Month: August 2024

Scientists Look to Stop Bird Flu Spreading in Cows

At first glance, it looks like an unassuming farm. Cows are scattered across fenced-in fields. A milking barn sits in the distance with a tractor parked alongside. But the people who work there are not farmers, and other buildings look more like what you’d find at a modern… Read Full Article (External Site) Dr. David […]

Published on August 23, 2024

Animals and the iterative natural kind strategy

What entities are conscious and how could we ever know? We recently provided a framework for developing validated tests for consciousness (‘C-tests’): the Iterative Natural Kind Strategy (INKS) [1]. Brown and colleagues [2] raise some important questions for the INKS approach, although we are not sure how different their answers to those questions are from […]

Published on August 23, 2024

To test the boundaries of consciousness, study animals

How can we validate tests for consciousness beyond healthy adult humans? Bayne and colleagues propose the ‘iterative natural kind strategy’ (INKS) [1]. INKS begins by taking seriously all tests with at least some face validity rather than restricting our attention to a small subset of tests that antecedently pass stringent requirements of validation. We then […]

Published on August 23, 2024