estatus moral pero la realidad es otra hoy en día los utilizan como medios para llegar un fin en lugar de fines. Si el mundo sigue ignorando cuestiones como estás ¿qué nos queda? Que también se atribuya una falta de conciencia a los propios seres humanos cuando estos no puedan hablar o sean incapaces de utilizar la conciencia de acceso.
March 7, 2025
Overall I enjoyed this - very good writing and clear explanations of some convoluted philosophical ideas. The book itself is an interesting blend of scientific research, philosophy, and ethics.
I came into the book with the idea that it would be a broad coverage of the current research into animal dreams, and though it touched on this, the thesis is more related to the author's moral and philosophical arguments.
As a result of this, there is obviously some bias on the part of the author, which when viewed through the lens of the book as an argument, is forgivable.
While I don't deny that animals have been and continue to be horribly mistreated, the author seems to imply that the prevailing philosophy is that animals lack consciousness and thus moral consideration. As someone who works in the academic field of animal welfare, this is certainly not true in the modern climate (though I cannot speak for those in the realm of philosophy).
This presentation that the majority of the scientific, agricultural, and governmental communities don't necessarily consider animals conscious was rather irksome, and seemed to be used to help the author's stance seem more radical.
Overall, an interesting and enjoyable book. I certainly learned lots!
I came into the book with the idea that it would be a broad coverage of the current research into animal dreams, and though it touched on this, the thesis is more related to the author's moral and philosophical arguments.
As a result of this, there is obviously some bias on the part of the author, which when viewed through the lens of the book as an argument, is forgivable.
While I don't deny that animals have been and continue to be horribly mistreated, the author seems to imply that the prevailing philosophy is that animals lack consciousness and thus moral consideration. As someone who works in the academic field of animal welfare, this is certainly not true in the modern climate (though I cannot speak for those in the realm of philosophy).
This presentation that the majority of the scientific, agricultural, and governmental communities don't necessarily consider animals conscious was rather irksome, and seemed to be used to help the author's stance seem more radical.
Overall, an interesting and enjoyable book. I certainly learned lots!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 24, 2024
I was summoned to leave a review on this book. Like most scientific literature, there was a degree of redundancy in explaining a few topics, but I still found it relatively insightful. Comparing physiological and psychological activity across a number of animal species in an active, "real world" state to their states in REM/sleep unconsciousness was intriguing (especially the example of a domesticated octopus expanding and contracting its chromatophores in what was assumed to be an unconscious state). Events like these can be a foundation for one's argument that animals are ethic beings not only capable of mentally reiterating moments (particularly those that introduced a type of emotional phenomenon), but are designed to. There is also an element of questioning our own ethics as our species continues to devalue other animal species based on mental cognizance. The rats in our laboratories have shown a resemblance of brain activity while unconscious to brain activity studied while going through a maze earlier that day. I think there was a careful balance of accounting for anthropomorphic bias while still maintaining an evolutionary relationship to participants in the case studies.
June 10, 2024
Cuando seleccioné este libro esperaba un ensayo muy centrado en aspectos biológicos, tal vez en la línea de Otras mentes, de Peter Godfrey-Smith, o El ingenio de los peces, de Jonathan Balcombe. Sin embargo, este ensayo no se vuelca tanto en describir el comportamiento animal desde un punto de vista del comportamiento animal sino en reflexionar acerca de qué es realmente la consciencia y cuáles son sus límites.
No abandona completamente el ámbito de la biología: incluye descripciones acerca de la morfología cerebral de diferentes especies animales y desarrolla diferentes experimentos que se han realizado para explorar los fenómenos del sueño y la consciencia en animales. Existen también menciones a teorías y hallazgos del ámbito de la psicología. Sin embargo, donde más incide este ensayo es en la vertiente filosófica y fenomenológica de la consciencia en sí.
Es una obra ampliamente documentada y con abundante bibliografía sobre la que apoyar sus tesis, una obra que plantea más preguntas que respuestas y que combina biología, psicología y filosofía, con algo más de peso de esta última. En definitiva, un libro interesante, pero que no es para cualquiera.
No abandona completamente el ámbito de la biología: incluye descripciones acerca de la morfología cerebral de diferentes especies animales y desarrolla diferentes experimentos que se han realizado para explorar los fenómenos del sueño y la consciencia en animales. Existen también menciones a teorías y hallazgos del ámbito de la psicología. Sin embargo, donde más incide este ensayo es en la vertiente filosófica y fenomenológica de la consciencia en sí.
Es una obra ampliamente documentada y con abundante bibliografía sobre la que apoyar sus tesis, una obra que plantea más preguntas que respuestas y que combina biología, psicología y filosofía, con algo más de peso de esta última. En definitiva, un libro interesante, pero que no es para cualquiera.
October 19, 2024
From the title, I thought it would be about popular science. But this is a serious book, in essay form, and can be a challenging read as it contains as much philosophy as biology, and there is a lot of empirical work examined here.
Peña-Guzmán discusses the work of neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers from a variety of fields, including those in morality, ethics, and cognitive science. He thus shows that dreams provide an invaluable window into the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals.
Studies that have provided neurophysiological, behavioural, and anatomical evidence for animal dreaming are also discussed.
Moreover, it delves into philosophy to explore whether animals dream, what they might be dreaming about, and what the philosophical and moral implications of this are for contemporary debates about animal cognition, animal ethics, and animal rights.
The author builds a compelling argument for animals as conscious beings and examines the scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions it raises.
A journey into the realm of non-human consciousness.
Contains sixty-five pages of notes, references and bibliography.
Peña-Guzmán discusses the work of neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers from a variety of fields, including those in morality, ethics, and cognitive science. He thus shows that dreams provide an invaluable window into the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals.
Studies that have provided neurophysiological, behavioural, and anatomical evidence for animal dreaming are also discussed.
Moreover, it delves into philosophy to explore whether animals dream, what they might be dreaming about, and what the philosophical and moral implications of this are for contemporary debates about animal cognition, animal ethics, and animal rights.
The author builds a compelling argument for animals as conscious beings and examines the scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions it raises.
A journey into the realm of non-human consciousness.
Contains sixty-five pages of notes, references and bibliography.
July 22, 2024
Way to burry the lead with the title.
What I thought would be an exploration of whether different animals dream turned out to be an interdisciplinary analysis of animal and human conscience and morality of the way we as humans treat animals through discussing the relevant academic literature on biology, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy.
The author did a great job in distinguishing between his own opinions and ones contained in the academic literature he mentions, as well as in pointing out the incompleteness of his own theories and the inherent limitations in researching animal consciousness.
At the same time the book does require a level of familiarity with the field and due to this is relatively dense in information. Personally I would have appreciated a more structured approach to in-text references to academic literature as some works were cited numerous times throughout the book, making it difficult for laymen to see the connections to the discussions of the same work in different chapters. Something like “[name of study] (also discussed in Chapters … and …)”
What I thought would be an exploration of whether different animals dream turned out to be an interdisciplinary analysis of animal and human conscience and morality of the way we as humans treat animals through discussing the relevant academic literature on biology, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy.
The author did a great job in distinguishing between his own opinions and ones contained in the academic literature he mentions, as well as in pointing out the incompleteness of his own theories and the inherent limitations in researching animal consciousness.
At the same time the book does require a level of familiarity with the field and due to this is relatively dense in information. Personally I would have appreciated a more structured approach to in-text references to academic literature as some works were cited numerous times throughout the book, making it difficult for laymen to see the connections to the discussions of the same work in different chapters. Something like “[name of study] (also discussed in Chapters … and …)”
August 25, 2024
David M. Peña-Guzmán nos pone al día en su libro Cuando los animales sueñan de las investigaciones sobre los sueños y la consciencia de los animales. A lo largo de la primera mitad del libro va contando casos concretos de diversos animales (pulpos, ratas, perros, pájaros o chimpancés) junto con las conclusiones que sacan los científicos tras analizar los sueños de cada uno de ellos.
En este punto creo importante apuntar que Peña-Guzmán usa los sueños de los animales con la intención de tratar cuestiones filosóficas con las que nos quiere llevar a pensar (nunca pensé que usaría la palabra mayéutica en toda mi vida) algo que él ya tiene claro desde el principio pero que intenta disimular: ¿son moralmente correctos las granjas, los zoológicos o los laboratorios de investigación? Si disfrutan y padece, si sueñan e imaginan, al igual que lo hacemos nosotros, ¿no es lógico pensar que tenemos una responsabilidad ética con ellos?
https://www.cuantaciencia.com/cuando-...
En este punto creo importante apuntar que Peña-Guzmán usa los sueños de los animales con la intención de tratar cuestiones filosóficas con las que nos quiere llevar a pensar (nunca pensé que usaría la palabra mayéutica en toda mi vida) algo que él ya tiene claro desde el principio pero que intenta disimular: ¿son moralmente correctos las granjas, los zoológicos o los laboratorios de investigación? Si disfrutan y padece, si sueñan e imaginan, al igual que lo hacemos nosotros, ¿no es lógico pensar que tenemos una responsabilidad ética con ellos?
https://www.cuantaciencia.com/cuando-...
February 21, 2024
Guzman speaks with profound intellectual prowess concerning the scope of animal consciousness, bridging the gap between philosophy and neuroscience by filling the spaces which history and science have left by the wayside. It’s common knowledge that research and industry are built on the backs of nonhuman animals, taken for granted to be mindless automatons. But there is so much left to learn, not only about ourselves and what it means to be human, but what it means to be alive, to be a conscious being existing in the world. I hope more books like this continue to be written and spread, if only to do an iota of justice to the giants we stand on the shoulders of, our nonhuman compatriots.
Also Guzman co-hosts a podcast called Overthink, that’s dedicated to bringing philosophical education to a wider audience. Definitely check it out if you enjoy sociocultural commentary with a philosophical twist!
Also Guzman co-hosts a podcast called Overthink, that’s dedicated to bringing philosophical education to a wider audience. Definitely check it out if you enjoy sociocultural commentary with a philosophical twist!
July 12, 2023
És aquest un llibre que normalment no hauria llegit, i no hauria passat res. Sento que és aquest un assaig en què l'autor es dirigeix més cap als seus col•legues de la comunitat científica que cap el lector; un atac vers la concepció antropocèntrica i racionalista de la consciència, del món oníric i de l'existència. És per a mi un llibre amb una fonamentació científica forta i centrada en anàlisis neurològiques, en escàners d'activitat cerebral, i la tesi del qual és que els animals - i part de fora del regne animal també- somnien d'una manera similar a com ho fem nosaltres, amb una consciència fenomenològica. Potser no m'ha interessat massa perquè a mi, precisament, no m'havia de convèncer. És un llibre interessant, de totes maneres, i he après alguns conceptes nous. Seguiré amb els de Godfrey-Smith.
October 28, 2023
Tanto el título como la contraportada tienden a engaño. Además, casi un 30% del libro (al final) son referencias bibliográficas y notas.
El libro trata más sobre la filosofía, ética y moral de los sueños y la consciencia que sobre lo que pasa cuando los animales sueñan (cognitiva, fisiológica o en algún otro aspecto).
Acabo de terminar el libro y estoy muy decepcionada. Sigo exactamente con los mismos interrogantes con los que empecé a leer. Los datos se exponen desde el punto de vista del autor, que deja muy claro su punto de vista durante todo el libro (tanto, que a veces molesta por parecer que está aleccionado moralmente aunque estés de acuerdo con él).
Por último, se expone una visión totalmente equivocada de lo que es la experimentación animal, su regulación normativa y la aproximación que hacemos los investigadores cuando la llevamos a cabo (por lo menos, en España).
El libro trata más sobre la filosofía, ética y moral de los sueños y la consciencia que sobre lo que pasa cuando los animales sueñan (cognitiva, fisiológica o en algún otro aspecto).
Acabo de terminar el libro y estoy muy decepcionada. Sigo exactamente con los mismos interrogantes con los que empecé a leer. Los datos se exponen desde el punto de vista del autor, que deja muy claro su punto de vista durante todo el libro (tanto, que a veces molesta por parecer que está aleccionado moralmente aunque estés de acuerdo con él).
Por último, se expone una visión totalmente equivocada de lo que es la experimentación animal, su regulación normativa y la aproximación que hacemos los investigadores cuando la llevamos a cabo (por lo menos, en España).
August 13, 2025
Having just read Peter Godfrey-Smith's Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science has given me a little extra information to understand why scientists are currently being so difficult about acknowledging something that seems so self-evident to everyone else. Still, I get the feeling the main reason they're so stubborn has more to do with not wanting to lose humanity's status as "smartest and God's favourite", which makes me endlessly annoyed.
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