Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can we know what animals are thinking?

medium.economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 234 posts

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#81

Post by gus_massa »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #70
gruez wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the more rational position would be that animals do think, as we are animals, and we think. *x* can *y*, as *z* is a subset of *x*, and *z* can *y*. See the issue here?

I never said my position was logical, just rational so far as it's based on my limited subjective reasoning.

Some animal don't have a nervous system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge and some have a system that is extremely simple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian . Saying that they can "think" is extending the concept too much, and will not be a useful concept.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#82

Post by [deleted] »

interfixus wrote: post #49
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #36

I think the more rational position would be that animals do think, as we are animals, and we think. To claim that animals do not think has no basis outside of our own condescending perspective. If we cannot prove one way or another then I feel my position is the more rational and should be the default position.

Exactly. I have enormous difficulty understanding how anybody could fail to hold this view.

[deleted]

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#83

Post by tpeo »

lngnmn wrote: post #67
tpeo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it funny that you're being downvoted to shit for holding an opinion which actually was quite common in the philosophy of mind, and which hasn't been quite yet superseded. Or at least I guess so, because nothing in philosophy ever really is. The identification of thought (or rather reason ) with language was explicitly advocated by Descartes in part V of the Discourse on the Method , where he suggested a test f…

Exactly. Information processing is information processing, and thinking is a process which is based on a language. Otherwise it loses all meaning - cells are thinking, tissues are thinking, computers are thinking, bacterias, etc. People seem to forget that "thinking machines" is still a metaphor which cannot be interpreted literally.

Honestly, I don't think it's such of an issue. If there's a real difference between the kind of information processing that occurs within a cell from that which occurs within the brain, it doesn't really matter what it is called.

Of course, the language within any field matters to the practitioners in that field. Things can be as easy or as hard to understand as the strictness and clarity of the language in that field allows it. But what do I mean is that, if any expression in a field ever fell in to such a degree of obscurity as to be said to have "lost all meaning", whatever it described still might be independently rediscovered later on. So meaning isn't something that needs to be formulated into a categorical imperative, or otherwise we might lose it forever. Striving towards clarity and towards a discriminating usage of words is a practical rule, not a moral one.

Plus, arguing definitions is never a sound choice.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#85

Post by roceasta »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #36

I think the more rational position would be that animals do think, as we are animals, and we think. To claim that animals do not think has no basis outside of our own condescending perspective. If we cannot prove one way or another then I feel my position is the more rational and should be the default position.

You're trying to explain why you think animals can think. The desire and the ability to explain things, and not thinking per se, is (I guess) what distinguishes humans from animals.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#86

Post by cryodesign »

wolco wrote: post #75
cryodesign wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things: * Veganism isn't about health[1]. It's about avoiding exploitation of other sentient and intelligent beings and reducing suffering on many levels. * The difference between us and other animals is that we have the ability of critical thinking. We can change our attitude and mind when presented with new information. A lion can't do this (also, a lion needs meat to survive, modern humans don't). There is a…

What is your take on the morally of eating plants. Plants are living creatures some would say sentient beings. Recent research is showing they feel pain, communicate with other plants. Do they deserve the same protection?

Good question. Imagine plants feel pain like other animals and like we do. If our objective is to avoid suffering and environmental damage as much as possible, which one would you choose:

1) Eat animals and plants. Remember the animals you eat also eat plants. This creates maximum suffering and damage.

2) Eat plants only. This creates less suffering and damage than option 1.

To answer your question though, if it's scientifically proven that plants are sentient and feel pain like we do (i.e. suffer) then I would only eat what plants produce (e.g. nuts, legumes, apples, etc) rather than the plant itself (e.g. carrots).

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#87

Post by roceasta »

csomar wrote: post #31
lngnmn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definition of thinking, like definition of sex, or any other biological trait cannot be broadened. That would yield nonsense. Thinking implies language. Without language it is feeling. Period. Learning from experience, map making and even planning, as one might see in case of machine learning and other branches of AI, does not require thinking. It is a lower level of activity, relative to abstract reasoning, like pat…

You are being downvoted because you are making strong claims without having anything to back it up. You are free to have your own definitions of things but people like to have the same. This helps in carrying on a useful conversation.

Yes. To be fair I think most people here want animals to be able to think (and for other humans to think that animals can think) because they want animals to be protected from humans.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#88

Post by tpeo »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #80
tpeo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should they object to it, though? If an unsubstantiated claim can't be said to be anything other than an opinion, then it's just his opinion. Plus, it doesn't really matter whether he was being "doctrinaire" or not, because nothing was actually being imposed of me. I'm not being forced to subscribe to this view, I'm not being threatened (e.g. with getting a low grade, being fired, being burned at the stake). And…

OP literally started their comment with "No." and followed it up with 3–4 blanket assertions. Slatestarcodex has a comment policy ( http://slatestarcodex.com/comments/ ) that I think is very relevant here too because I think that's how people implicitly judge most comments—"If you make a comment here, it had better be either true and necessary, true and kind, or kind and necessary." OP's statement was not 100% true s…

I didn't say he was kind.

I am good to people who are good.

I am also good to people who are not good.

Because Virtue is goodness.

People should be thought as being free to speak their mind in whatever way it suits them. Not because they should, but because they will. And when the time comes, it's up to me whether to make an issue of it or not. And in so far as I know, I'd rather not.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#89

Post by mitchty »

_jal wrote: post #43
csomar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats and Dogs are very aware of human beings, and no, they are not interested in killing or eating you.

Cats do, in fact, snack on deceased owners. Whether they enjoy it, I can't say. When I had a cat, I'd fairly frequently wake up with her staring at me, sitting on my chest in the "breath stealing" position. I always imagine her inner dialog being something like, "Morning! Are you dead yet? Can I eat your eyes? OK, not dead yet. Scratch my nose?"

Dogs also snack on deceased owners. In as little as 45 minutes as well.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/pets-dogs-cats-ea...

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#90

Post by EliRivers »

lngnmn wrote: post #5

No. 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…

AH, you again. I think I recall you went off on a long thread about this not so long ago. You posit (without proof) that if a creature has no language, it cannot think, because only the parts of the brain that deal with language are capable of thinking.

There is a large amount of experimental evidence showing some animals planning for the future, imagining what other creatures will do based on what they have seen, making tools, saving tools for the future to deal with predicted future situations, solving puzzles they've never seen before (did they learn to solve puzzles they've never seen before from experience?), beating humans in gestalt tests, communicating via sign language (how about those animals? They communicate via sign language; do they think?), and various other things that by any sensible definition are the product of mental processes everyone else here considers "thought".

It seems that as far as you are concerned, "thinking" is defined as something to do with language. Everyone else is using a different definition. If you clearly explained your definition of "thinking", perhaps this will turn out to all be a misunderstanding and you're actually saying something completely different.

Simply stating over and over that without language there is no thought does not help your case, as everyone else here considers that to be trivially falsifiable by the animals they see doing things that must be the product of thought.

Post reply on HN