John Conley

“Feelings are widely taken to be necessary and sufficient conditions for ethical concern. The scientific understanding of feelings outlined in this book therefore presents us with an opportunity to think a little more deeply about animal suffering. I have mentioned more than once how the advances in affective neuroscience in the late twentieth century (i.e. the realisation that what is required for sentient being is little more than a midbrain decision triangle, something that we share with all vertebrates) altered many scientists’ views about what is and is not acceptable in animal research. It seems self-evident that the same should apply to the public’s attitude towards animal welfare more generally. For example, how do we justify industrial-scale breeding and slaughter of fellow sentient beings for the purposes of eating them? When addressing this question, we must bear in mind that consciousness emerges by degrees, so that the putative sentience of a fly or a fish cannot be equated directly with that of a human being. By the same token, however, we must remember that sheep and cows and pigs (which feature so prominently on Western menus) are fellow mammals. This means they are subject to the same basic emotions that we are, such as FEAR, PANIC/GRIEF and CARE. Mammals possess a cortex, too, which means they are capable – all of them, to some degree – of consciously ‘remembering the future’ and feeling their way through its probabilities and likelihoods. As the twenty-first century unfolds, in the absence of any higher goal – if all that we are is our consciousness – what else should we do but try to minimise suffering? Now that we have a better idea of where suffering might exist, what else could we do with this knowledge? The preservation and protection of biological consciousness is decidedly not tied to the fate of our species alone.”
― Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness