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> 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 o

> 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.)

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.)