221–230 of 234 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> relative to abstract reasoning, like pattern recognition. You mean like the patterns the puffer fish creates to attract mates? https://youtu.be/yaPmYYWsixU
Can wind think? https://www.google.com/search?q=sand+dune&source=lnms&tbm=is...
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.
No. 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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no observable evidence for an internal experience in humans either. Each person just extrapolates that belief from their own consciousness. That is what got us into the silly position that animals don't possess consciousness in the first place.
We can talk for hours about consciousness in the sense "what it is like to be bacterium", and it will lead us nowhere, or, better to say, it will lead us all over the place. Ask different philosophers. On the other hand we can agree that we can sufficiently easily distinguish conscious and unconscious human, dog or other mammal. From here we can study which parts of a brain participate in conscious activities, and ma…
I define consciousness as the property of having an internal experience.
It would be better to describe someone "unconscious" as unresponsive. You don't know that they are not having an internal experience at that moment in time. Even if they told you later that they weren't having an internal experience, that only tells you that they have no memory an internal experience, it does not prove that no such experience occurred.
I quit pursuing philosophy as an academic matter when I realized that these sorts of conflations are at the root of most philosophical debates. In fact, I'll go ahead and state that the single most contested subject in modern philosophy is the definition of the word "is".
As I was growing up around animals, I had an insight derived from my interactions with a particularly adept cat. She had an affinity with people and made an effort to communicate. Vocalizations confused me. There isn't enough information in them to encode all of her demonstrated use cases. Maybe I could not hear everything. Wondered about that for a while. One day, it sort of hit me: Cats, at least, are missing a lay…
RE: I feel work to better communicate is worth it. When I make investments in animals, they get close, like people do. I can feel the bond, and that little spark that is "them", it's a'll just simpler, smaller, and quite often much faster. I like the way you put this and I had similar experiences. If we'd just take some time to get to know those type animals we regard as food, maybe we wouldn't put them in the 'They'…
My very close experiences are potent enough to agree.
Heh, cows have besties! I sometimes look at a field and wonder. Their form limits what they can do physically, but socially? It's intriguing.
Whales demonstrate higher order tribal, familial, pair or partner type behavior. Same sort of dynamic.
What is there when one is limited in being able to build and manipulate? Community, emotions, stories, bonds, sharing of experiences. History.
That's a lot!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can talk for hours about consciousness in the sense "what it is like to be bacterium", and it will lead us nowhere, or, better to say, it will lead us all over the place. Ask different philosophers. On the other hand we can agree that we can sufficiently easily distinguish conscious and unconscious human, dog or other mammal. From here we can study which parts of a brain participate in conscious activities, and ma…
Part of the problem here is conflating terms. I define consciousness as the property of having an internal experience. It would be better to describe someone "unconscious" as unresponsive. You don't know that they are not having an internal experience at that moment in time. Even if they told you later that they weren't having an internal experience, that only tells you that they have no memory an internal experience…
And we don't have anything better.
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…
Gorillas have apparently never asked a question. They've learned sign language, so this is an interesting distinction. If they had the desire or ability to ask questions, presumably they'd have done so. https://medium.com/@bleistern/why-dont-apes-ask-questions-9f... I'd be interested to know the original sources and the rigor of the tests, though.
>They can’t conceptualize that there could exist a mind of thoughts and feelings outside their own.
Presumably they don't have a concept of their own mind either. And this is despite being quite sophisticated and hosting a bunch of memes related to things like tool-use:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10071-011-0403-...
Whereas primitive humans painted pictures of themselves on cave walls. Which seems like an early attempt to explain themselves to themselves.
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...
> You can't just choose to not participate in modern industrial life Why not? Try to not be part of the throwaway culture, avoid falling for gimmicks and new toys and try to build a environmental Friendly lifestyle. It's not perfect but it's perfectly possible to escape the modern lifestyle to a huge degree
Unlike Animals, Humans have Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (lack of remorse and empathy), Sadism (pleasure in suffering of others);
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…