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Are animals more conscious than we are?

erikhoel.substack.com

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Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#21

Post by IgorPartola »

rubyfan wrote: post #20
TaupeRanger wrote: post #19

Unclear what "more" means in relation to consciousness. More vivid? More varied? More aware? All or some of these? Just because our behavioral expressions seem subdued compared to animals (but do they really?), it doesn't follow that their inner experience has "more" of anything.

The rationale that the uncontrollable feelings convey more consciousness doesn’t follow for me either. Our own ability to reason about the state of our being, threats to our safety and a command over what we do seems reasonable that humans are experiencing a consciousness that animals do not enjoy. Perhaps I overlook the author’s point here.

To me it seems that what separates us from other animals mentally is the ability for abstract thinking. A thought about a thought is itself a thought.

Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#23

Post by justshowpost »

maybe_pablo wrote: post #10
oceanghost wrote: post #2

I am not sure what this article is trying to accomplish. Consciousness might be binary, so rabbits might have it? Can you define consciousness at all?

Isn't consciousness the feeling of existing?

That's self-consciousness or self-awareness, a bit different thing, the next level for winners of the mirror test.

Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#24

Post by erikhoel »

zwkrt wrote: post #5
oceanghost wrote: post #2

I am not sure what this article is trying to accomplish. Consciousness might be binary, so rabbits might have it? Can you define consciousness at all?

Just shitposting: How about “the number of bits a subsection of a system is able to encode about the rest of the system surrounding it”

Ah, but what about the subsections of the subsections? And so, ad infinitum? Eventually you'll need something like the exclusion postulate of Integrated Information Theory

Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#25

Post by erikhoel »

tayo42 wrote: post #4
hirundo wrote: post #3

How do you wire up the “conscious-o-meter”? What would a function for mapping consciousness to a quantity look like? How about [thoughts, emotions, sensations] .sum { |p| p.frequency * p.complexity } Collecting the data is left as an exercise for the student.

Integrated information theory has one attempt at actually measuring how conscious a system is. It calls it phi.

I worked on that in graduate school :)

Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#26

Post by hliyan »

hirundo wrote: post #3

How do you wire up the “conscious-o-meter”? What would a function for mapping consciousness to a quantity look like? How about [thoughts, emotions, sensations] .sum { |p| p.frequency * p.complexity } Collecting the data is left as an exercise for the student.

I would suggest that consciousness is a faculty that is independent of thoughts, emotions or sensations. I can think of instances where I was aware of myself in the absence (or at least greatly reduced levels) of thought, emotion or sensations.

Perhaps the question is whether qualia [1] are binary or not. This is a question that is probably impossible to answer because there is nothing else to measure it with. To paraphrase Julian Jaynes, what's more immediate that immediate awareness itself?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#27

Post by orange8 »

Razengan wrote: post #11
hirundo wrote: post #3

How do you wire up the “conscious-o-meter”? What would a function for mapping consciousness to a quantity look like? How about [thoughts, emotions, sensations] .sum { |p| p.frequency * p.complexity } Collecting the data is left as an exercise for the student.

You have to define “thoughts, emotions, sensations” and “complexity” first. Pain, for example, counts as all 3, and some would say it’s simple while others might call it complex.

Pain is strictly a physical sensation. It may however be triggered by thoughts or emotions. The three are rarely ever experienced in isolation.

Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#28

Post by causasui »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #7

all that chicken must have a death wish then

The US breeds and slaughters 8 billion chickens a year.

If you at all believe (not you personally OP, as the above punchline makes it obvious that you have the empathetic range of a thimble) that animals have a level of consciousness/agency similar to humans, you should consider if you want to continue to pay for their suffering for a 15 minute meal.

Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#29

Post by krasin »

causasui wrote: post #28
wait_a_minute wrote: post #7

all that chicken must have a death wish then

The US breeds and slaughters 8 billion chickens a year. If you at all believe (not you personally OP, as the above punchline makes it obvious that you have the empathetic range of a thimble) that animals have a level of consciousness/agency similar to humans, you should consider if you want to continue to pay for their suffering for a 15 minute meal.

Just an observation: by this metric, bison meat is approximately 200 times more ethical than chicken meat.

Re: Are animals more conscious than we are?

#30

Post by AlbertCory »

oceanghost wrote: post #17
AlbertCory wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can speak for himself, so I'm not interpreting him here, but: This was an excellent article. To me "consciousness" cannot be thought of as binary, i.e. humans have it, no other creature does. That's the classical, religious view. Rather it's just an illusion your brain puts on for you, and rabbits get a different illusion. So it's silly to say "animals are more conscious." They have a different consciousness. Go a…

Honestly, I thought your view was the default of most people?

Maybe, but oceans of ink over the millennia have been spilled on the question of "how does mind differ from matter?"

Maybe you're right and we're beyond all that.

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