This paper demonstrates the validity of analogical abduction for attributing consciousness, suggesting its advantages over traditional reasoning methods.
Advances in animal sentience research, neural organoids, and artificial intelligence reinforce the relevance of justifying attributions of consciousness to non-standard systems. Clarifying the argumentative structure behind these attributions is important for evaluating their validity. This paper addresses this issue, concluding that analogical abduction – a form of reasoning combining analogical and abductive elements – is the strongest method for extrapolating consciousness from humans to non-standard systems. We argue that the argument from analogy and inference to the best explanation, individually taken, do not meet the criteria for successful extrapolations, while analogical abduction offers a promising approach despite limitations in current consciousness science.
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Negro et al. (2025) studied this question.
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