The database of research on animal sentience is strong and rapidly growing. If you're a topical expert - researcher, business leader, author or innovator - and would like to contribute an op-ed piece, email us here. Evidence of animal sentience is everywhere - the remaining questions are a matter of why sentience evolved, not if it evolved. I call this Dawkins's Dangerous Idea.Д«ut, the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare is instead based on what I believe is the indisputable fact that animals are sentient and that they can suffer and feel pain, as recognized by the Treaty of Lisbon and the rapidly growing field of compassionate conservation. One notable exception is Oxford University's Marian Dawkins who continues to claim we still don't know if other animals are conscious - using the same data as those who wrote the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. I don't offer any specific, geographic location for this declaration because, with very few exceptions, people worldwide - including researchers and non-researchers alike - accept that other animals are sentient beings. For the purpose of this essay I am defining 'sentience' as ' the ability to feel, perceive, or be conscious, or to experience subjectivity' (for wide-ranging discussion please click here.) And, I'm sure as time goes on, researchers will add many other animals to the consciousness club.ДЄ universal declaration on animal sentienceД«ased on the overwhelming and universal acceptance of the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness I offer here what I call a Universal Declaration on Animal Sentience.

They could also have included fish, for whom the evidence supporting sentience and consciousness is also compelling (see also). Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.' Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.

The scientists behind the declaration wrote, 'Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. As I was flying home, I thought of a previous essay I wrote called ' Scientists Finally Conclude Nonhuman Animals Are Conscious Beings' in which I discussed the the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness that was publicly proclaimed on July 7, 2012, at that university.

Sapience vs sentience