![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.blog-thebrain.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/\u00e9cole-d\u00e9t\u00e9-ISC-2018.jpg\" "\\"\u00e9cole")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.\u201d<\/em> – Thomas Nagel<\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>What is it like to be a bat?\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span> is the somewhat disconcerting title of philosopher Thomas Nagel\u2019s famous 1974 article<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong> on the ineffability of subjective consciousness. In reality, we humans will never know what it is like to use echolocation to navigate as we fly through the air, because, unlike bats, we simply don\u2019t have the bodies or the nervous systems to do so. But the question of animals\u2019 experience in general is nevertheless highly relevant, if only because our human species has the faculty of language<\/span><\/a><\/span> and has developed a scientific method that lets us make observations and deductions about the mental states of other human beings and other animals. And because humans domesticate, exploit and exterminate thousands of other animal species, knowing what they may experience becomes an ethical imperative to guide the way we treat them.<\/p>\n That was the idea behind a 10-day summer school entitled \u201cThe other minds problem: animal sentience and cognition\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong>, presented in 2018 by the Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0\u00a0 Montr\u00e9al Institut des sciences cognitives<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong> (UQAM\/ISC institute of cognitive science). At this event, some 60 comparative psychologists, ethologists, evolutionary scientists and cognitive neurobiologists<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong> made presentations on scientific efforts to understand the thought processes of other animal species. (To watch a video of each presentation, click the preceding link, then click on the presenter\u2019s name.) As the overview<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong> of the summer school so nicely put it, these presenters played the role of human spokespersons for elephants, monkeys, whales, cows, pigs, chickens, mice, fish, lizards, lobsters and snails, attempting to communicate in words what science believes it understands about their mental processes.<\/p>\n