Assembling the Tree of Consciousness: A Study of Scientific Methodology for Investigating the Phylogenetic Distribution of Consciousness (Postdoctoral Fellowship)

尽管人类不是地球上唯一有意识的生物这一观点被广泛接受，并且科学工作和公众对动物意识这一话题的兴趣重新抬头，但关于动物有意识的实际含义，仍有相当多的科学怀疑主义和分歧的公众意见。这个项目解决了两个相关的研究问题。在不同的研究背景下，意识是如何被概念化的？动物意识的各种看似不相容的概念能否以一种基于证据的方式整合或联系起来？该项目将使用科学和哲学立场的概念和逻辑分析方法，生成一系列关于该主题的研究出版物，并将启动一个“在线意识树”，作为该领域的研究、教育、伦理和政策的开放数据库。该项目将提供来自多个学科的现有概念和方法的清晰特征。目标是将这些整合到一个单一的话语领域，围绕已研究的物种之间的系统发育关系组织起来。这将允许不同种类的证据（行为，神经生理，进化等）在它们的系统发育背景下进行评估，并且应该有助于发现现有数据中的模式，以及帮助确定系统研究不足的领域。潜在的更广泛的影响该项目预计将为未来的科学工作提供一般性建议和指导方针，使动物意识的概念范围更加清晰，以及如何研究它，使关注动物福利的政策制定者和伦理学家更容易获得关于意识的最新研究，使社会科学家更容易获得与动物意识研究的历史和社会学模式相关的数据。对于那些希望用任何科学都面临的最困难、最迷人的概念问题挑战学生的教育者来说，这是很容易的。

IntroductionDespite widespread acceptance of the idea that humans are not the only conscious creatures on the planet, and a resurgence of scientific work and public interest in the topic of animal consciousness, considerable scientific skepticism and divergent public opinion remains concerning what it actually means to say that animals are conscious. This project addresses two related research questions. How is consciousness conceptualized in different research contexts? Can the various and seemingly incompatible conceptualizations of animal consciousness be integrated or related in an evidence-based way? Intellectual MeritThe project will use the methods of conceptual and logical analysis of scientific and philosophical positions to generate a series of research publications on this topic, and will initiate an "Online Tree of Consciousness" to serve as an open database for research, education, ethics, and policy in this area. The project will provide a clear characterization of existing concepts and methods from multiple disciplines. The goal is to integrate these into a single domain of discourse organized around phylogenetic relationships among the species that have been studied. This will allow different sorts of evidence (behavioral, neurophysiological, evolutionary, etc.) to be evaluated in their phylogenetic context, and should aid in the discovery of patterns in existing data as well as helping to identify systematically understudied areas. Potential Broader ImpactsThe project is expected to yield general recommendations and guidelines for future scientific work, greater conceptual clarity about the range of ideas about animal consciousness and how to study it, improved accessibility for policymakers and ethicists concerned with animal welfare to the latest research on consciousness, better access for social scientists to data relevant to the historical and sociological patterns of animal consciousness research, and easy access for educators looking to challenge students with one of the hardest and most fascinating conceptual problems facing any science.