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Can we know what animals are thinking?

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Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#141

Post by AsyncAwait »

roceasta wrote: post #135
AsyncAwait wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The desire and the ability to explain things, and not thinking per se, is (I guess) what distinguishes humans from animals. But how do you know that animals have no desire or ability to explain things to each other, at least amongst their own species? We may not be able to read it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, we already know that a parent can 'teach' its offspring that something is dangerous, for example…

I don't. It's a guess. But I do think our ability to explain things comes not just from our genes but from our culture, and culture is something animals haven't yet developed.

I appreciate your answer since I find this fascinating;

> and culture is something animals haven't yet developed.

I know they don't have movies and such, but they do seem to have dialects, activities and behaviours based on various, (including location-based) factors even among the same kind of animals that one could classify that collection as being a 'culture' of theirs, no?

I think this mindset of trying to map everything 1:1 to humans might be robbing us of a greater understanding of the universe in general, like looking at planets that have water and an atmosphere of some kind as with probably having life. There is no need for other kinds of life to need water or oxygen per se, so why we seem to be focused almost exclusively on it?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#142

Post by cetalingua »

Our biggest problem which has not been solved yet is human inability to ask questions in non-anthropocentric way. For example, when we investigate self-awareness in dolphins we use mirrors (by the way, one recent project failed to replicate the much cited and discussed mirror self-recognition study). We are visual species, dolphins are not, many live in very murky waters with limited visibility.Why are they expected to pass mirror self-recognition test? Can we measure self-recognition without mirrors?

It is even worse with cetacean signals. Their system is nothing like human language; to begin with, it is very fast, it is so fast that dolphins could distinguish separate clicks in a sound that consists of 100s clicks which we perceive as one continuous "squeaky door" sound. Then they have 2 areas in their brain associated with auditory processing (unlike in humans and other mammals that have just one). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150707082344.h...

On top of that, small corpus callosum means that two hemispheres are more independent in dolphins than they are in humans. This should have at least some effect on how they "think".Finally, "seeing" world through sound, and being able to make 2 (maybe even more) sounds at once independently only adds to the "alien" complexity of cetacean species.

Anyone who has seen a spectrogram of a dolphin pod vocalizing will testify: they rarely shut up! There is a constant chatter going on, apart from echolocation. It must have some meaning, evolution would not tolerate such waste of energy for nothing.We have been investigating dolphins cognition and communication since 1960s, we still do not know what they "think" or "say" and it could be partially due to our tendency to compare them to us, expecting something similar.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#143

Post by c22 »

skadamou wrote: post #60
danielam wrote: post #39

While the particularities may be interesting, much of what's said isn't surprising (though for Cartesians, it may be, and the author does throw Descartes' name around a few times). There is a great deal of confusion about this subject and a number of philosophical errors in the comments (w.r.t. language, religion, qualia, zombies, etc). For those who do want some perspective, I recommend starting with Feser's introdu…

Boy there is a lot in Feser’s work to unpack. I haven’t gotten through all of the links you posted yet, but the crux of his argument (and evidently the argument Thomists make) is that humans are different because we are capable of abstract reasoning and logic whereas animals are not. Do you suppose animals really are not capable of these two mental faculties? Abstraction seems more difficult to dissect but it does no…

Didn't Alex the parrot[0] prove that at least one animal is capable of abstraction? He could identify by type specific objects he'd never seen before and make distinctions based on color or amount.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#144

Post by dashundchen »

pier25 wrote: post #116
grossvogel wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agriculture and forestry is listed as the second largest sector with 24% of GHG emissions, second to energy production at 25% so I'm not sure where you're getting that information in your second link.

Animal agriculture is a huge drain on resources and the environment. There's clear cutting of the Amazon for cattle feed and grazing. Cows and cattle emit huge amounts of methane, many times more potent in climate change than CO2. Nearly a quarter of ice free land in the world is dedicated to animal ag.

Some estimates put 20 kg of grain for a single kg of beef. That is not efficient.

https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic... check out this link.

Yes every human activity uses energy. Does that mean we shouldn't try be consious in limiting our consumption and be damage we inflict on others?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#145

Post by pluma »

raarts wrote: post #107
KekDemaga wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe humans only appear to be thinking but in fact only use some human form of ML?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#146

Post by dashundchen »

pier25 wrote: post #119
soared wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That is not what your link says at all. The second largest category is animal agriculture and forestry at 24% of global GHG emissions, the largest is power at 25%.

https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic...

Animal agriculture is extremely destructive. Forestry being in that category, one of the biggest causes of deforestation is expansion of cattle grazing and feed lands, especially in the Amazon.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#147

Post by Koshkin »

khedoros1 wrote: post #132
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…

> First off, everyone would agree that humans, apes, dogs, squirrels, spiders - all "think" in essentially different ways. I wouldn't, and a lot of the other comments on this story imply that they wouldn't, either. As an example, when I think, it's not usually in the form of words until I try to map my thoughts and feelings into a more concrete form. I'm particularly conscious of this because I frequently wrack my mi…

An insect's "thinking" consists mostly of following instincts and some acquired reflexes. There's (much, much) more to the human thinking than that, and there are a few levels of consciousness in between.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#148

Post by dsacco »

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 humans pretend to be more intelligent than animals

Sorry, what?

Humans are only capable of conceiving of religion and destroying the planet because they are more intelligent than other animals. I'm not a religious person, but it's a bit offensive to imply humans that believe in religion are less intelligent than canines, don't you think? And animals don't destroy the planet because, for the most part, they're incapable of it - many species frequently do things that destroy their ecosystem, they are simply limited in their ability to do it rapidly. It's not as though lions have a righteous crusade against depleting all the gazelle, or beavers against destroying forests to build dens. If they could amplify their activity by leveraging the intelligence we have they would oversaturate their environments too.

Your definition of intelligence seems to be moralistic, not empirical. Moreover it's inconsistent - I'm inferring that you don't eat animals now because you believe they're intelligent, and it's cruel. What's your opinion on animals consuming other animals if they're so intelligent?

Circling back to your opening claim: dogs do not think "better" than humans for any definition of "think" that primarily involves executive reasoning skills. Our prefrontal cortex development directly contributes to our superlative intellectual ability.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#149

Post by Broken_Hippo »

FooHentai wrote: post #131
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…

I have a pet theory (hypothesis?) that infant amnesia is due to acquisition of language. When you gain language and start thinking in it, you lose the ability to meaningfully access memories made beforehand.

This theory is likely at least partially correct, mostly because of what we figured out from kids born deaf. I can't remember where I read this stuff, though:

It used to be society thought a deaf person also meant you had low IQ. The signs were everywhere. It winds up that sign language was the key to not having a low IQ. It is almost like you need to learn the language of your brain.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#150

Post by photojosh »

amelius wrote: post #138
shanev wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your overall sentiment. But just because there aren't animals on your plate, doesn't mean they weren't killed in bringing food to your plate. For example, published studies show that at least 25 times more sentient animals are killed per kilogram of useable protein when producing industrial wheat and other grain [1]. Not eating animals isn't enough. You have to find ethically sourced food. So ironically,…

I think explicitly or implicitly, vegetarians try to not eat sentient beings, but the story is more complicated because there is a scale for that, with plants being at the bottom of the scale, and mice further up the scale, and then cows, and finally humans. So in this perspective, does the article you linked to really make sense?

So sentientism is a thing now? Just because one species thinks a little less than another it makes it okay to eat them?

(I am joking. Mostly.)

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