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I think we observe complex behavior in you personally that we associate with our own ... I just doubt they are necessarily as intense as we experience. Lets st

• shannifin 5y ago
  > If Helen Keller were never to learn to communicate with us through language that we understand are we to have believed that she has no consciousness. I was only referring to emotions and their intensity in species that exhibit no ability to self-reflect, not consciousness in general.
  • srean 5y ago
    I am doing the same. I am just pointing out that we use different standards of 'proof'. The only way I can assign an internal monologue of human emotions to you is (i) pattern match your external behavior with my own behavior in an emotional state (ii) take you on your word when you describe that your feelings, (iii) assume that all humans are roughly going to be the same. With animals (ii) is not an option. It would not have been an option for Helen Keller too before a common language was established. Regarding (iii) it depends on where we draw the line where similarity ends, one can argue that there is a lot of shared physiology among say dolphins, us, elephants, primates dogs … So believing that animals do not have internal monologue of emotions when they clearly show similar external manifestation is sourced more from human exceptionalism and having double standards for proofs. We don't have the technology yet to listen into the internal monologues of anybody other than our own. All we have is evidence of external behavior and some physiological telemetry. What we conclude from these stems from what we want to believe. We have been wrong about our exceptionalism many times in history, so its not a very reliable guide. By the way when I use the word 'you' its to draw attention to epistemological problem in the line of argument. Not that I disbelieve that you do have emotions.
    • shannifin 5y ago
      > The only way I can assign an internal monologue of human emotions to you is (i) pattern match your external behavior with my own behavior in an emotional state (ii) take you on your word when you describe that your feelings, (iii) assume that all humans are roughly going to be the same. Aha... With animals, I think (i) is a misleading option. Our own emotions are laden with self-reflection, with an internal monologue, with thinking about why we're feeling something and how we might be able to change it. This is how we get the idea of "emotions" at all. If we take away the ability to self-reflect, to even have a conceptual understanding of "emotions", that doesn't mean the emotional behavior necessarily goes away, but the conscious experience of the emotion may be quite different, perhaps even completely non-existent. (Again, not consciousness itself, just consciousness of the emotion.)
      • srean 5y ago
        The point is that the standards that you are using is incapable of inferring presence of emotion in animals. Its merely human exceptionalism disguised as reasoning. I have as much observational evidence that you have emotions as much for a dolphin, monkey or a dog for instance. The external manifestations are in the same ball park. Same for physiological probes like FMRI. When same class of external observation leads to different class of conclusions that's theology and blind faith, not science. 'Science' has been in this 'human exceptionalism' tar pit before in other fields of science -- astronomy for example.
        • shannifin 5y ago
          > the standards that you are using is incapable of inferring presence of emotion in animals I'm not talking about emotions in and of themselves, I'm talking about the conscious experience of emotions. In humans, we perhaps conflate the two, as we can have no concept of anger or joy without the ability to self-reflect on our experience, comparing our thought patterns and physiological sensations to past and possible future, and reasoning about why we're experiencing an emotion. Now, what is it like to experience an emotion without being able to self-reflect and consciously know that we are experiencing an emotion? The external manifestations do not go away. We can still infer the presence of emotion, we just have no way to know what the conscious experience is like. It's not a question that can as yet be answered by science, so any conclusion one way or another cannot be scientific. Just as we can infer emotional states in animals by their behavior, we can infer their lack of self-reflection by their lack of behavior we would deem "intelligent", at least compared to humans. And so we do not hold animals to the same intellectual standards. I am only suggesting that this lack of self-reflection and ability to reason would have profound effects on the conscious experience of emotions, even when external manifestations derived from them are similar. (Perhaps a can-of-worms digression, but this is also related to animals having Free Will and moral culpability for their actions. We generally do not infer the presence of evil in animals, for instance, regardless of their behavior, nor discipline them beyond Pavlovian classical conditioning. It's not a scientific matter; all we can do at the moment is guess.)
• xaedes 5y ago
  I think this text is very relevant: BEFORE THE SOUL DAWN by Helen Keller Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two facts led those about me to suppose that[142] I willed and thought. I can remember all this, not because I knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith. It was not night—it was not day. . . . . . But vacancy absorbing space, And fixedness, without a place; There were no stars—no earth—no time— No check—no change—no good—no crime. [143] My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of death. I remember, also through touch, that I had a power of association. I felt tactual jars like the stamp of a foot, the opening of a window or its closing, the slam of a door. After repeatedly smelling rain and feeling the discomfort of wetness, I acted like those about me: I ran to shut the window. But that was not thought in any sense. It was the same kind of association that makes animals take shelter from the rain. From the same instinct of aping others, I folded the clothes that came from the laundry, and put mine away, fed the turkeys, sewed bead-eyes on my doll's face, and did many other things of which I have the tactual remembrance. When I wanted anything I liked,—ice-cream,[144] for instance, of which I was very fond,—I had a delicious taste on my tongue (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my hand I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I "thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips. From reminiscences like these I conclude that it is the opening of the two faculties, freedom of will, or choice, and rationality, or the power of thinking from one thing to another, which makes it possible to come into being first as a child, afterwards as a man. Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another. So I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain[145] when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It was the turning of the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the meaning of "I" and "me" and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me. Thus it was not the sense of touch that brought me knowledge. It was the awakening of my soul that first rendered my senses their value, their cognizance of objects, names, qualities, and properties. Thought made me conscious of love, joy, and all the emotions. I was eager to know, then to understand, afterward to reflect on what I knew and understood,[146] and the blind impetus, which had before driven me hither and thither at the dictates of my sensations, vanished forever. [...] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27683/27683-h/27683-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27683/27683-h/27683-h.htm