2 ms·

Out of curiosity, where does this leave you with non-human animals?

skissane 4y ago
Growing up, we had dogs. I had a very strong emotional bond with our dogs – so, if my emotional bonds with my son and daughter are good reasons for me to be convinced that they are both really conscious, to be consistent I'd have to say our dogs were really conscious too. And, since I generalise from my conclusion that my children are really conscious, to the conclusion that other people's children are also really conscious, I'm also going to generalise the conclusion from our dogs to other people's dogs – and also cats – I'm not a cat person, I find them much harder to relate to than dogs, but I recognise other people feel rather differently about them than I do. So, in my mind, animals which humans have as pets, and which are capable of forming social-emotional bonds with humans, are really conscious. I'm less sure about pet species which are less social, since emotional bonds with them may be much more unidirectional, and I think the bidirectional nature of an emotional bond plays an important part in how it helps us form the conviction that the other party to that bond is really conscious. What about ants, fleas, wasps, bees, bacteria? I don't believe that they are conscious, I suppose I'm inclined to think they are not. But, I could be wrong about that. I can't even rule out panpsychism (everything is really conscious, even inanimate objects) as a possibility. If I had to bet, I'd bet against panpsychism being true, but I can't claim to be certain that it is false. Where do we draw the boundary then between "really conscious animals" and "p-zombie animals"? I think capacity for social and emotional bonds with humans (or other human-like beings, if any such beings ever exist–such as intelligent extraterrestrial life, supernatural beings such as gods/angels/demons/spirits/etc, or super-advanced AIs) is an important criterion – but I make no claim to know where the exact boundary lies. I don't think that "we don't (or maybe even can't) know the exact location of the boundary between X and Y" is necessarily a good argument against the claim that such a boundary exists.

Growing up, we had dogs. I had a very strong emotional bond with our dogs – so, if my emotional bonds with my son and daughter are good reasons for me to be convinced that they are both really conscious, to be consistent I'd have to say our dogs were really conscious too. And, since I generalise from my conclusion that my children are really conscious, to the conclusion that other people's children are also really conscious, I'm also going to generalise the conclusion from our dogs to other people's dogs – and also cats – I'm not a cat person, I find them much harder to relate to than dogs, but I recognise other people feel rather differently about them than I do. So, in my mind, animals which humans have as pets, and which are capable of forming social-emotional bonds with humans, are really conscious. I'm less sure about pet species which are less social, since emotional bonds with them may be much more unidirectional, and I think the bidirectional nature of an emotional bond plays an important part in how it helps us form the conviction that the other party to that bond is really conscious. What about ants, fleas, wasps, bees, bacteria? I don't believe that they are conscious, I suppose I'm inclined to think they are not. But, I could be wrong about that. I can't even rule out panpsychism (everything is really conscious, even inanimate objects) as a possibility. If I had to bet, I'd bet against panpsychism being true, but I can't claim to be certain that it is false. Where do we draw the boundary then between "really conscious animals" and "p-zombie animals"? I think capacity for social and emotional bonds with humans (or other human-like beings, if any such beings ever exist–such as intelligent extraterrestrial life, supernatural beings such as gods/angels/demons/spirits/etc, or super-advanced AIs) is an important criterion – but I make no claim to know where the exact boundary lies. I don't think that "we don't (or maybe even can't) know the exact location of the boundary between X and Y" is necessarily a good argument against the claim that such a boundary exists.