Are animals conscious?
Many are, and the science supports it. The 2012 Cambridge Declaration and the 2024 New York Declaration back conscious experience in mammals and birds, and the New York Declaration adds a realistic possibility across all vertebrates and many invertebrates, among them octopuses, crabs and insects. In OPH an animal is an observer that holds a boundary with its world and reads its own state for its own repair. A dog keeps track of trust, fear, hunger and attachment, and those readings steer what it does next. How many such self-readings a mouse or a bee carries is a question for experiment. Plants sense light, signal chemically and respond to injury, and OPH counts them as living federations of observers, yet the evidence for plant experience is weak and OPH makes no claim for it. An animal that can suffer is a moral patient, and its suffering counts whenever anyone's actions reach it.
Also in Chapter 39: Why Is a Bacterium Freer Than an Atom?.
This answer comes from OPH, Observer Patch Holography. OPH is a rigorous, consistent and complete description of the unified, self-creating computational Universe we inhabit. Its consistency is machine-checked: the fixed point at its core is constructed explicitly, and a theory with a model contains no contradiction.
To understand OPH and check every step yourself, start with the free book Reverse Engineering Reality. It builds the theory from the ground up, and the OPH Notebook answers your questions while you read.
read the free bookask the notebookor ask sage:read chapter 40: Does It Feel Like Anything, and What Is Left to Decide?watch a universe make its own particles