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Can we know what animals are thinking?

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Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#111

Post by rwmj »

There's a sci-fi-ish short story in The Mind's I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I) about a robot which scuttles around, when stroked it glows, then when it is hurt it mewls and flashes its lights, and so on. It's meant to question whether we can really know what any other animal is thinking (the machine is supposedly programmed like a regular computer, so we know it has no real feelings).

Of course this applies to robots, but not necessarily to animals, where we know they are constructed similarly to ourselves and so likely have feelings similar to ours although there are questions to what degree.

It's actually online here: https://themindi.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/chapter-8-soul-of-ma...

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#112

Post by aleksei »

Koshkin wrote: post #104
arthurwinter wrote: post #99

I 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, co…

Can you point to some to research on the subject? I would think it's not at all clear in which manner animals think, be it in terms of a language or not. Even for humans language may just be a layer on top of thought, and in fact there are those who claim not to think in any specific language.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#113

Post by red75prime »

_jal wrote: post #41
StavrosK wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

A different question is whether consciousness is something desirable in machines. As an exercise in playing with that question, Peter Watts' fiction is hard to beat. As one distillation he presents goes, first-contact comes about because of our emissions being noticed. But the reason for the contact is the content of the messages - intelligent but not-conscious beings receive them, find them difficult to process beca…

Some form of awareness of its own existence is required for a machine to be operating efficiently. Otherwise it can plan to use materials of its own "brain" as an intermediate step.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#114

Post by cryodesign »

pharrington wrote: post #103
cryodesign wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 earth…

Why does it have to be black or white? It's a spectrum. Or as pmoriarty greatly put it further down:

'If one can't save everything, one must save nothing?'

You should watch the presentation by Ethan Brown, he talks about creating meat using plant protein.

He's a great entrepreneur and 'hacker'. You might enjoy it.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#115

Post by gaius »

aleksei wrote: post #112
Koshkin wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, co…

Can you point to some to research on the subject? I would think it's not at all clear in which manner animals think, be it in terms of a language or not. Even for humans language may just be a layer on top of thought, and in fact there are those who claim not to think in any specific language.

This is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis if you want to do more reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#116

Post by pier25 »

grossvogel wrote: post #68
pier25 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that being a vegetarian for moral reasons is quite delusional. We, humans, are inflicting much more suffering to flora and fauna by the simple fact of participating in the industrial modern lifestyle. Buying food at the supermarket, using the internet, travelling, AC, and pretty much any activity we can think of. The underlying problem is that to sustain 7+ billion people we need industrialisation which requir…

Just because it's not enough doesn't mean it's delusional. I'm a vegetarian partly out of compassion for the animals who might be eaten and partly because of the other harmful effects of industrialized meat production. In addition, I don't own a car and try to avoid non-human-powered transportation in general, I use air conditioning extremely sparingly despite living in Louisiana, I avoid buying crap I don't need onl…

No offense, but the hard reality is that those things don't have much of an impact in emissions.

I was like you a few years ago. Even left the world and moved to an off the grid cabin for a year until I realized I was only trying to feel better about myself.

Me installing some solar panels on that cabin: http://imgur.com/5mfDVHv.jpg

Everything that we do, like using the internet, is still consuming massive amounts of energy and resources. From manufacturing the computer(s) you are using, to networking.

Energy consumption for example is the number one cause of CO2 emissions, not transportation, and certainly not the food industry.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#117

Post by pier25 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #92
pier25 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that being a vegetarian for moral reasons is quite delusional. We, humans, are inflicting much more suffering to flora and fauna by the simple fact of participating in the industrial modern lifestyle. Buying food at the supermarket, using the internet, travelling, AC, and pretty much any activity we can think of. The underlying problem is that to sustain 7+ billion people we need industrialisation which requir…

"I find that being a vegetarian for moral reasons is quite delusional. We, humans, are inflicting much more suffering to flora and fauna by the simple fact of participating in the industrial modern lifestyle." If one can't save everything, one must save nothing?

Depends on the impact.

Are we saving 1%, 10%, or 30%?

Because if we are saving 1% we are being delusional.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#118

Post by gaius »

remir wrote: post #98
monktastic1 wrote: post #46

For some reason I am reminded of this section from Sam Harris's Waking Up : See if you can stop thinking for the next sixty seconds. You can notice your breath, or listen to the birds, but do not let your attention be carried away by thought, any thought, even for an instant. Put down this book, and give it a try. Some of you will be so distracted by thought as to imagine that you succeeded. In fact, beginning medita…

It is quite shocking to realize that we're not the owners of the thoughts inside our mind, even the thoughts beginning with "I" ( "I'm stupid", "Oh shit I will be late!", "I hate this fucking job!" , etc). We identify with these thoughts, believing we are their originator, but it's the biggest illusion of all.

Are you referring to bicameralism?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#119

Post by pier25 »

soared wrote: post #66
pier25 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that being a vegetarian for moral reasons is quite delusional. We, humans, are inflicting much more suffering to flora and fauna by the simple fact of participating in the industrial modern lifestyle. Buying food at the supermarket, using the internet, travelling, AC, and pretty much any activity we can think of. The underlying problem is that to sustain 7+ billion people we need industrialisation which requir…

Well except that meat is a much larger factor in global warming than anything else in our diet. You can't just choose to not participate in modern industrial life, but you can easily choose to not eat meat. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/21/eat-less...

The hard truth is that energy consumption is the biggest factor in global warning.

The second one is deforestation.

The third one is industry.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#120

Post by DominikPeters »

Teichopsia wrote: post #109
arthurwinter wrote: post #99

I 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. Wh…

Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_consciousness#Cambridge...

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