3 papers in the library · 32 citations · publishing 2023-2025
Science (New York, N.Y.) February 21, 2025 Kristin Andrews, Jonathan Birch, Jeff Sebo 29 citations
A growing scientific field demonstrates that animal feelings can be investigated using rigorous methods, challenging the long-held view that subjective experiences in non-human animals are beyond scientific reach.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci November 13, 2025 Kristin Andrews, Noam Miller 3 citations
The social origins of consciousness hypothesis proposes that the original adaptive function of consciousness was to enable coordination with group members. Three arguments support this: a phylogenetic argument that consciousness is widespread among animals and likely evolved early to solve the problem of predicting others' behavior and staying together as a group during the Cambrian; a neuroscience argument that even simple brains have capacities for social rewards and pains, with modern brains retaining close connections between social cognition and affect; and an argument from deep adaptive alignment between social pain and harm to animals, building on William James (1890).
Current Biology August 1, 2023 J. LeDoux, Jonathan Birch, Kristin Andrews et al.
Leading experts in consciousness research address big questions about the relationship between AI and consciousness. The piece presents a multi-perspective discussion, with contributors including philosophers, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists responding to challenges posed by Joseph LeDoux and Jonathan Birch. The experts explore whether AI systems could ever be conscious, what criteria might be used to assess machine consciousness, and how insights from animal and human consciousness research might inform these debates. No single conclusion is reached; instead the work maps the current landscape of scientific and philosophical positions on AI consciousness.