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Are animals conscious? New research

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Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#31

Post by uxcolumbo »

guilhas wrote: post #26
uxcolumbo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With conscious stuff I’m assuming you mean conscious beings. It is against the law to murder another human. In many countries it is also against the law to kill or torture your pet. Are you not living your life according to those agreed upon ‘reasoning’? As humanity evolves, the circle of compassion and common sense will expand to also include those conscious beings that we currently don’t deem worthy of compassion,…

So our evolved consciousness will be superior to other animals that still eat other animals

Other animals don't raise billions of other animals to cram them into factory farms, deprive them of natural surroundings, pump them full of hormones and antibiotics and then send them off to slaughterhouses to turn them into burgers and other meat products.

Animals live with nature. We don't. We created our own world on top of the natural world, which we are slowly destroying.

We have the brains, skills and resources to maintain and improve our living standards without destroying the natural world. But we choose not to vote with our wallet.

We in the Western world don't need to kill and eat animals anymore to survive. It's purely out of taste pleasure, habit and because 'we have always done it'.

EDIT: watch this video to see the reality of industrial animal farming:

http://www.nationearth.com/

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#32

Post by doodaddy »

poikroequ wrote: post #6

The trouble I have with much of this discussion is it assumes many traits of animal behavior are indicative of consciousness. Bees play with balls, therefore consciousness? You can't just jump straight to that conclusion. There is so much our brains do that is subconscious, that we are not aware of. Heck, even signs of self awareness may not be indicative of consciousness. Arguably we are at the point that we could t…

While what you say about drawing conclusions is maybe true, it does not seem to have started with modern scientists. Rather, my takeaway from the article was that everyone is still playing by Descartes’ rules: that is to conflate intelligence, language, and consciousness. So instead of trying to redefine that basis, researchers are simply going with it (however flawed it may be) and saying, “well, if language and intelligence are the only sure ways to detect consciousness, then here are a whole bunch of animals that exhibit intelligence, language, or both.”

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#33

Post by ilaksh »

poikroequ wrote: post #6

The trouble I have with much of this discussion is it assumes many traits of animal behavior are indicative of consciousness. Bees play with balls, therefore consciousness? You can't just jump straight to that conclusion. There is so much our brains do that is subconscious, that we are not aware of. Heck, even signs of self awareness may not be indicative of consciousness. Arguably we are at the point that we could t…

I don't think the word "conscious" is generally used in a way that is the least bit scientific. So that's the first problem.

Here you combine "self-aware" with "awake" or "stream of experience" and possibly intelligence.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#34

Post by elicksaur »

Regardless of whether you agree with the proposition, this seems to be the conclusion society is trending toward.

Personally, I fear that instead of treating animals and machines more like humans, we will end up treating humans more like we currently treat animals and machines.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#35

Post by 39896880 »

guilhas wrote: post #29

Should we stop eating chicken, fish, and other small animals, in favour of bigger ones like cow? That would reduce farm animal suffering by more than 80% What about the meat alternative insects? Are they conscious? If so there are people investing millions. to kill gazillion lives a year Or are they definitely "inferior"? Do we even know what suffering and consciousness is? Why did nature evolved for animals to eat e…

> Should we stop eating chicken, fish, and other small animals, in favour of bigger ones like cow? That would reduce farm animal suffering by more than 80%

We should stop eating all animals.

> Why did nature evolve for animals to eat each other?

Because evolution “cares” only about gene propagation. The nourishment obtained from eating animals allows that.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#37

Post by klyrs »

> Prof Chittka’s experiments showed that bees ... seemed to be able to play, rolling small wooden balls, which he says they appeared to enjoy as an activity.

But can they understand the offside rule?

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#38

Post by throwup238 »

> We now know that bees can count, recognise human faces and learn how to use tools.

I was curious what that means in this context and found this research (co-authored by Prof Chittka mentioned in the article): https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

Apparently only a small minority of bumble bees can figure out how to pull a string to access a reward, but then other bees adopt the behavior by mimicry. IMO I think we're doomed to move the goalposts on intelligence for a while, like with the statistical abilities of LLMs to manipulate language and insects' ability to use tools. Moravec's paradox keeps rearing it's ugly head as more and more complex systems turn out to be relatively easy compared to basic cognition (the system that keeps them flying and identifies threats, flowers, etc.).

It'd take a lot more to convince me that bumble bees are conscious just because of the their brains' simplicity compared to humans or other animals that appear more intelligent like pigs, corvids, octopuses, etc. I'm not categorically against such a possibility, but I think the bar for recognizing intelligence in general has been set too low.

This sidesteps the main problem anyway: What is consciousness? I don't think we're any closer to rigorously defining that anymore than intelligence.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#40

Post by squigz »

jbotz wrote: post #13
poikroequ wrote: post #6

The trouble I have with much of this discussion is it assumes many traits of animal behavior are indicative of consciousness. Bees play with balls, therefore consciousness? You can't just jump straight to that conclusion. There is so much our brains do that is subconscious, that we are not aware of. Heck, even signs of self awareness may not be indicative of consciousness. Arguably we are at the point that we could t…

I don't think it's really the case that "much of this discussion assumes" certain behaviors as being indicative of consciousness. Rather, it has been the case until recently that behaviorists pointed to various behaviors as being unique to humans, and jumped to the conclusion that this indicates that humans are conscious and other animals aren't. What has been happening recently is that one by one these behaviors hav…

I think we're going to realize soon that consciousness isn't really all that complex
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