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Are animals conscious? New research

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Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#81

Post by Coffeewine »

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 agree completely. Anyone who spends even a cursory amount of time with a companion animal such as a dog or cat can see that they are emotional beings, and the notion that you can be emotional without also being conscious seems to strain credulity.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#82

Post by lolinder »

mgh2 wrote: post #76
lolinder wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence: animals exhibit numerous behaviors that resemble our emotional responses in various ways. Anyone who has ever had a pet dog or a cat will have countless anecdotes. The explanation with the fewest moving parts is that our brain and hormonal systems look an awful lot like the brain and hormonal systems of a cat or a dog and therefore the simplest explanation is that cats and dogs have emotions and thought…

Are you sure that is not just mimicry of mechanisms left by evolution? Is like saying ChatGPT has conscience because it can talk or "think" like us...are we missing something here? I am not opposing your view, just trying to understand the logic - perplexed by downvotes on a simple question...

I'm not sure about the downvotes, I couldn't even downvote you if I wanted to because you replied to me.

I'm operating on the assumption that evolution happened as Darwin described it. As another reply to you notes, darwinian evolution precludes sharp divides between species in favor of a gradual development of complexity over time. A believer in darwinian evolution should expect consciousness and emotions and other mental processes to manifest on a continuum, which means that the question of animal consciousness should be about as controversial as the question of our own consciousness (which is definitely an open topic of philosophical debate but is also impossible to solved with an experiment).

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#83

Post by DangitBobby »

epgui wrote: post #77
DangitBobby wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human attitude towards our relationship with animals cannot be described as anything other than anthropocentric for the vast majority of people. Whether the origin of that attitude is due to the rejection of certain traditions assuming animals to be sacred or the adoption of traditions treating humans as sacred, it exists, and causes horrific mistreatment of animals on a global scale.

> the origin of that attitude I suspect the attitude is the default / most primitive one, because any other attitude requires higher-order cognitive processes that can abstract one's own experiences (which is the only real input one has) with the behaviours of entities that appear to be very different from oneself. In other words, the capacity for empathy is a "positive feature", in the sense that it is absent by def…

True. It's also sophisticated to have the ego required to believe you should inherently have dominion over the entire planet and all animals on it. I don't think it's an idea most people would have adopted themselves without being born into a society formed by religions that perpetuate such a belief and it's consequences [1].

As an aside, it's not clear to me how "having dominion" should justify such mistreatment, anyway.

1. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201:25-...

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#84

Post by epgui »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #74
epgui wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To prove this would require being able to very clearly define consciousness, but we know that consciousness is not “a thing”— it’s rather “a collection of things”, and it’s not either there or not; rather it’s largely a question of degree. And I don’t just mean this as inter-species variation either: even if we only look at humans, humans exhibit the whole spectrum and/or patchwork of states of consciousness, both de…

> I find it annoying how we’re even entertaining the idea that animals wouldn’t be conscious. Like what does that even mean? it means that "science" has been infiltrated with grifters living off research grant gravy trains producing conjectures entirely obvious for hundreds of thousands of years...and reproduced by the previous round of grifters a handful of years earlier. i say that as someone who sees these faux re…

That's for the most part nonsense / a distorted perspective on what happens in science... and I say this as someone who used to be a biochemist.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#85

Post by cf100clunk »

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

In your sentence I would substitute ''religious'' with other more specific terms like ''Judeo-Christian'' since Jainism and Hinduism have been talking about a continuum of consciousness in all living things for almost 3,000 years: specifically described by them as the Ātman and the Jiva.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80tman_(Hinduism)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiva

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#86

Post by captainclam »

mgh2 wrote: post #76
lolinder wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence: animals exhibit numerous behaviors that resemble our emotional responses in various ways. Anyone who has ever had a pet dog or a cat will have countless anecdotes. The explanation with the fewest moving parts is that our brain and hormonal systems look an awful lot like the brain and hormonal systems of a cat or a dog and therefore the simplest explanation is that cats and dogs have emotions and thought…

Are you sure that is not just mimicry of mechanisms left by evolution? Is like saying ChatGPT has conscience because it can talk or "think" like us...are we missing something here? I am not opposing your view, just trying to understand the logic - perplexed by downvotes on a simple question...

“Mimicry of mechanisms left by evolution” would be a much less parsimonious explanation than just having those mechanisms, i.e. Occam’s razor.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#87

Post by lolinder »

cf100clunk wrote: post #85
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 In your sentence I would substitute ''religious'' with other more specific terms like ''Judeo-Christian'' since Jainism and Hinduism have been talking about a continuum of consciousness in all living things for almost 3,000 years: specifically described by them as the Ātman and the Jiva. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4…

Yep, I meant that to be included, that's why the sentence ends with a reference to how people usually read the Bible.

I'm a Christian myself but I definitely think that the Indian religions get animals and animal rights far more correct than we usually do.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#88

Post by epgui »

DangitBobby wrote: post #83
epgui wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the origin of that attitude I suspect the attitude is the default / most primitive one, because any other attitude requires higher-order cognitive processes that can abstract one's own experiences (which is the only real input one has) with the behaviours of entities that appear to be very different from oneself. In other words, the capacity for empathy is a "positive feature", in the sense that it is absent by def…

True. It's also sophisticated to have the ego required to believe you should inherently have dominion over the entire planet and all animals on it. I don't think it's an idea most people would have adopted themselves without being born into a society formed by religions that perpetuate such a belief and it's consequences [1]. As an aside, it's not clear to me how "having dominion" should justify such mistreatment, an…

> It's also sophisticated to have the ego required to believe you should inherently have dominion over the entire planet and all animals on it.

Is that really "sophisticated", or is that just what happens when an entity outcompetes all others for resource utilization by chance (ie.: in the context of ecology / evolutionary pressure)? This is basically how cancer happens, and yet I wouldn't call cancer cells more sophisticated than healthy ones. I call it dys-regulated.

Re: Are animals conscious? New research

#89

Post by DangitBobby »

epgui wrote: post #88
DangitBobby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. It's also sophisticated to have the ego required to believe you should inherently have dominion over the entire planet and all animals on it. I don't think it's an idea most people would have adopted themselves without being born into a society formed by religions that perpetuate such a belief and it's consequences [1]. As an aside, it's not clear to me how "having dominion" should justify such mistreatment, an…

> It's also sophisticated to have the ego required to believe you should inherently have dominion over the entire planet and all animals on it. Is that really "sophisticated", or is that just what happens when an entity outcompetes all others for resource utilization by chance (ie.: in the context of ecology / evolutionary pressure)? This is basically how cancer happens, and yet I wouldn't call cancer cells more soph…

Yeah, I think it's sophisticated. Our brains are hardwired for empathy, and people are able to mostly ignore their social/emotional programming through a system of beliefs that would be difficult to propagate without language.
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