Can we know what animals are thinking?
medium.economist.com
Can we know what animals are thinking?
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Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#2"No animals have all the attributes of human minds; but almost all the attributes of human minds are found in some animal or other"
This was a fun read in general, but I think it's particularly interesting to consider some of its implications in the context of trends in AI (to be clear, the article has nothing to do with AI).
I think the excerpt above is rapidly becoming true for current generation ML/AI systems (I'm leaving aside the question of qualia [0], since we are still unclear how to evaluate that question even for animals).
To the extent the above becomes true, I think it's an interesting contrast to the implied point behind Dijkstra's famous "swimming submarine" analogy:
"The question of whether machines can think... is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim."
The submarine "swims", but almost none of that activity could be mapped onto how a human swims. As the structure of ML/AI systems starts to mimic what we believe we know about the neuroscience of the brain, the question of whether machines are "thinking", and what that might mean about thought in general, is very interesting.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#3"No animals have all the attributes of human minds; but almost all the attributes of human minds are found in some animal or other" This was a fun read in general, but I think it's particularly interesting to consider some of its implications in the context of trends in AI (to be clear, the article has nothing to do with AI). I think the excerpt above is rapidly becoming true for current generation ML/AI systems (I'm…
The question, to me, is whether machines will ever have consciousness, or whether consciousness is just "what it feels like to have a cortex". We assume that machines will have consciousness some day, but what if we had a machine that could do many things as well as a human, but didn't consider itself "alive"?
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#4"No animals have all the attributes of human minds; but almost all the attributes of human minds are found in some animal or other" This was a fun read in general, but I think it's particularly interesting to consider some of its implications in the context of trends in AI (to be clear, the article has nothing to do with AI). I think the excerpt above is rapidly becoming true for current generation ML/AI systems (I'm…
The question, to me, is whether machines will ever have consciousness, or whether consciousness is just "what it feels like to have a cortex". We assume that machines will have consciousness some day, but what if we had a machine that could do many things as well as a human, but didn't consider itself "alive"?
Yes, this is closely connected to the question of qualia, and the concept of a "philosophical zombie" [0].
On the one hand, naive human intuition seems to suggest that the "movie playing in your head" would not emerge from any number of transistors and wires connected to each other.
On the other hand, it's not clear how you can argue that what goes on in our own heads is physically any different. So that leads you either to religion, or to the idea that somehow consciousness has to emerge from interactions of matter. And if that's the case, it raises all sorts of ethical questions about the creation of artifacts that might (some day) exhibit consciousness. And, of course, there are already many ethical questions about how we treat animals in the here-and-now.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#5No. Animals don't think, because thinking requires language, based on it conceptual thinking and related brain circuitry which animals still didn't evolve.
Signaling systems and elaborate warning cries do not account for a language.
Animals only feel. They have emotions, environmental clues and heuristics, everything but a language and hence no thinking by definition. That is exactly what some call non-verbal,'animal' mind. Emotional states and behavioral patterns and learning from experience only. Look at toddlers to grasp what it means.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#6
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#7No. Animals don't think, because thinking requires language, based on it conceptual thinking and related brain circuitry which animals still didn't evolve. Signaling systems and elaborate warning cries do not account for a language. Animals only feel. They have emotions, environmental clues and heuristics, everything but a language and hence no thinking by definition. That is exactly what some call non-verbal,'animal…
Unless you use an extremely narrow definition of "thinking" (yours is not commonly accepted among animal researchers, and is IMO too tautological to be useful), this is clearly disproven by decades of animal cognition research.
Animals can form future-oriented plans, engage in risk management activities, can remember inventories of items stored in safekeeping locations, develop "cultural" dialects to their vocalization patterns, and much more. You can find a good start on the current state of the research here
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#8No. Animals don't think, because thinking requires language, based on it conceptual thinking and related brain circuitry which animals still didn't evolve. Signaling systems and elaborate warning cries do not account for a language. Animals only feel. They have emotions, environmental clues and heuristics, everything but a language and hence no thinking by definition. That is exactly what some call non-verbal,'animal…
Citation needed.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#9No. Animals don't think, because thinking requires language, based on it conceptual thinking and related brain circuitry which animals still didn't evolve. Signaling systems and elaborate warning cries do not account for a language. Animals only feel. They have emotions, environmental clues and heuristics, everything but a language and hence no thinking by definition. That is exactly what some call non-verbal,'animal…
> Animals don't think, because thinking requires language and abstract brain circuitry which animals still didn't evolve.
Animals certainly can think. And they have limited language, certainly not as complex as ours, but they are capable of communicating with each other.
Just because humans are much smarter doesn't mean animals don't think.
> Look at toddlers to grasp what it means.
Toddlers certainly think, though not on the same level as older children and adults. And certainly many animals like chimps, pigs and crows can think better than toddlers.
> Animals only feel.
If animals only felt and couldn't think, how can they think to use tools?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/this-cro...
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#10Obligatory: https://img.ifcdn.com/images/e7aa1c63573be10d2cb7b18edc55b0d...
Obligatory SMBC:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3864