Optimism about Measuring Animal Feelings

Heather Browning; Walter Veit

doi:10.1007/s41649-023-00244-7

Optimism about Measuring Animal Feelings

Asian Bioeth Rev. 2023 Mar 15;15(3):351-355. doi: 10.1007/s41649-023-00244-7. eCollection 2023 Jul.

Authors

Heather Browning¹, Walter Veit²

Affiliations

¹ University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
² University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.

Abstract

While animal sentience research has flourished in the last decade, scepticism about our ability to accurately measure animal feelings has unfortunately remained fairly common. Here, we argue that evolutionary considerations about the functions of feelings will give us more reason for optimism and outline a method for how this might be achieved.

Keywords: Animal ethics; Animal pain; Animal sentience; Animal welfare; Consciousness studies.