To Be or Not to Be Conscious: Reflections on the Phenomenological Complexity of the Macaque Mind

Abstract

One of the most difficult aspects of studying consciousness scientifically, particularly in other-than-humans, is to develop functional definitions for the phenomenon in non-verbal beings, wherein consciousness has to manifest itself in behavioural actions that can be unambiguously ascribed to being products of conscious states of the mind. Walter Veit’s novel pathological complexity thesis proposes to investigate nonhuman consciousness from an evolutionarily bottom-up perspective, casting aside our obsessive preoccupation with the complexities of human consciousness, and seeks to understand the adaptive origins of even the most minimal forms of subjective experience. In this brief response to Veit’s proposal, I offer glimpses into the phenomenologically complex minds of wild individual bonnet macaques Macaca radiata – a cercopithecine nonhuman primate endemic to peninsular India – examined through deep naturalistic observations of their cognitive decision-making processes. Such explorations, I believe, are critically important, in not only revealing the innovative responses of these cognitive beings to the pathological complexity presented by the socioecological realities of the everyday but also in uncovering the mechanisms by which these individuals may be able to ‘consciously’ synthesise their various subjective experiences to take novel decisions at different stages of their challenging life histories in the long term, as postulated by Veit.