Why is animal consciousness still treated like a controversial idea?
Something I genuinely don’t understand:
How did we end up in a world where many people — including scientists for a long time — treated animals almost like biological machines without real self-awareness, emotions, or subjective experience?
And why is it suddenly being presented as “big news” that animals might be far more conscious than we assumed?
For anyone who has ever deeply interacted with an animal, especially a pet they had a real bond with, this feels almost self-evident. Animals clearly show personality, preferences, emotional reactions, memory, fear, affection, curiosity, jealousy, grief, and intentional behavior.
So why did the dominant view for so long seem to lean toward “instinctive automatons” rather than conscious beings? Was it religion, philosophy, scientific caution, human ego, or something else?
I’m genuinely curious how this disconnect happened historically and why public/scientific discourse seems to be “catching up” only recently.