Mentophobia or mentaphobia is a concept described by

Donald Griffin Donald Redfield Griffin (August 3, 1915 – November 7, 2003) was an American professor of zoology at various universities who conducted seminal research in animal behavior, animal navigation, acoustic orientation and sensory biophysics. In 1938, ...

, an American zoologist and the founder of

cognitive ethology Cognitive ethology is a branch of ethology concerned with the influence of conscious awareness and intention on the behaviour of an animal. Donald Griffin, a zoology professor in the United States, set up the foundations for researches in the cogn ...

, to denote strong resistance from scientists to the idea that animals, other than humans, are

conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

. Griffin argued that there is a taboo "against scientific consideration of private, conscious, mental experiences" that leads to the minimization of the significance of the consciousness of non-human animals, as well as human consciousness and asserted that this presents a significant barrier to scientific progress. Mentophobia has been likened to

Frans de Waal Franciscus Bernardus Maria "Frans" de Waal (born October 29, 1948) is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, ...

's concept of anthropodenial: "a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves". It has also been compared with an observation by

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...

that "a curious asymmetry can be observed" when it comes to the certainty of human consciousness not being required for moral certainty, but moral certainty is not applied when it comes to the experiences of other animals. David Chauvet in ''Contre la Mentaphobie'' ("Against Mentaphobia"), argues that the denial of the consciousness of animals alleviates the guilt that is associated with abuses directed towards them.

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