The evidence for animal consciousness is indirect. But so is the evidence for the big bang, neutrinos, or human evolution. As in any event, such unusual assertions must be subject to rigorous scientific procedure, before they can be accepted as even vague possibilities. Intriguing, but more proof is required. However merely because we do not understand something does not mean that it is false - or not. Studying other animal minds is a useful comparative method and could even lead to the creation of artificial intelligence (that does not include irrelevant transitional states for an artificial entity), based on a model not as complex as our own. Still the central point being illustrated is how ignorant our understanding of the human brain, or any other brain is and how one day a concrete theory can change thanks to enlightening findings.

Furthermore, an analogous incident that exemplifies this argument happened in 1847, when an Irish workman, Phineas Cage, shed new light on the field of neuroscience when a rock blasting accident sent an iron rod through the frontal region of his brain. Miraculously enough, he survived the incident, but even more astonishing to the science community at the time were the marked changes in Cage’s personality after the rode punctured his brain. Where before Cage was characterized by his mild mannered nature, he had now become aggressive, rude and "indulging in the grossest profanity, which was not previously his custom, manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires" according to the Boston physician Harlow in 1868. However, Cage sustained no impairment with regards to his intelligence or memory.

The serendipity of the Phineas Cage incident demonstrates how architecturally robust the structure of the brain is and by comparison how rigid a computer is. All mechanical systems and algorithms would stop functioning correctly or completely if an iron rod punctured them, that is with the exception of artificial neural systems and their distributed parallel structure. In the last decade AI has began to resurge thanks to the promising approach of artificial neural systems.

Artificial neural systems or simply neural networks are modelled on the logical associations made by the human brain, they are based on mathematical models that accumulate data, or "knowledge," based on parameters set by administrators. Once the network is "trained" to recognize these parameters, it can make an evaluation, reach a conclusion and take action. In the 1980s, neural networks became widely used with the backpropagation algorithm, first described by Paul John Werbos in 1974. The 1990s marked major achievements in many areas of AI and demonstrations of various applications. Most notably in 1997, IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov. After the match Kasparov was quoted as saying the computer played "like a god."