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Are animals conscious? New research

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Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#121

Post by slibhb »

cf100clunk wrote: post #85
lolinder wrote: post #66

> Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds. What's always been funny to me about the scientific approach to animal consciousness/emotions/empathy is that in a perfectly rational world the default as…

> The only reason why animal consciousness has been controversial historically is a religious one In your sentence I would substitute ''religious'' with other more specific terms like ''Judeo-Christian'' since Jainism and Hinduism have been talking about a continuum of consciousness in all living things for almost 3,000 years: specifically described by them as the Ātman and the Jiva. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4…

Sure but in Hinduism and Buddhism, humans are higher than animals. In general, only humans are capable of escaping samsara.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#122

Post by rrr_oh_man »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #75
mgh2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a cursory glance at the evidence and a basic application of Occam's razor would suggest the opposite. Care to elaborate/expand? PS: Being downvoted for a simple question shows how biased (sometimes toxic) HN can become...

Ever since Darwin, the scientific view has been descent with modification. We're all branches of the same phylogenetic tree, and many of those branches are very close to us, such as other mammals. We have topologically similar digestive, immune, circulatory, respiratory, nervous, and reproductive systems. While there are important differences between, say, the foods that a cat and a human can digest, the differences…

Speaking of consciousness and tress:

https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcs.1...

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#123

Post by BirAdam »

DangitBobby wrote: post #70
klyrs wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of the history here is that scientific understanding of the nature of animals was based on folklore, attributing supernatural properties to animals and their behavior. Scientists agreed to throw all that out, and rightfully so, in preference for an evidence-based approach. And what we're seeing today, is that despite a couple centuries of assuming that animals are pure instinct-driven automatons, we…

The human attitude towards our relationship with animals cannot be described as anything other than anthropocentric for the vast majority of people. Whether the origin of that attitude is due to the rejection of certain traditions assuming animals to be sacred or the adoption of traditions treating humans as sacred, it exists, and causes horrific mistreatment of animals on a global scale.

Eh, plants too. Many plants react to the environments, recognize kin, seem to communicate with each other, etc

People don’t like it, just like many people don’t like animals being aware.

I had a fascinating theological discussion with a guy once. He was a farmer and he believed strongly that animals lack souls. I, on the other hand, believe that even amoeba have souls. I feel it’s just a condition of being a living thing while he felt that this was unique to humankind. Obviously, he has an interest emotionally in viewing animals as soulless. Easier to slaughter them that way.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#125

Post by ben_w »

slibhb wrote: post #120
lolinder wrote: post #66

> Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds. What's always been funny to me about the scientific approach to animal consciousness/emotions/empathy is that in a perfectly rational world the default as…

> The only reason why animal consciousness has been controversial historically is a religious one—the Bible has typically been read as placing humanity in a category of its own. And yet we see countless secular scientists clinging to that perspective when even a cursory glance at the evidence and a basic application of Occam's razor would suggest the opposite. It's not just the Bible. It's virtually every religion an…

I'd guess at the continuum, too — "going against common sense" is, unfortunately, a thing I have seen often enough of true things to reach the conclusion that "common sense" as a phrase means only "inside the Overton window of the person who just said or wrote that".

But it's a guess, it has to be, especially as we're not all agreed on what the thing even is in the first place:

> About forty meanings attributed to the term consciousness can be identified and categorized based on functions and experiences. The prospects for reaching any single, agreed-upon, theory-independent definition of consciousness appear remote

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#The_problem_of_d...

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#126

Post by lolinder »

slibhb wrote: post #121
cf100clunk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason why animal consciousness has been controversial historically is a religious one In your sentence I would substitute ''religious'' with other more specific terms like ''Judeo-Christian'' since Jainism and Hinduism have been talking about a continuum of consciousness in all living things for almost 3,000 years: specifically described by them as the Ātman and the Jiva. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4…

Sure but in Hinduism and Buddhism, humans are higher than animals. In general, only humans are capable of escaping samsara.

Right, but that concept is itself very compatible with darwinian evolution. Humans are the current pinnacle of evolution when it comes to intelligence, but that doesn't mean everything else is entirely unintelligent.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#127

Post by goatlover »

okasaki wrote: post #114
lolinder wrote: post #66

> Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds. What's always been funny to me about the scientific approach to animal consciousness/emotions/empathy is that in a perfectly rational world the default as…

> The only reason why animal consciousness has been controversial historically is a religious one Fundamentally it's really "practical" issue. We want to use, abuse and kill animals and we make up justifications. It won't change until the material conditions we live under change.

Why would material conditions matter? Hunters and gatherers used animals they hunted, and began domestication. And so has almost every society since. Even if it’s to help plow their crops or to fend off wild animals and keep the vermin population in check.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#128

Post by lolinder »

slibhb wrote: post #120
lolinder wrote: post #66

> Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds. What's always been funny to me about the scientific approach to animal consciousness/emotions/empathy is that in a perfectly rational world the default as…

> The only reason why animal consciousness has been controversial historically is a religious one—the Bible has typically been read as placing humanity in a category of its own. And yet we see countless secular scientists clinging to that perspective when even a cursory glance at the evidence and a basic application of Occam's razor would suggest the opposite. It's not just the Bible. It's virtually every religion an…

> I reject panpsychism as going against common sense; I think there probably are very simple (read: small) animals that aren't conscious.

Yes, I can definitely agree with this. I'm more reacting to the idea that it's somehow an unresolved scientific question whether dogs and cats and other mammals have emotions.

There isn't a sufficiently large difference in neurology between humans and other mammals for me to believe that they're entirely unconscious machines while we're not.

> I think most animals are conscious but a qualitative distinction between humans and animals is very reasonable. Animals didn't land on the moon or discover quantum mechanics. Whatever it is that allowed humans to accomplish things like that is a worthy basis of a distinction.

Yes, it's a worthy basis of distinction, but is it a qualitative one or a quantitative one? Do we possess intelligence that is orders of magnitude higher than the next smartest mammals, or do we actually possess something that other mammals have none of?

It's not clear to me that landing on the moon and discovering quantum mechanics require a different kind of mental process than building a beaver dam or discovering a use for medicinal herbs. That feels more to me like the same sort of thing multiplied a thousand fold.

And if it is the same sort of thing, then we're not projecting emotions onto our dogs, our dogs actually do have emotions of the same general sort that we do.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#129

Post by andoando »

robwwilliams wrote: post #95
lolinder wrote: post #66

> Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds. What's always been funny to me about the scientific approach to animal consciousness/emotions/empathy is that in a perfectly rational world the default as…

No, it has been controversial for at least one other major reason discussed in the BBC article and by Anil Seth—-the near equivalence made between language and consciousness that goes back to Descartes. Descartes viewed the body as machinery, the mind as imbued and linked in a nebulous way to the body, but distinct at some fundamental level. This split enabled the behaviorist tradition to dominate animal psychology f…

I don't see how language and consciousness are equivalent in any sense. Does someone who never learns to speak not conscious?

I suppose we mean the ability to learn language.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#130

Post by ang_cire »

epgui wrote: post #113
ang_cire wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. We literally discovered a 32,000 year old burial site where a hunter put a mammoth bone in their deceased dogs mouth when they buried him . https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/animal-health/our-respo... That's not utilitarian, to give funerary care. Another grave site in Germany from 14,000 years ago had a dog buried with a man and a woman, treating it as a family member. We literally have had fur…

Yes, and in the evolutionary time scale of primates, that’s all very recent.

Now you're backtracking. Those other primates weren't humans. In human history, pets are not recent by any measure.

We have no evidence of a specific period of homo sapiens in which we know they did not keep pets.

Also, other animals have been observed keeping pets.

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