Peter Carruthers stands out among philosophers for having previously argued that most animals lack conscious experiences. He returns to the question of non-human consciousness in Human and Animal Minds with another striking view. Where he once proposed that the capacity for higher-order thoughts is essential to phenomenal consciousness and restricted to a small number of species, he now regards its significance as indeterminate. He infers that for many species, there is no fact of the matter either way.
Peter Carruthers is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland. He is the author of numerous articles and books in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and has co-edited seven volumes of interdisciplinary essays in cognitive science. His recent publications include The Opacity of Mind (OUP, 2011) and The Centered Mind (OUP, 2015). In 2018, he won the annual Romanell Prize awarded by the American Philosophical Association.