🔗 Mentophobia
Mentophobia or mentaphobia is a concept described by Donald Griffin, an American zoologist and the founder of cognitive ethology, to denote strong resistance from scientists to the idea that animals, other than humans, are conscious.[1][2] 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.[3]
Mentophobia has been likened to Frans de Waal's concept of anthropodenial:[1] "a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves".