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Are animals conscious? New research

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Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#421

Post by cupcakecommons »

katbyte wrote: post #207
cupcakecommons wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about being extremely drunk. I have a friend that "woke up" walking in a park after a night of drinking. If he was already walking exactly who woke up? My friend the human-animal was walking already. My friend the human-consciousness woke up. It was his consciousness coming back online as the ethanol was metabolized in the parts of his brain that afforded his consciousness.

It’s not that your friend “woke up” it’s that his BAC dropped enough for his brain to start correctly forming memories again not that his consciousness “came back online”. It never went away just that no memories were formed during that time

I was trying to explain the relayed subjective experience there. The relayed subjective experience is a discontinuity occurring that's similar to waking up. The self is the thing that relays the experience to other people. You're probably right that consciousness in some expansive sense didn't go away, but that's not what I was referring to. I was referring to what it was like to be the part of my friend that relayed the story to me.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#422

Post by wruza »

lukan wrote: post #354
sim7c00 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How else could you justify treating them as a mere raw ressource in factory?

I'm sure that consciousness is a spectrum and that big mammals are near us on it, if there's any difference at all except for intelligence levels.

At the same time I have no issues with animal resource factories. I justify their existence by the fact that I'm a carnivore and needed meat and fats to properly operate since forever, no need for complex philosophy here. The necessity to justify that against ethics usually means you got way deeper into it than is reasonable.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#423

Post by jumploops »

efilife wrote: post #306
jumploops wrote: post #305

I once witnessed a spider controlling a motion activated flood light to catch prey. At first I assumed the flood light in my backyard was just being triggered by the wind, as a spider had built a web in front of the sensor, however I then noticed that the light would turn on even when there wasn’t any wind. Upon closer inspection, I found that the spider had created a singular strand of webbing, thicker than the rest…

Just a heads up - for its own advantage

The fun thing about language is that we define it.

(On a serious note, this one always gets me after midnight!)

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#424

Post by jaharios »

shinycode wrote: post #379
lolinder wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 believ…

My cat can’t comprehend code written on my screen and the world that is internet. Maybe other being exists and our notion of intelligence would collapse the same way a cat can’t possibly understand what internet is. Compared to them, would we be conscious beings ? Would they consider us conscious beings ?

>My cat can’t comprehend code written on my screen and the world that is internet.

My grandma is the same.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#425

Post by gorgoiler »

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…

There are a lot of reasons to put humans atop a sharp cliff though. Ascending the cliff means devising language, farms, fire, steel, math, NFTs etc. Reminiscent of Brin’s Uplift novels about giving dolphins (if you’ll pardon the joke) a leg up.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#426

Post by cupcakecommons »

layla5alive wrote: post #236
cupcakecommons wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. I would guess he woke up and that this was subsequent to him forming memories again. Memory seems to be a requirement for the kind of self-referential conscious experience that appears to be basically unique to humans. An anesthetic that acts entirely on memory formation and paralyzes the body is in many ways the ideal anesthetic. It's not super unlikely this is how many anesthetics work to at least s…

You are so stunningly Dunning-Kruger wrong here. Neurotransmitters, cortisol and other stress hormones, protein expression, epigenetics, the gut microbiome, all of these and more can lastingly be affected by trauma which is not committed to long term memory. Nevermind the fact that even if it is forgotten, an awake mind will suffer greatly in the moment - pretending that suffering did not occur because it was forgott…

What about what I said implied anything about various other systems like stress hormones not being lastingly be affected by trauma?

I don't think most surgical patients are concerned with the kind of trauma their cells or gut microbiome sustain during surgery. In fact, if these systems recollected zero trauma it's doubtful the surgical outcome would be positive. When most people discuss suffering they are usually discussing the suffering of their selves. The self requires coordinated effort from the brain. When surgery occurs, it could be well argued you would want to use the least anesthesia necessary to avoid the kind of suffering the patient wants to avoid.

What are you actually on about? Why be purposefully insulting?

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#427

Post by bangaroo »

ojosilva wrote: post #415
bangaroo wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how did you arrive at that conclusion? i feel like there's still just an element of "it's this way because it is this way" to this argument. the entire point of the article and the discussion is the fact that we perhaps assume our experience to be unique when it's not. it could be just as possible that animals experience consciousness in the exact way we do but simply have different innate motivations and interests t…

Yes, my definition would be more originalist ("because it has been this way") if you may. Consciousness has been a definition of the inner human experience made by humans themselves, regardless of the lack of clear understanding of what precisely denotes consciousness. Can animals experience what we experience? Well, maybe, but that's not consciousness, as I'm reserving that term to define the human inner experience…

if they are undefinable and unmeasurable i'd argue you don't understand them well enough to prove or even argue that there aren't similar complexities in other species

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#428

Post by doodpants »

"But his ideas that animals are conscious in the same way humans are have long been shunned."

...except by every single dog or cat owner ever.

Seriously, I've never understood how anyone could interact with or observe animals for any length of time and not perceive obvious signs of conciousness.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#429

Post by cupcakecommons »

lassoiat wrote: post #209
cupcakecommons wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever met a person who was blackout drunk? Easy example. They are very often not conscious but still emotional. You could easily imagine animals that exist in this state continuously without requiring chemical assistance. It makes sense on a neurological level as well. The more robust and evolutionarily older parts of the brain like the brain stem take much more ethanol to inhibit. The PFC is inhibited almost immediat…

This is why the concept of consciousness is largely nonsense. The person that is blacked out is not unconscious. They just are not storing memories in order to remember the experience after the fact. Can you see it? It is right in front of you that consciousness doesn't exist. It is right in your own example. It is a 21st century superstition and English language flaw. People cling to this idea the way people use to…

I think the self can come and go. I don't think a blacked out person is always unconscious, but they do seem to lack a subjective self while sometimes still being clinically awake and engaging in complex behavior. When the subjective self comes back online later, it makes understanding the self easier for them by creating contrast.
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