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Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

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Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#131

Post by mtowle »

i_cannot_hack wrote: post #57
gnoway wrote: post #55

This is great news. Now that we've proven the animals are conscious, we can put more resources into communicating and reasoning with them, and convince them to stop maiming, killing and eating each other. Peace on Earth, maybe within our lifetimes! Edit:

Are you equating consciousness with rationality and intelligence?

Literally nobody has ever done that. Try understanding his comment a different way. Like, say, that the human protections against violence preclude humans who chose to act violently, ergo if we extend that protection to animals, many of them would lose that protection as soon as it was extended to them.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#132

Post by vacri »

dharmach wrote: post #104
IanDrake wrote: post #96

When these "scientists" can get lions to stop eating gazelles, I'll stop eating cows, chickens, and fish. That being said, I am concerned about how animals are treated during their lifetime.

When consuming resources and producing pollution, you do not remember this comparison. Besides, animals kill to eat, not to sell.

If it's the selling that's bad, isn't the same true of plant matter? Most of us also outsource obtaining vegetable matter in the same way.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#133

Post by sageikosa »

tladendo wrote: post #109
IanDrake wrote: post #96

When these "scientists" can get lions to stop eating gazelles, I'll stop eating cows, chickens, and fish. That being said, I am concerned about how animals are treated during their lifetime.

At present, ethically-raised animal meat is not practical on a mass scale. Also, this is a ridiculous justification for meat eating, since lions cannot reason about morality.

Only the slaughter needs to be ethically managed; no excessive, prolonged nor unnecessary pain. Animal cruelty is usually an indicator of sociopathy, and its presentation in other humans is likely a danger signal to the rest of us; as the person probably lacks, or has low, empathy.

If both lions and gazelles have conscious awareness, and we do not condemn the lion for eating a fellow conscious awareness holder, then why should we hold ourselves to higher standards? If we believe that the taking of any conscious life is wrong, then we should see that the lion is wrong, and punish him. Lion prison anyone?

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#134

Post by tehwalrus »

loceng wrote: post #48
tehwalrus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of us commit hideous crimes on humans, too (North Korea, I'm looking at you,) so it may not be their only criticism of us. I do agree though, and this is why I've been a vegetarian for 10 years now.

What about the U.S.? Just because people are disconnected from the actions of their military doesn't mean they're not responsible

Sure, the US too. But they don't put hundreds of thousands of citizens in jail just for voicing decent, and then work/starve them to death. NK is my go-to example of an evil government, doesn't mean there aren't other ones.

I'd add to the people replying to this comment, about US citizens' responsibility, they have more responsibility than the average North Korean citizen, but not much. From what I understand, challenging the status quo in the USA is pretty difficult!

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#135

Post by nickmain »

This recent HN comment about Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is worth following up on:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404

As I understand it the theory posits that consciousness is only a very recent development in humans.

How can we ascribe consciousness to any other form of life when we do not even understand what it means for ourselves ?

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#136

Post by blueprint »

jessedhillon wrote: post #118
blueprint wrote: post #112

> Consequently, say the signatories, the scientific evidence is increasingly indicating that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. That's because neurological substrates don't generate consciousness. There is no evidence to the effect that they do. However, when we understand the structure of the system of consciousness it's very easy to see how consciousness is…

Factual authority does not derive from socially validated papers. The law of nature and all the facts exist in nature itself. The problem is that if you don't try to confirm my words through 'what is' you can not recognize the evidence in front of you.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#137

Post by kryten »

vacri wrote: post #125
kryten wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. This is typical human hypocrisy at work. The worst thing I find is the "I'll eat a sausage but I couldn't possibly eat a cute bunny wabbit". The sausage in its natural form is capable of being a valuable and loyal human companion. I haven't eaten meat since I was at university in the distant past after I got addicted to a combination of ramen noodles, mushrooms and home made pepper sauce. The ethical dilemma…

There is plenty of perfectly nutritious vegetable matter that humans won't eat - it's a false equivalence you're making.

Unless you suddenly find a conscious cabbage or an onion with an opinion.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#138

Post by blueprint »

nickmain wrote: post #135

This recent HN comment about Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is worth following up on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404 As I understand it the theory posits that consciousness is only a very recent development in humans. How can we ascribe consciousness to any other form of life when we do not even understand what it means for ourselves ?

Well put.

However, please note that there have been a few individuals in human history who did have complete understanding of consciousness. The story of this world is that nobody wanted to learn from those people when they were alive.

The reasons that modern scientists do not understand consciousness is that

1. they do not apply a specific principle to their research (In math, when we want to solve a question, we apply the equality to operate the question.) and because

2. their research only investigates half of the set of existent relevant phenomena - that which can be seen with the naked eye.

Once a human recognizes the simple law that governs natural phenomena it is simple to recognize what consciousness is.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#139

Post by sageikosa »

nickmain wrote: post #135

This recent HN comment about Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is worth following up on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404 As I understand it the theory posits that consciousness is only a very recent development in humans. How can we ascribe consciousness to any other form of life when we do not even understand what it means for ourselves ?

I am fairly certain that a large percentage of the human population still operates regularly without the consciousness as described by Jaynes.

At the very least, the genetically built neural machinery that our species would've had 3000 years ago is still likely to reward behaviors such as assuming gods and spirits in almost everything, enthralling oneself in crowd dynamics, and yielding to charismatic authorities.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#140

Post by smosher »

stiff wrote: post #117
smosher wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confused. I'm not asking for philosophical proofs end-to-end, I'm asking for the framing. If you look at the formulation it starts out as a magical-seeming property, yet the definitions and processes do nothing to demystify that property. If you look at that process carefully you'll find the deceit: this is not an answer to the question of consciousness as asked. With the right philosophical treatment…

The problem is that the answers you are looking for are of philosophical nature and not of scientific one (you talk about "demystifying" consciousness, "elucidating it"). The neural correlates might not clarify what consciousness is, but they might yield answers to precise scientific questions, such as: what brain activity is necessary and sufficient for a person to be able demonstrate self- or world- awareness. We m…

The neural correlates might not clarify what consciousness is, but they might yield answers to precise scientific questions

I don't deny that at all, in fact it is quite precisely what I endorse. Notice that the term consciousness lies on the left side, the excluded part. On the right side, you use the better-defined term, awareness. A definition that comes with better philosophical understanding. TFA, however, talks of qualia.

We might need to first answer to such questions before we gain any new insights of more philosophical nature.

I would say "different" rather than "more." Philosophy doesn't mean "weird stuff we don't really understand" and it can often be as boring as the implications of simple arithmetic or even the logic used in scientific endeavors. I wouldn't want to throw that out in the name of progress either.

I cannot agree the results are meaningless or "only reaffirm our prejudices".

The results described by the article and supported here are of the form "consciousness is X" where no question was asked that is answerable directly in terms of X, and no reconciliation has been made. That is the sense of meaninglessness I'm talking about. If you're still in doubt, or think that's somehow unimportant, grab the bull by the horns and deal with the implication that this is somehow ultimately a measure of qualia.

My only point is really that the lack of a great definition of consciousness doesn't diminish the value of research like the one cited here.

In that phrasing I am almost in agreement, if it wasn't for some of the claims made. Some very interesting things are being measured, but to go from these measurements to things like qualia is a leap I can't justify. A correlation between these measures and alertness, intelligence and kinds of awareness are easy to establish or contradict, and better yet: given those connections who is going to say "yeah but what are these results over here? it looks like manifest experience!"—?

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