8 ms·
Here's what the experiment did: The crows were trained to watch for a flash — which didn’t always appear — and then peck at a red or blue target to register wh
by codeulike 5y ago
Here's what the experiment did:
The crows were trained to watch for a flash — which didn’t always appear — and then peck at a red or blue target to register whether or not a flash of light was seen. Ozzie and Glenn were also taught to understand a changing “rule key” that specified whether red or blue signified the presence of a flash with the other color signifying that no flash occurred.
In each round of a test, after a flash did or didn’t appear, the crows were presented a rule key describing the current meaning of the red and blue targets, after which they pecked their response.
This sequence prevented the crows from simply rehearsing their response on auto-pilot, so to speak. In each test, they had to take the entire process from the top, seeing a flash or no flash, and then figuring out which target to peck.
Not sure I'd say this means 'self aware' but it does seem smart, as in evidence of problem solving rather than just conditioning
- throwawayboise 5y agoStill seems to be it could be mostly conditioning. It's essentially a two-part stimulous to provoke a response. Also many animals can problem-solve up to a point, even use tools, but that is not what "self aware" means to me. Self-awareness is more being able to think of yourself in the abstract, behave in consideration of how others may see you, etc.
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- nathias 5y agoyes, but we can't know if they are so we have to speculate based on behavior and other cognitive functions that we associate with self-awareness.
- xg15 5y agoWhat I don't quite understand is why the "null hypothesis" here is frequently assumed to be "crows are not self-aware". We have no idea how prevalent self-awareness in the animal kingdom actually is, so shouldn't it rather be "we don't know whether crows are self-aware or not"?
- matt-attack 5y agoThe funny thing is we have no way of knowing that any other human (other than yourself) is self aware. This is why the study of consciousness is so difficult. We each clearly know that we are having a subjective experience, but we have no way of knowing that any one (or anything) else is. I kind of sympathize with the hypothesis that simply all matter has some degree of self consciousness.
- emteycz 5y agoHmm, TBH I think that is pop-science (wrong) take... Humans can stop being self aware and we can measure that very easily. There are many different degrees of self-awareness damage, and many of them are precisely codified.
- leonry 5y agoThe problem of other minds is very much a serious problem in philosophy, cf. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
- netizen-936824 5y agoPhilosophy itself is a problem because it seems to be allergic to evidence. Look elsewhere for information concerning the mind, brains, and neurochemistry
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- jcelerier 5y agoAre you yourself even self-aware or just conditioned into believing in your own self-awareness ?
- kitd 5y agoCorvids are among the most capable problem solvers in the animal kingdom. Ravens are known to have copied complex sequences of actions, and not just in a rote fashion, but understanding what was being done (ie empathetically) and adjusting their own behaviour when conditions were changed.