Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

ieet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 175 posts

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#141

Post by RivieraKid »

leoedin wrote: post #130
RivieraKid wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge difference between feeling pain and reacting to demage. Humans can react to injury in a very complex ways without feeling pain. And buildings too - when you crash with an airplane into a building, the building reacts in a complex way. Does it feel pain? Feeling pain is something fundamentally different than reacting to demage.

If feel only fits your narrow, human centric definition of it, then of course machines can't feel pain. There isn't much point in having a discussion if the discussion is about your understanding of a word though. If you go by the broader definition of feel, which includes "to have a sensation of something", then I'd argue that the line is far more blurred. If you accept that a rat is capable of feeling pain, then su…

My understanding of "feel" is purely subjective. I think it's impossible to create an objective definition. That's the problem

"To have a senseation of something" isn't really helpful definition, because "have a sensation" is just another word for "feel". It's like saying that the definition of "to buy" is "to purchase".

Physics cannot, even in theory, explain my subjective experience of pain. Why do I feel pain, when my brain's atoms are in specific positions?

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#142

Post by Swizec »

Carwajalca wrote: post #79
Swizec wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another part to this story. We have brought animals back from the brink of extinction purely because someone realised they were really tasty. A lot of our domestic animals, in particular, wouldn't even be able to survive without us ... but they're tasty, so we make them live, breed them in large numbers, feed them, etc. Isn't that what biologists call symbiosis?

Wolves do fairly well without humans, bees as well. Which animals did we bring back from the brink of extinction? I'll admit that new subspecies have emerged thanks to humans, but we hardly need to keep e.g. 1.3 billion cows ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#Population ) just to save the species from extinction.

Buffalos are a good example. Red Panda as well if I'm not mistaken.

The sad part is, we've also made species extinct just because they weren't tasty. Dodos for instance. Taste bad, so we just killed them for fun. Then they went extinct.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#143

Post by IanDrake »

mrspeaker wrote: post #102
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.

Yeah, stupid "scientists". That's why I refuse to poop in a toilet, and won't use antibiotics: 'cause the gazelles aren't doing it.

I get what you're saying we're more advanced than animals.

That's why we domesticated our prey, which is what everyone seems to be complaining about now.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#144

Post by IanDrake »

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.

>Besides, animals kill to eat, not to sell.

I don't understand. Ultimately it ends up in someone's stomach and provides sustenance. How is it any different?

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#145

Post by IanDrake »

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.

>Also, this is a ridiculous justification for meat eating, since lions cannot reason about morality.

I'm unclear what level of moral justification is needed. I want to survive. There are weaker animals for me to eat. My gut can process their meat. My teeth can rip their flesh.

I guess I haven't transcended nature and evolution the way vegetarians have.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#146

Post by scotty79 »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #67
scotty79 wrote: post #64

I think we are fairly close to achieving consciousness in silicon (graphene or whatever). We will improve algorithms, increase computing power and achieve system of consciousness of a mouse, then just by tossing in more computing power and optimizing speed of algorithms one of consciousness of a dog, then monkey, then human and then we'll be surprised that when we toss in even more computing power we'll get even more…

It is not as simple as that. We don't really know what consciousness is. We know its correlates but not how brains seem to cause consciousness. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#5 At this stage of our knowledge saying "computation X will be conscious" is just a statement of belief or a simple definition as there is no consciouness-meter that I can use to test it. Such statements are unfalsifiable.

It seems that conciousness is just eventual function of any adaptive system that's complex and poweful enough.

Research mentiones that organisms as diverse as birds, mammals and mollusks advanced enough show some consciuosness. Mollusks are so different from us that they have evolved their own eyes from scratch, completely different from ours apart from functional elements.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#147

Post by scotty79 »

brotchie wrote: post #89
alokm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is not solely a matter of computation. Even if we are able to simulate the brains of lesser beings, doesnt necessarily mean that there will be self awareness in the simulation. I think this is one area where we still have a lot of catching up to do.

12 months ago I would have strongly disagreed with your first sentence, but after a load of reading on Physics, Philosophy, and Neuroscience, my views have changed. I am still unable to reconcile my "internal" conscious experience with our current understanding of Physics. I'm a materialist, however I'm trending towards the believe that consciousness is an emergent physical property of massively interconnected system…

I think interconnectedness is necessary but not sufficient. For conciousness you also need interaction with environment.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#148

Post by Zigurd »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #116
Zigurd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What process takes place in your cranium that does not take place in a petri dish containing some of your brain cells?

You have an assumption that consciousness is just a brain process.

I'm not assuming. I just don't know any viable theories of how it isn't a brain process, and how one determines that not-a-brain process is or isn't present in all the variations in humans, brain injury cases, birth defects, etc.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#149

Post by scotty79 »

alokm wrote: post #93
kretor wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what the brain is made of. Or would you say that if there are alien lifeforms, with their brains certainly made out of another matter than our brains, have no conscience?

I didn't mean that brain made up of silicon cannot be conscious. We are trying to simulate whatever we have learned about the brain. And that understanding is not complete. So implementing that in silicon (circuit) will not be conscious until we figure how to implement it.

Lots of what we know about the brain is implementation detail. For example brain architecture. Which part processes what. It's insignificant because when brain is young enough you can cut out whole hemisphere and end up with completely functioning individual.

When babys brain grows up it reassimilates most of the neurons that it grew. Architecture of the brain is shaped by funcion during development. The brain begins as generic structure that undegoes optimisations for the sole purpose of probably energy efficiency.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#150

Post by Zigurd »

smosher wrote: post #113
Zigurd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is without any philosophical backup the neural correlate is entirely uncompelling—it's merely a clinical definition of a measure of... nothing meaningful. Gravity is arguably a more compelling concept to someone falling off a ladder than to a student in a high school physics class. But, so? Does gravity lose meaning on a scale that is too large or too small to fit human experience?

The physics has obvious relevance to the experience and leaves no experiential questions unanswered. There's no problem with gravity. I'm not looking for a why —the common complaint about gravity—I just want all the what s to match up. The meaninglessness is in reference to the question of consciousness. If you supply this to the asker, they could rightly ask, "sure, but what about my question?" Perhaps there is no r…

You are right. I should have gone straight to the heart of the matter: An intelligence arising in machines or in an exobiological system (or, for that matter, in a sufficiently different animal) seems very unlikely to function like human intelligence. Does that mean the only philosophically valid intelligence is human, or maybe in a genetically manipulated primate?
Post reply on HN