I would always recommend _Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?_ by _Frans de Waal_, it was a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30192493-are-we-smart-en...
Can we know what animals are thinking?
101–110 of 234 posts
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#102>Chaser, a border collie, knows over 1,000 words. She can pull a named toy from a pile of other toys. This shows that she understands that an acoustical pattern stands for a physical object. I don't think it quite shows this. Collies and human toddlers use words (and are used by words) without understanding what they're doing or what the meaning of language is. The understanding comes later, growing over time as we a…
You are confusing different meanings of the word "understanding" here. I am sure you too understand many things intuitively that you don't understand in a reflected way.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sc…
If it's scientifically proven that plants are sentient and feel pain (I'm dropping the like conjunction because that's pushing it past the breaking point), you'd prefer keeping them alive in perpetuity to continually rip off their genitals over killing them outright?
Personally, at least until we can efficiently synthesize arbitrary dietary proteins, fats, and fibers, I'll keep using my computer built from rare earths mined with exploited workers to post about the delicious, factory-slaughtered chicken I just ate.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#104I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans. Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans…
> if animals can think
Well, it is not an easy question to answer. First off, everyone would agree that humans, apes, dogs, squirrels, spiders - all "think" in essentially different ways. This is important. Humans, for example, think mostly in terms of the language (words, phrases) - the way they would talk to other people (or post on Facebook, for that matter). Other animals do not do that. From that perspective, computers are closer to humans than animals. Again, this is an important difference that cannot be ignored. It would help if we had different words for these different levels of "thinking", but we don't.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#105I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans. Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans…
Animals aren't "eco-friendly" because they're intelligent; if they're eco-friendly at all, it's because they're too dumb to do otherwise. Many animals (cf invasive species) are extremly destructive.
Many animals exhibit a much greater degree of tribalism than humans. Consider wild canid species like wolves. Tribalism in humans isn't "made up" either, it makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective even if it's possibly not as useful today.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#106What if, on the outside, thinking is a unitary process, similar to (but not the same as) processes in quantum mechanics. When you observe a result (of someone's mental process; e.g. the dog ended up biting you), you could say "oh, I know what you were thinking", but all you know is in fact the current state of their mind, and, just like in a quantum mechanics, that state will persist (the dog will keep trying to bite you) unless you give it (the process) some time to become unitary again. After that, a new observation may yield a different result.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#107No. They don't. Animals live in the moment and understand causal relationships within time and space. They don't abstract their thoughts and form assemblies or sciences or write histories. Though they understand causal laws better than humans sometimes. Hence you can't teach an animal like you would a human. But you can train an animal. This works on habit, not on abstract thought. Both animals and humans can be trai…
This crow really appears to be thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04&app=desktop
Maybe it only appears to be, but in fact it's some animal form of ML. Hard to say I guess.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#108I know what my cat is thinking. He's plotting to sell me to the cat food factory.
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Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#109I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans. Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans…
First an anecdote. I was laying on the floor in my bedroom and my dog wanted to come in. I told her not to, she stood with her front paws at the entrance for half a second, did a 180 degree turn, body inside the room and started to walk in backwards. I'll never forget that.
I agree with what you say but have yet managed to stop eating them. They taste good. Hopefully one day I'll manage to grow some more backbone.
Whether they communicate or not, of course they do. At a different level, obviously. Who's fault is it for not being able to understand? Theirs because "we" are smarter? That's arrogant. Heck, we have trouble communicating with each other properly.
And... I can't remember what the other comment below was talking about and I'm going to have lunch.
To end, can't remember exactly how to search for it. It went something along the lines of "2014 Cambridge [something]". Where several scientists and other fellow people smarter than myself signed a treaty stating animals are conscious. If I remember correctly.
Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?
#110>Chaser, a border collie, knows over 1,000 words. She can pull a named toy from a pile of other toys. This shows that she understands that an acoustical pattern stands for a physical object. I don't think it quite shows this. Collies and human toddlers use words (and are used by words) without understanding what they're doing or what the meaning of language is. The understanding comes later, growing over time as we a…
You are confusing different meanings of the word "understanding" here. I am sure you too understand many things intuitively that you don't understand in a reflected way.
Here is the sense I mean to convey. When a fridge light comes on, does the fridge 'understand' anything? Does it know anything? No, the process is just automatic.
Objects such as books can contain knowledge without understanding anything because they don't have minds. The design of the fridge embodies knowledge about human needs, for example the need to hand-select food accurately at night. However there is neither understanding nor intuition anywhere inside that cold box about the relationship between the door opening and the light coming on.
Similarly, words, which are a type of meme (the type that can be pronounced) can exploit brains to make copies of themselves, without any understanding of this going on in those same brains.
Btw, none of this implies that animals can't think, or don't have minds, or that we shouldn't honour them. Actually I honour my fridge too...