What is it to be aware? A Pragmatic Approach to Comparing Animal Awareness
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Proposes that awareness should be understood as an organism's abilities to selectively process, store, and use information for goal-directed action, and illustrates this pragmatic approach through spatial awareness in desert ants. |
Abstract
Efforts to understand animal abilities face longstanding conceptual and methodological challenges, especially regarding cognition and consciousness. Awareness has largely suffered a similar fate, having been subsumed into these discussions rather than examined on its own merit. This paper asks what it means to be aware. The proposal is to understand it as an organism’s abilities to selectively process, store, and use information in the service of goal-directed action. A pragmatic approach to awareness for comparative research is developed and briefly illustrated through an example of spatial awareness in desert ants.