“Animal Consciousness”

Animal consciousness continues to draw the attention of philosophers, scientists and general audiences and is tethered to ongoing debates about fundamental questions of mind, knowledge, and morality. Phenomenal consciousness is very hard to define without reference to itself. Knowing which animals are sentient and knowing what it is like, that is, what kind of consciousness they possess, are respectively known as the Distribution and Phenomenological questions and essentially aspects of the problem of other minds extended to non-humans. Indeed, human ignorance about other species is arguably the quintessential formulation. As much more has been written on the problem of distribution, this chapter focuses on providing an overview of the main philosophical responses to curiosity about which animals are conscious.