7 ms·

Why won't biologists say that animals might be conscious?

45 points by eatitraw 10y ago

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
That old word - 'conscious'. We misuse it terribly. For instance we know when someone is 'unconscious', which should reasonably be the converse of being conscious. By that view, every animal that is aware and responding to its environment is conscious. Another use (misuse?) of the word is to mean 'self-aware'. That one is harder to measure. But plenty of animals seem to meet that bar - if they recognize themselves in a mirror; if they can empathize with others etc.
- psyc 10y ago
  I'd happily forfeit all my Christmas presents this year if internet people would all stop noising up discussions of consciousness with protests that it's ill-defined. One meaning is the opposite of unconscious. Another perfectly fine meaning is having subjective experience. Just like every other word with shades of meaning, we can tell from context - e.g. if the one using the word is a philosopher, or an anesthesiologist. Neither necessarily implies self-awareness. That's a third thing. Poorly understood, yes. Ill-defined - I just don't see it.
  - robbrown451 10y ago
    For self awareness and subjective experience: can you tell me if a self driving car has either of those?
  - harryjo 10y ago
    you just gave two vague definitions and also said it has shades of meaning -- that's what "ill-defined" is.
dominotw 10y ago
because there is no precise definition of consciousness...duh.
pvaldes 10y ago
Because we have much more urgent problems to solve, that aren't being solved.
- kleer001 10y ago
  My friend. I'm sad to say, that's not how science works.
  - pvaldes 10y ago
    Ok, I'll rephrase it. Becoming a scientist is so incredibly hard that for the 99% or scientists in the planet there is absolutely neither point nor desire into spend their huge inversion validating the 2.0 version of old uninteresting themes linked with pseudo-religious connotations. We are instead thinking about cancer and other diseases, biological invasions, contamination, climate change, and how explore, discover and save new animals and plants. Each one of this problems could fill several lives. Do you feel that your turtle pet is so smart that could read your mind? Sorry if I'm being rough, but honestly... I don't care. We are trying to fight against the sixth extinction here.
    - robbrown451 10y ago
      Whether or not it is an appropriate thing for science to discuss is a separate issue from whether it has utility. There are plenty of things of limited utility that scientists spend time on, and I'm fine with that. On the other hand, I don't think this is a scientific question.
    - chillwaves 10y ago
      Perhaps if you valued the philosophy of considering lower intelligence as more than resources to be exploited, we would not have so many problems to solve in the first place. To expand, there is value in nature and the existent ecosystems in ways that are not immediately apparent. The perspective of mankind subjugating nature, conquering our planet is in my mind the root cause of the disruptions creating the extinction event you allude to. Consider there is value in caring about these sort of questions.
pekk 10y ago
Why won't they say that humans are conscious? Because this is not a question of biology and it is not a question biologists have the training or data to answer, even if you want them to take this stand for essentially political reasons.
SFJulie 10y ago
Because the bible says so. And, it has always been the taboo in biology where biologists are a tad more reverent to religions than in other science. Bibles says so: else eating/using animals would be a sin, and a lot of human «non virtuous behaviour» could be acceptable and animalism would be almost acceptable. If human beings where animals (and animals considered conscious) monotheism most important axiom would disappear and most of our social order.
- mikeash 10y ago
  You know there are a lot of non-monotheistic biologists out there?
vivekd 10y ago
It's so easy for humans to anthropomorphize animals and believe that they have thoughts, feelings and inner lives similar to that of humans. We do it every day when looking at cute cat videos on the internet and imagining that the cats are laughing, or smiling or crying based on superficial similarities with human emotions. I think it's so tempting for our species to project our inner words onto the animal kingdom. I think that's why so few biologists are willing to consider this area, it looks like they are projecting their biases and ways of thinking onto their subjects of study, which wouldn't be conductive to their research.
- davidiach 10y ago
  It's not just animals, humans will anthropomorphize even robots which we know for sure aren't conscious. I remember how, not that long ago Boston Dynamics posted a video of a man kicking a robot dog and a lot of people were really unconformable seeing that.
  - harryjo 10y ago
    Not just animals robots, humans will project emotions onto other humans. We see a photo of someone's face, or look at someone who isn't making any particular expression, and imagine an emotion based on transient artifacts captured at a single point in time. See also: "resting bitch face" and all the memes featuring baby's faces.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > It's not just animals This is entertainingly illustrated with googly eyes [1]. Stick a pair of them on virtually any inanimate object and you'll find people naming it, addressing it and contemplating its existence. [1] http://factorydirectcraft.com/pimages/20120612115710-811278/25mm_googly_eyes.jpg http://factorydirectcraft.com/pimages/20120612115710-811278/...
- 10y ago
robbrown451 10y ago
The word consciousness, as most people seem to use it, is not defined in a way that science can touch it. It only makes sense from a certain perspective, and that is not the perspective of science. Asking "is some entity X conscious?" is sort of like asking "last December 6, what were the chances of there being a big earthquake in Indonesia the following day?" The only way to answer a "what are the chances?" type question is from the perspective of someone with limited knowledge. From the point of view of us, today, we don't have limited knowledge, we know the earthquake happened. So the question doesn't make sense. Likewise with consciousness. You can't analyze it from a perspective other than that of the entity in question. It doesn't make sense. There are plenty of other ways of defining consciousness that make it more accessible to science. But you might find it difficult to make sure it isn't inclusive of things that you don't consider conscious, like a self driving car or even your phone.
- mikeash 10y ago
  I think this is not quite true. If an entity describes its own consciousness without any outside prompting, I think that's pretty good evidence that it actually is conscious. The odds of a non-conscious entity acting that way are minimal. This is why I'm pretty sure other people are conscious, for example. Of course, it doesn't work so well with animals....
  - robbrown451 10y ago
    Ok, so say a self driving car has a natural language interface. It can describe everything it knows about its environment, its relationship to its environment, and so on. And pretty much anything else that a decent phone or computer could talk about, given a few more years of advances in natural language processing, machine learning, etc. What are examples of things it might say that would cause you to conclude it must be "conscious", by your definition? Also, you seem to have ruled out animals like dogs or chimps. I've never heard of one them them describing their own consciousness. Are you saying they aren't conscious if they can't describe it? (should we not be concerned if an animal is in pain, if it can't describe pain to your satisfaction?)
jplasmeier 10y ago
Hmm. I had read in a book that volitional attentional binding (being able to shift your attention to different parts of your experience was closely related to what we call consciousness/experience, and that a lot of animals exhibit this behavior. So, most likely, animals are in fact conscious. Sadly I don't have any sources of research done in this area...
Nomentatus 10y ago
I think it's a pendulum. I remember when no scientist would say in print that animals could experience pain, and my shock when first reading a peer-reviewed article that suggested that (fish I think it was) did. Back then the Nim experiments were held to show that animals were not capable of understanding language in any way ('cause their syntax was imperfect.) However, before that scientists had been too quick to trumpet any sign of symbolic understanding as "animals understanding language." Of course, it is also strict traditional (Thomist) Catholic doctrine that animals do not have souls (the seat of experience) or go to heaven; go back far enough and that was a strong limit on what science it was easy to publish.
negamax 10y ago
I recently spent good bit of time studying neuroscience. It's fascinating the way brain and nervous system functions. My own understanding is that animals are much more a slave to their neural networks as compared to humans. Because of frontal lobe and series of evolutionary changes, human beings have branched too far. Consciousness is also not fully understood at this stage. But I do concur that on cellular and structural level we are quite similar to other vertebrates. Still different. Edit: if anyone is studying biology, medicine and are from software background; give me a shout. I would love to exchange ideas and collaborate
justinpombrio 10y ago
For anyone that wants to actually learn about consciousness, I recommend the book "In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind"[1]. It teases apart different aspects of what people call "consciousness", gives a theory that explains them, and describes the supporting evidence found so far. The theory suggests that some but not all animals are conscious. I believe the theory -- "Global Workspace Theory"[2] -- is currently the leading theory of consciousness, though the field is still very new. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Theater-Consciousness-Workspace-Mind/dp/0195147030 https://www.amazon.com/Theater-Consciousness-Workspace-Mind/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Workspace_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Workspace_Theory
alexandercrohde 10y ago
The fact that pushed me over the edge is when I learned a cat twitching in its sleep is dreaming. Apparently all mammals dream. Now we haven't exactly defined consciousness, but I can't really imagine how you can have dreaming without having an experience that "counts" to me. Sometimes scientists use "recognizing oneself in a mirror" as the definition of "self-awareness", but I'd be sure to differentiate self-aware and conscious, because infants can't recognize themselves in mirrors, but they almost certainly experience pain that shapes them for life.
- waqf 10y ago
  Philosophers have come up with a long string of traits which supposedly separate us from the animals, and they have a very poor track record: "Animals can't recognize themselves in a mirror" "Animals can't use tools" "Ok, but animals can't make a plan to go get a tool and use it" "Animals can't make tools" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo) … and so it goes on. My impression at this point is that scientists are spending time patiently disproving these theories only because philosophers are so far off track in suggesting them to begin with.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dmurray 10y ago
    The article deals with this, slightly tongue in cheek, as: > A funny pattern in animal behaviour seems to be that whatever difficult task you devise will eventually be done by pigeons A charitable interpretation is that scientifically, we ascribe the simplest possible behaviour (no conscious thought! No tool making! No tool using!) to animals and treat it as a notable result when these assumptions are proven wrong.
- robbrown451 10y ago
  What about a self driving car that, when it is not operational and is just sitting in the garage with its sensors turned off, replays scenarios from the past, creates fictional scenarios loosely or directly based on those experiences, and so on, so as to better organize and refine its data and decision making logic? Gaining additional experience without actually driving on roads. Basically dreaming, at least in a functional sense. Does that mean it is conscious? (and what if that same car, when operational and passing a reflective store window, can identify the reflection of itself as being itself, as opposed to being another car?)
roflchoppa 10y ago
I was in a lecture by James Blackmon (cool dude, has some really interesting points about AI consciousness) He gave this example of testing for a Moral Patient, he stated "you would not hit a dog with a hammer, not because it can feel pain, but because it has an adverse reaction to the sensory input." By that conclusion he was saying that similarly an AI could be a moral patient because it can react to sensory input. Interesting to think about.
westoncb 10y ago
I think the author is conflating two every different notions of consciousness here, more specifically by not quite getting what the 'hard problem' of consciousness refers to. The easy problem, which is what most of the article is about, is just self-monitoring—having some 'meta' processing. It's not hard to conceive of a system structured (roughly) like this: you start with a first order brain that just reacts to external stimuli, then you layer another system on it that monitors its state and calculates new inputs for it based on what was observed. The hard problem isn't a scientific problem at all. It relates to immediate experience: what it's like to actually feel cold, or the experience of the color red, etc. It's basically accounting for 'qualia'—and it has nothing to do with what's usually called 'conscious thought.'
Pseudosudowoodo 10y ago
Consciousness is tricky philosophical business. The reality is that on our planet, even something as simple as a plant (or fungi) can have memory, communication, and the ability to anticipate results. Where do we draw the line? Is there even a line that can be drawn? This issue goes way beyond just animals and until we have a functional metric of intelligence, I can't see us getting any real answers past simply recording data. A link to a researcher on this subject as well as some of her published work: http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/people/monica.gagliano http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/people/monica.gagliano There are quite a few people, all more qualified than I, researching matters like this. Figured that this was something that most might not even consider and thus was worth mentioning.
fellellor 10y ago
All the better to eat you, my dear..

45 points by eatitraw 10y ago

That old word - 'conscious'. We misuse it terribly. For instance we know when someone is 'unconscious', which should reasonably be the converse of being conscious. By that view, every animal that is aware and responding to its environment is conscious. Another use (misuse?) of the word is to mean 'self-aware'. That one is harder to measure. But plenty of animals seem to meet that bar - if they recognize themselves in a mirror; if they can empathize with others etc.

psyc 10y ago
I'd happily forfeit all my Christmas presents this year if internet people would all stop noising up discussions of consciousness with protests that it's ill-defined. One meaning is the opposite of unconscious. Another perfectly fine meaning is having subjective experience. Just like every other word with shades of meaning, we can tell from context - e.g. if the one using the word is a philosopher, or an anesthesiologist. Neither necessarily implies self-awareness. That's a third thing. Poorly understood, yes. Ill-defined - I just don't see it.
- robbrown451 10y ago
  For self awareness and subjective experience: can you tell me if a self driving car has either of those?
- harryjo 10y ago
  you just gave two vague definitions and also said it has shades of meaning -- that's what "ill-defined" is.

dominotw 10y ago

because there is no precise definition of consciousness...duh.

pvaldes 10y ago

Because we have much more urgent problems to solve, that aren't being solved.

kleer001 10y ago
My friend. I'm sad to say, that's not how science works.
- pvaldes 10y ago
  Ok, I'll rephrase it. Becoming a scientist is so incredibly hard that for the 99% or scientists in the planet there is absolutely neither point nor desire into spend their huge inversion validating the 2.0 version of old uninteresting themes linked with pseudo-religious connotations. We are instead thinking about cancer and other diseases, biological invasions, contamination, climate change, and how explore, discover and save new animals and plants. Each one of this problems could fill several lives. Do you feel that your turtle pet is so smart that could read your mind? Sorry if I'm being rough, but honestly... I don't care. We are trying to fight against the sixth extinction here.
  - robbrown451 10y ago
    Whether or not it is an appropriate thing for science to discuss is a separate issue from whether it has utility. There are plenty of things of limited utility that scientists spend time on, and I'm fine with that. On the other hand, I don't think this is a scientific question.
  - chillwaves 10y ago
    Perhaps if you valued the philosophy of considering lower intelligence as more than resources to be exploited, we would not have so many problems to solve in the first place. To expand, there is value in nature and the existent ecosystems in ways that are not immediately apparent. The perspective of mankind subjugating nature, conquering our planet is in my mind the root cause of the disruptions creating the extinction event you allude to. Consider there is value in caring about these sort of questions.

pekk 10y ago

Why won't they say that humans are conscious? Because this is not a question of biology and it is not a question biologists have the training or data to answer, even if you want them to take this stand for essentially political reasons.

SFJulie 10y ago

Because the bible says so. And, it has always been the taboo in biology where biologists are a tad more reverent to religions than in other science. Bibles says so: else eating/using animals would be a sin, and a lot of human «non virtuous behaviour» could be acceptable and animalism would be almost acceptable. If human beings where animals (and animals considered conscious) monotheism most important axiom would disappear and most of our social order.

mikeash 10y ago
You know there are a lot of non-monotheistic biologists out there?

vivekd 10y ago

It's so easy for humans to anthropomorphize animals and believe that they have thoughts, feelings and inner lives similar to that of humans. We do it every day when looking at cute cat videos on the internet and imagining that the cats are laughing, or smiling or crying based on superficial similarities with human emotions. I think it's so tempting for our species to project our inner words onto the animal kingdom. I think that's why so few biologists are willing to consider this area, it looks like they are projecting their biases and ways of thinking onto their subjects of study, which wouldn't be conductive to their research.

davidiach 10y ago
It's not just animals, humans will anthropomorphize even robots which we know for sure aren't conscious. I remember how, not that long ago Boston Dynamics posted a video of a man kicking a robot dog and a lot of people were really unconformable seeing that.
- harryjo 10y ago
  Not just animals robots, humans will project emotions onto other humans. We see a photo of someone's face, or look at someone who isn't making any particular expression, and imagine an emotion based on transient artifacts captured at a single point in time. See also: "resting bitch face" and all the memes featuring baby's faces.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > It's not just animals This is entertainingly illustrated with googly eyes [1]. Stick a pair of them on virtually any inanimate object and you'll find people naming it, addressing it and contemplating its existence. [1] http://factorydirectcraft.com/pimages/20120612115710-811278/25mm_googly_eyes.jpg http://factorydirectcraft.com/pimages/20120612115710-811278/...
10y ago

robbrown451 10y ago

The word consciousness, as most people seem to use it, is not defined in a way that science can touch it. It only makes sense from a certain perspective, and that is not the perspective of science. Asking "is some entity X conscious?" is sort of like asking "last December 6, what were the chances of there being a big earthquake in Indonesia the following day?" The only way to answer a "what are the chances?" type question is from the perspective of someone with limited knowledge. From the point of view of us, today, we don't have limited knowledge, we know the earthquake happened. So the question doesn't make sense. Likewise with consciousness. You can't analyze it from a perspective other than that of the entity in question. It doesn't make sense. There are plenty of other ways of defining consciousness that make it more accessible to science. But you might find it difficult to make sure it isn't inclusive of things that you don't consider conscious, like a self driving car or even your phone.

mikeash 10y ago
I think this is not quite true. If an entity describes its own consciousness without any outside prompting, I think that's pretty good evidence that it actually is conscious. The odds of a non-conscious entity acting that way are minimal. This is why I'm pretty sure other people are conscious, for example. Of course, it doesn't work so well with animals....
- robbrown451 10y ago
  Ok, so say a self driving car has a natural language interface. It can describe everything it knows about its environment, its relationship to its environment, and so on. And pretty much anything else that a decent phone or computer could talk about, given a few more years of advances in natural language processing, machine learning, etc. What are examples of things it might say that would cause you to conclude it must be "conscious", by your definition? Also, you seem to have ruled out animals like dogs or chimps. I've never heard of one them them describing their own consciousness. Are you saying they aren't conscious if they can't describe it? (should we not be concerned if an animal is in pain, if it can't describe pain to your satisfaction?)

jplasmeier 10y ago

Hmm. I had read in a book that volitional attentional binding (being able to shift your attention to different parts of your experience was closely related to what we call consciousness/experience, and that a lot of animals exhibit this behavior. So, most likely, animals are in fact conscious. Sadly I don't have any sources of research done in this area...

Nomentatus 10y ago

I think it's a pendulum. I remember when no scientist would say in print that animals could experience pain, and my shock when first reading a peer-reviewed article that suggested that (fish I think it was) did. Back then the Nim experiments were held to show that animals were not capable of understanding language in any way ('cause their syntax was imperfect.) However, before that scientists had been too quick to trumpet any sign of symbolic understanding as "animals understanding language." Of course, it is also strict traditional (Thomist) Catholic doctrine that animals do not have souls (the seat of experience) or go to heaven; go back far enough and that was a strong limit on what science it was easy to publish.

negamax 10y ago

I recently spent good bit of time studying neuroscience. It's fascinating the way brain and nervous system functions. My own understanding is that animals are much more a slave to their neural networks as compared to humans. Because of frontal lobe and series of evolutionary changes, human beings have branched too far. Consciousness is also not fully understood at this stage. But I do concur that on cellular and structural level we are quite similar to other vertebrates. Still different. Edit: if anyone is studying biology, medicine and are from software background; give me a shout. I would love to exchange ideas and collaborate

justinpombrio 10y ago

For anyone that wants to actually learn about consciousness, I recommend the book "In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind"[1]. It teases apart different aspects of what people call "consciousness", gives a theory that explains them, and describes the supporting evidence found so far. The theory suggests that some but not all animals are conscious. I believe the theory -- "Global Workspace Theory"[2] -- is currently the leading theory of consciousness, though the field is still very new. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Theater-Consciousness-Workspace-Mind/dp/0195147030 https://www.amazon.com/Theater-Consciousness-Workspace-Mind/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Workspace_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Workspace_Theory

alexandercrohde 10y ago

The fact that pushed me over the edge is when I learned a cat twitching in its sleep is dreaming. Apparently all mammals dream. Now we haven't exactly defined consciousness, but I can't really imagine how you can have dreaming without having an experience that "counts" to me. Sometimes scientists use "recognizing oneself in a mirror" as the definition of "self-awareness", but I'd be sure to differentiate self-aware and conscious, because infants can't recognize themselves in mirrors, but they almost certainly experience pain that shapes them for life.

waqf 10y ago
Philosophers have come up with a long string of traits which supposedly separate us from the animals, and they have a very poor track record: "Animals can't recognize themselves in a mirror" "Animals can't use tools" "Ok, but animals can't make a plan to go get a tool and use it" "Animals can't make tools" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo) … and so it goes on. My impression at this point is that scientists are spending time patiently disproving these theories only because philosophers are so far off track in suggesting them to begin with.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dmurray 10y ago
  The article deals with this, slightly tongue in cheek, as: > A funny pattern in animal behaviour seems to be that whatever difficult task you devise will eventually be done by pigeons A charitable interpretation is that scientifically, we ascribe the simplest possible behaviour (no conscious thought! No tool making! No tool using!) to animals and treat it as a notable result when these assumptions are proven wrong.
robbrown451 10y ago
What about a self driving car that, when it is not operational and is just sitting in the garage with its sensors turned off, replays scenarios from the past, creates fictional scenarios loosely or directly based on those experiences, and so on, so as to better organize and refine its data and decision making logic? Gaining additional experience without actually driving on roads. Basically dreaming, at least in a functional sense. Does that mean it is conscious? (and what if that same car, when operational and passing a reflective store window, can identify the reflection of itself as being itself, as opposed to being another car?)

roflchoppa 10y ago

I was in a lecture by James Blackmon (cool dude, has some really interesting points about AI consciousness) He gave this example of testing for a Moral Patient, he stated "you would not hit a dog with a hammer, not because it can feel pain, but because it has an adverse reaction to the sensory input." By that conclusion he was saying that similarly an AI could be a moral patient because it can react to sensory input. Interesting to think about.

westoncb 10y ago

I think the author is conflating two every different notions of consciousness here, more specifically by not quite getting what the 'hard problem' of consciousness refers to. The easy problem, which is what most of the article is about, is just self-monitoring—having some 'meta' processing. It's not hard to conceive of a system structured (roughly) like this: you start with a first order brain that just reacts to external stimuli, then you layer another system on it that monitors its state and calculates new inputs for it based on what was observed. The hard problem isn't a scientific problem at all. It relates to immediate experience: what it's like to actually feel cold, or the experience of the color red, etc. It's basically accounting for 'qualia'—and it has nothing to do with what's usually called 'conscious thought.'

Pseudosudowoodo 10y ago

Consciousness is tricky philosophical business. The reality is that on our planet, even something as simple as a plant (or fungi) can have memory, communication, and the ability to anticipate results. Where do we draw the line? Is there even a line that can be drawn? This issue goes way beyond just animals and until we have a functional metric of intelligence, I can't see us getting any real answers past simply recording data. A link to a researcher on this subject as well as some of her published work: http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/people/monica.gagliano http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/people/monica.gagliano There are quite a few people, all more qualified than I, researching matters like this. Figured that this was something that most might not even consider and thus was worth mentioning.

fellellor 10y ago

All the better to eat you, my dear..