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Are animals conscious? New research

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Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#331

Post by llamaimperative »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #135
slibhb wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 on the grounds of the Standard Model. There are no possible fields at the energy levels we've explored that could have an effect such as panpsychism claims (and fields at any other energy levels couldn't have such an effect). Sean Carroll published a paper on this, and it's worth a read, as is his draft response to Phillip Goff. [1], [2] [1] The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Su…

Haven’t read the first paper but the second is a fairly naive straw man argument. If anything, it’s arguing against free will, which many panpsychists reject anyway. Free will or “outside forces” is not at all a prerequisite for panpsychism.

Actually his paper is a (decent) argument for panpsychism: we know that we ourselves (as individuals) are conscious, and we know that there’s nothing special at the physical level about our brain-stuff as compared to tree-stuff or rock-stuff or anything else. Particles in a brain are not somehow specially imbued with consciousness "energy", yet they obviously have it. Ergo the reasonable prediction would be that other things have it too and it’s much more a question of configuration that yields more or less of the emergent property of consciousness (much like different configurations and states of atoms can yield more or less magnetic force, conductivity, energy, temperature, etc) - all of which are only possible in certain configurations of energy/matter because all energy/matter itself has the properties required to yield those effects. That is the panpsychist argument, and it has nothing to do with free will.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#332

Post by themaninthedark »

defrost wrote: post #242
maxbond wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is also a misguided razor that people who self identify as rationalists often apply, which goes, "the most cynical or disenchanted answer is likely the correct one." An overcorrection to superstition, perhaps. I personally did this, and one of the symptoms was being overly skeptical of animal consciousness. People would tell me this dog was smart or that it was feeling a certain way, and I dismissed it,…

> I was impressed because I wouldn't have noticed those books being out of place. Orthogonal to any argument about conciousness in cats, the most probable explanation is your cat was aware of your scent freshly attached to a book that previously didn't carry it. In my experience cats are acutely aware of scents, particularly known and especially unknown scents in new places. Had you been an unknown cat the chances ar…

My thoughts didn't go to scent but to environment change; things moving can signify the presence of another animal, one that is trying to hide itself. Could be an ambush predator.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#333

Post by lebuffon »

agumonkey wrote: post #223
lebuffon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harari gave me some insights when he explained that when humans lived closer to nature, as hunter gatherers, we tended to see the continuum of life on earth. "God" was in everything. After the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry it became necessary to change our views in order to raise animals to slaughter and eat them. Religions after that time separated humans from the rest of the animal kingdom and provided…

Do you know any other author discussing this topic ?

Sorry, no I do not.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#334

Post by mannykannot »

llamaimperative wrote: post #328
newzisforsukas wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they tried the strategy in the past, and they had learned behavior that by eating things at night, they can get away with it. If you read the methods of this study, they used dogs that lived as pets [1]. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...

And how do you think humans acquire a theory of mind other than learning behaviors and figuring out what works and what doesn’t?

The question is one of what has been learned. It seems possible that an animal could learn, from experience, that outcomes can be different depending on whether it is light or dark, without developing any intuition as to why that might be so.

I'm all for the 'consciousness as a spectrum' view, but as TFA says, anyone looking for a eureka moment [in this matter] will be disappointed.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#335

Post by __s »

rusticpenn wrote: post #286
nikkwong wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're over complicating it. When people generally talk about consciousness, they're talking about the phenomenology of awareness in the present moment. It's not really hard to define. It's difficult to establish whether or not an animal is conscious in the way that it's difficult to establish whether another person is conscious. The only evidence we have for consciousness is the fact that we personally exper…

As a former owner of several cats, I can say that the cats I had definitely had consciousness. They were able to read my emotions and react to it. They knew how to get what they wanted. One of them loved looking at a mirror while wiping its face (It had observed me doing it). I could go on.

My father had a siamese cat growing up, smart, would open drawers from behind to get food, tease dogs outside by standing just out of range of their leash. One day it slipped on a jump, his brother laughed at it. It ran away humiliated. That night while they were asleep it attacked his brother

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#336

Post by wruza »

maxbond wrote: post #218
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…

I think there is also a misguided razor that people who self identify as rationalists often apply, which goes, "the most cynical or disenchanted answer is likely the correct one." An overcorrection to superstition, perhaps. I personally did this, and one of the symptoms was being overly skeptical of animal consciousness. People would tell me this dog was smart or that it was feeling a certain way, and I dismissed it,…

Since you seem to be one of those who denied(?) consciousness of a cat, how do you conceptualize it?

Something like “a cat is just a large finite automaton and I am not”? How do you draw the line? Through “soul”? Through “neocortex thickness”? Why a cat would not experience its life like you do when e.g. drugged or seriously drunk? I mean, cats aren’t drunk, but isn’t it easy to experience or at least imagine the “animal mode” in yourself? At times when you were startled or in rage or had sex like an animal, so that your intellectual parts didn’t work properly, did that pause your consciousness? Have you thought about it and if yes, what’s the answer?

Also why is it so surprising to you that a cat noticed a change and… how exactly does this connect to yes/no consciousness?

(These are all curiosity questions, I’m not an animal rights fighter or something like that.)

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#337

Post by NayamAmarshe »

swader999 wrote: post #327
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory and intelligence are not the same as consciousness. Yes, we're different in the way that we use our intelligence but it doesn't prove that other beings are without consciousness.

What about humour? Only rats, people and chimps can laugh.

All of this is very much dependent on the types of senses. The Sāṁkhya metaphysics system gives a breakdown of everything that exists on top of the conscious entity:

1. Intellect

2. Ego

3. Mind

5. Sensory capacities

6. Action capacities

Humor would be a part of the Mind and Sensory capacities which reflects back the changes in Action capacities.

So 'consciousness' is actually none of these things. It's the irreducible entity, or in simple terms energy or force that animates what would otherwise be dead matter.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#338

Post by copirate »

lkdfjlkdfjlg wrote: post #55
jraph wrote: post #36

It doesn't take a genius to notice animals are conscious. Only to prove it and convince their human peers that this is the case. I guess.

How do you "prove" that other people are conscious? This isn't a gotcha question: to me they're both obviously true. The question is what kind of evidence do you require, and why do people require different evidence for people vs other animals.

> How do you "prove" that other people are conscious?

For sentience scientists mainly look at behavioral cues:

> For example, "if a dog with an injured paw whimpers, licks the wound, limps, lowers pressure on the paw while walking, learns to avoid the place where the injury happened and seeks out analgesics when offered, we have reasonable grounds to assume that the dog is indeed experiencing something unpleasant." Avoiding painful stimuli unless the reward is significant can also provide evidence that pain avoidance is not merely an unconscious reflex (similarly to how humans "can choose to press a hot door handle to escape a burning building").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience#Indicators_of_sentie...

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#339

Post by robofanatic »

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…

> It's not just the Bible. It's virtually every religion and it's probably pre-religious. There's also no reason to assume that animals don't think the same way.

except Hinduism.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#340

Post by sim7c00 »

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…

i love how humans always put themselves outside of nature, and like you point out, that scientists, even though they dispute where that notion comes from, cling onto it religiously :D. There's even animals with more developed / complex brains as us, but surely, they can't be conscious!

My dog isn't dreaming about anything, he's just flapping his feet and snorting and making cute sounds in his sleep at random, likely just spazms.... Like any normal dog.

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