 For many people it seems obvious that familiar animals such as dogs and cats have conscious mental lives that include perceptual states, motivational and hedonic states, basic emotions and social attachments.  David Hume, known for championing skepticism generally, wrote that “no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men” (1888 p 176, reproduced in Jamieson 1998). Hume did not provide elaborate philosophical or empirical arguments to this effect — he thought it was clear from observation.  As Searle (1998) puts it,