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Is a dog conscious? Dogs sense and categorize; dogs feel emotions; dogs form conclusions about their reality; dogs sleep and die just like we do. What do you m
by beat 7y ago
Is a dog conscious? Dogs sense and categorize; dogs feel emotions; dogs form conclusions about their reality; dogs sleep and die just like we do.
What do you mean by "consciousness", if it includes humans but excludes dogs? And if it includes dogs, does it include insects? Plants?
We need to be reasonably specific when discussing these things.
- mcguire 7y agoAm I conscious? How would I know? If I'm capable of fooling everyone else, can I be fooling myself?
- goatlover 7y agoYou can’t be fooling yourself into thinking you see color or feel pain. What would that even mean?
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoI think there are two different things called consciousness. The first is awareness of your surroundings. Yes, your dog is conscious, unless asleep. And even then it's conscious to some degree, because it can be awakened by external stimulus. The second kind of consciousness is being aware of your awareness - being able to watch your mind work. To our knowledge, dogs don't have that. Nobody does but humans, so far as we know. The problem is, my definition here is a purely internal, subjective one. I can't prove to you that I am conscious in the second sense; I can't prove to you that anyone else is or is not. All I know is that this is something my own mind can do, and maybe I can describe a bit of what it's like to have my mind do it. That's not much to go on for further investigations.
- _nub3 7y agoTo state, that humans are able to watch their mind work is simply wrong. People who argue with the chinese room argument, are unable to prove, that they're not a "chinese room" themself.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago> To state, that humans are able to watch their mind work is simply wrong. Given that I experience doing so, refuting it takes a bit more than claiming that it's simply wrong.
- lostmsu 7y agoDemonstratably, you don't actually experience doing so. When a solution to a problem you were thinking aloud about yesterday suddenly pops up in you mind today, you have 0 idea how your brain came up with it. What you experience is only the pop ups.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoYes, I have had that experience. And how do we know it just "popped up"? Because we can watch our own consciousness, and we can see that it did not originate at the level of conscious thought.
- lostmsu 7y agoSo you mean unless you think an idea in words, you are not doing anything conscious? Does that mean I play a real-time video game entirely unconsciously? Because I don't think "I need to go there and do this" in words, I just do it.
- _nub3 7y agoSeen from my perspective this doesn't make you any more different than the chinese room, as you cannot prove your claim to observe your very own mind while thinking.