Lectures on Tap-The Science of Animal Consciousness: Smarter Than We Think

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🧠 Lecture: "The Science of Animal Consciousness: Smarter Than We Think"

🎤 Speaker: Michael Cohen

For most of Western history, animals were dismissed as unfeeling biological machines. The brightest thinkers of the Middle Ages even argued that animals couldn’t truly feel pain. Today, that view is increasingly hard to defend.

In this engaging talk, Michael Cohen traces how our understanding of animal minds has evolved—from philosophical denial to cutting-edge scientific investigation—and then explores what modern research actually shows. The findings are striking: cats perceive visual illusions much like humans, numerous species can perform basic arithmetic, and primates and dolphins can recognize themselves in mirrors.

Across a wide range of species, animals seem to experience the world in ways that rhyme with our own, challenging the sharp boundary we’ve long drawn between human and animal minds. These insights carry profound implications not only for neuroscience and psychology, but also for ethics and animal rights.

Michael Cohen is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Amherst College and a Research Scientist at M.I.T.

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