What Can We Hope to Learn About Animal Minds?

Editor's note: Evolution News is pleased to inaugurate a new series, "Animal Minds," by Denyse O'Leary. You will find this and future installments conveniently gathered here.

Human consciousness is difficult to define and "arguably the central issue in current theorizing about the mind," even though we experience it all our waking hours. If we can't even define our own consciousness, can we say whether a different type of life form has consciousness or a mind?

Some current philosophers have...