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Are animals conscious? New research

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Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#451

Post by lukan »

wruza wrote: post #422
lukan wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 usuall…

Are you sure, you need meet? Personally, I know I want meat and I know I despise the meat factories. But there are alternatives, cattle raised on actual grass. Or game from the forest. More expensive, but I don't need nor want meat every day.

edit: with meat factories I did not talk about industrial packaging of meat. That is fine. What is not fine with me, is having living animals on conveyor belts, who never see the sun or feel the earth.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#452

Post by bowsamic »

bowsamic wrote: post #253
maxbond wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zhuangzi: See how the minnows come out and dart around as they please! That is what fish enjoy! Huizi: You're not a fish - how do you know what fish enjoy? Zhuangzi: You're not I, so how do you know that I don't know what fish enjoy?

Oh then demonstrate your supernatural abilities to know what a lizard is feeling to us

Why am I being flagged for comments that should not be flagged at all?

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#453

Post by lukan »

psychoslave wrote: post #407
tdb7893 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of things that I was taught growing up that I used to sort of just accept but from the outside don't really make any sense (as an example: where I grew up was pretty homophobic but once I was old enough I realized that the homophobia just literally made no sense and it was stupid to care what other people did). The current state of animal agriculture is one of those thing, growing up I ate meat and I…

> it was stupid to care what other people did Just put like this, it’s a bit of an opposite extreme. I mean, the rest of your message also give context that mitigate the statement, but alone it sounds a bit drastic: if some people plot a genocide against some other people, the latter would be wiser to care about it.

Yes indeed. A person who does not care about others at all, is called a sociopath.

But what to do, if the society itself is sick?

Well, either find a balance of blocking out the bad parts and accepting only the good, or find a better society ...

(To become a immigrant somewhere else)

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#454

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bowsamic wrote: post #452
bowsamic wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh then demonstrate your supernatural abilities to know what a lizard is feeling to us

Why am I being flagged for comments that should not be flagged at all?

From the site guidelines:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Eschew flamebait.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals...

That's why that comment was flagged. (To me personally, your comment was harsh enough to be worthy of downvoting, though I'm not sure I would have flagged it.)

Also from the guidelines:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#455

Post by gadflyinyoureye »

ysavir wrote: post #350
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 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. Is this not a very self-serving assertion, though? Pointing at things that we humans have accomplished and are proud of, and saying that sets…

I’m at a lost as to why I should care? Everything comes down to force. Those animals can opine all they want, but humans have the means, motive and opportunity to make them into tasty food. Their conscious or lack there of has no impact.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#456

Post by Supermancho »

protonfish wrote: post #401
throwup238 wrote: post #38

> 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…

If a rigorous definition of consciousness existed, how would you be convinced that it was correct?

Same way I am convinced of relativity without having recognized experiencing the effects. Deduction and consistent observation. That's just me. Getting people to believe in things, is not a hard problem.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#457

Post by alexey-salmin »

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,…

> 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.

This approach wouldn't be inconsistent if you were cynically skeptical of human consciousness as well.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#458

Post by SpaceFarmer »

I've always had trouble with people's definition of consciousness. What is amazing to me is that I've lived my whole life, from the perspective of this one seemingly random guy. I can't prove anyone or anything else is consciousness, but I know "I'm in here" so to speak. As amazing and complex as the configuration of atoms in the human brain is, it doesn't even begin to explain to me how "I" ended up perceiving reality from this one object in particular. Or even explain what "I" am.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#459

Post by MaxBarraclough »

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…

> humans are 100% conscious

If using humans as a comparative baseline, then sure, that's trivially true. I don't see any reason to believe there could never be anything 'more conscious' than a human, i.e. >100% conscious when compared to a human.

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