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Thousands of species of animals probably have consciousness
- c420 3y agohttps://archive.is/ix9tf https://archive.is/ix9tf
- spicyusername 3y agoIt would be far more surprising if they didn't...
- ftxbro 3y agoHow can the Economist say something so controversial yet so brave? Seriously it sounds like a Victorian era headline like 'Boffins Question Galen's Theory of Humours.' Maybe the story is that there is a religion hangup. Like, maybe the economist isn't ready for a story like 'billions of people believe in an afterlife that isn't real' and this article about consciousness is just warming up the crowd. We're taking baby steps here.
- lusus_naturae 3y agoHow do you connect these threads? What does animal consciousness has to do with the afterlife and belief in it? Is it mentioned anywhere that animals are not in the afterlife? Edit: I don't care one way or the other, I am just confused by what seems to me like disconnected threads.
- ftxbro 3y agoI think it's obvious that people would have agreed that every animal is conscious to some degree like, at least by one or two hundred years ago, if it weren't for "the implication."
- barbazoo 3y agoWhat's the implication? That they don't go to some kind of heaven or hell?
- reducesuffering 3y agoThat we will possibly be judged by future generations as savages, in the same way we look back on people having slaves, ancestors being blatantly racist, or the holocaust.
- 000ooo000 3y agoWe kill about 80 billion of them a year for food..
- CivBase 3y agoSure, but GP was talking about religion. I've never heard of a religion encouraging its followers to eat meat. The biggest ones generally discourage at least some kinds of meat.
- adyashakti 3y agochristian evangelists propagandise meat-eating in historically vegetarian countries like india. in fact they sponsor large feasts featuring meat dishes, invest in slaughterhouses etc.
- Kamq 3y agoMy understanding is that people avoiding meat is considered a sign of the endtimes (along with people leaving the faith and avoiding marriage). At least that's my reading of 1 Timothy 4:3
- anonzzzies 3y agoDon’t think Christianity does? And if creatures of god, with consciousness, should it not be all or nothing? Not just some? And for the wrong reasons (pigs are not ‘clean’). Still don’t see why we cannot eat humans if we can eat pigs. What’s the diff? I know many humans dumber than my dogs or pig. Outside religion and humans having more power (aka law), what’s the moral difference?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- alephxyz 3y agoProbably more than two hundred years ago if you consider where the word "animal" comes from
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoFrom the wiki page on "animal" The word "animal" comes from the Latin animalis, meaning 'having breath', 'having soul' or 'living being'.
- Kamq 3y ago200 years ago, killing humans that we know have consciousness was quite in vogue (generally speaking via war). Why do you think this would have been different?
- autoexec 3y agoYou make it sound like things have changed. There hasn't been a single year in my entire life where the people of my country weren't at war. Killing conscious humans is every bit as popular now! It's never once gone out of fashion.
- hgsgm 3y agoAll dogs go to heaven.
- hgsgm 3y agoIf you keep reading past the headline, it starts to make more sense. It's literally about scientific models of consciousness in specific body parts that specific animals have.
- mrcode007 3y agoAnyone with a dog can tell you so :)
- ZunarJ5 3y agoAny pet, really or anyone that works with animals in any capacity.
- earthboundkid 3y agoI think some animals have florbghji. What is florbghji? Well, I’m not going to define it. I’m just going to go on and on about it with no definition as though this wasn’t a total waste of time.
- noSyncCloud 3y agoThanks for contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation and pretending it's incredibly profound. Classic HN.
- crazygringo 3y ago> I think some animals have florbghji. What is florbghji? Well, I’m not going to define it. I’m just going to go on and on about it with no definition as though this wasn’t a total waste of time. The entire article is about the controversies and difficulties of defining consciousness, and the hypotheses of neural correlates, and at what stage of evolution those correlates appeared. So the literal thing you seem to be snarkily complaining about, is precisely what the article is trying to directly address. With various competing scientific definitions. I honestly don't know what more you want.
- 88913527 3y agoI don't see why people struggle with consciousness. I've found it to be concrete. It's the experience of having inputs (vision/hearing/etc) and outputs (response to stimuli). Whether or not you're actively aware of "hey, I have inputs and outputs" doesn't really matter. It's just the process of it. Do you have a pet dog or cat? It's obviously conscious. I guess my construct breaks down if we consider things like plants, they obviously respond to their environment.
- rustymonday 3y agoSo by this definition bacteria has consciousness. I would have to disagree that bacteria are conscious.
- 88913527 3y ago
- user6723 3y agoOne of my cats has the IQ to play Tetris, for sure. I know what will happen if I connect a brain/computer interface to him and let him at it. The other cat is fucking retarded though.
- jerrysievert 3y agoI had an extremely smart and communicative cat. she monitored things and let me know when they were out of place, was able to clearly communicate complicated ideas, put her toys away in her toy box, and told on the other cats when they were doing something she knew wasn't approved of. my current cat is what I would consider above average, understands over 100 words, is very emotionally intelligent, and can communicate fairly well. she seems to have about 20-30 different vocalizations that we have agreed on, and is able to communicate that way; though not in the way of the other cat that could communicate ideas. of course, I've also had cats that were either on the dumb side, or didn't care enough about dealing with the humans to make themselves appear as smart. unfortunately, until we can define "consciousness" and measure it well, it will still be our own ideas on what is intelligent or conscious that we either observe with bias or make an emotional "guess" about.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoI find it enormously entertaining that mine actually has a "whining" vocalization when she is moved against her will, letting me know her displeasure in an impotent but palpable way. She knows I'll soothe her and lessen the blow; really makes me think cats aren't so different than children.
- Yizahi 3y agoYes, we can't simply equate pattern matching with consciousness, otherwise we have to say that ChatGPT is conscious.
- yieldcrv 3y agohow does an individual human pass this test?
- adyashakti 3y agoof course animals are conscious. it would be more accurate to say that consciousness appears in animals, since consciousness is a priori to the body. but consciousness is not an observable; only its symptoms are observed, except by the conscious being itself. consciousness is “unseen by any sense organ, not related to anything, incomprehensible by the mind, uninferable, unthinkable, indescribable” (Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad 7) because it is completely subjective and Absolute.
- thsksbd 3y agoWe dont even know what consciousness is, or how to define it, but somehow we know thousands of species has it. Personally, I like EW Schumacher's definition (a guide to the perplexed): animals are conscious because they can be knocked unconscious. Very practical.
- akomtu 3y ago"I wasn't conscious when that or this happened" implies that consciousness is just perception. Neutrinos fly straight thru our bodies, but we don't perceive that, so we aren't conscious of that reality. We can be conscious of our thoughts or not, the latter means our attention was elsewhere. Following this logic, all animals are conscious. They can't reason, but that's an addon to consciousness. Btw, imagine your mind as a standalone reasoning machine: you tell it a situation and it models the outcome. This machine can reason on its own, passively wiretapping sensory inputs and modeling outputs in your memory, all without your involvement, and whayever it models will be simply ignored, as your attention would be elsewhere. In other words, the thinking process would carry on unconsciously, just like your heart's activity. However, the moment you pay attention to those thoughts and start steering the thinking machine, this process becomes conscious. A creature equipped with such thinking machine, but without anyone steering it, would be a zombie.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoNo shit
- Richardfox001 3y agoConsciousness is often associated with self-awareness, subjective experiences, and the ability to perceive and respond to one's environment. It is challenging to study and measure consciousness directly because it is inherently subjective and cannot be directly observed in others. https://www.yourtexasbenefits.bid/ https://www.yourtexasbenefits.bid/
- ZunarJ5 3y agoThis is rich, coming from The Economist.
- iammjm 3y agoI highly recommend the book "Other Minds" by Godfrey-Smith, it has changed my view on this topic. I understood that consciousness is a scale. Humans have "a lot" of it, chimpanzees a bit less, dogs even fewer, but we all have a first person perspective of what it is to be us. I don't know where the scale begins or ends, but I am sure we are not that unique. I assume the capacity for consciousness has plenty to do with hardware and it's capacity for complex operations, so I don't know if all living things (like bacteria, or ants) "have it". Other point: at some moments I feel like I am less conscious, just going through my motions like an automaton, or daydreaming. And then sometimes, while meditating or under very intense stress, I feel hyper conscious. Fascinating topic for sure
- Mattasher 3y agoShameless self promo: I had a great discussion with Peter Godfrey-Smith about his books and consciousness for my podcast https://mattasher.com/2021/04/22/ep-33-peter-godfrey-smith-on-sea-life-and-the-evolution-of-consciousness/ https://mattasher.com/2021/04/22/ep-33-peter-godfrey-smith-o... My own leaning is towards a panpsychist view, in which case the idea of animal consciousness as a binary, or even a scalar, makes no sense. It's multifaceted and complex and built from overlapping (resonant?) pieces. For example, human tongues can act like they have a mind of their own just like the arms of an octopus.
- WhrRTheBaboons 3y agodon’t octopusses’ arms literally have a mind of their own? they all have an individual brain, right?
- hulitu 3y ago> I understood that consciousness is a scale. Humans have "a lot" of it, Not all humans though. (see Kissinger)
- sn9 3y agoI think you're confusing consciousness with conscience.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago>> Dr LeDoux is one of the world’s authorities on the amygdalas ... No, the _amygdala_. "Amygdala" is the plural of "amygdalon", Greek for "almond". Also: one phenomenon, many phenomena; one criterion, many criteria; etc. See also: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/plurals-of-foreign-words https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/plurals-of-for...
- aarond0623 3y agoBut the structure in the brain is not called an amygdalon. It's called an amygdala. According to Merrimack-Webster, the plural is amygdalae, but we also knew what the author meant with amygdalas. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amygdala https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amygdala
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoYeah, you're right that it's "the amygdala". I got confused by the plural. It's complicated. As Wikipedia says, "amygdala" is the singular for "amygdalae", but both of these words are said to be Latin. Wikipedia correctly traces them to the original Greek "αμυγδαλή", which is a female noun, hence its transliteration as "amygdala" in Latin, rather than "amygdale" as it should be if it came directly from Greek; I think that's because it's ungrammatical to have a female noun ending in "-e" in Latin (I am unsure, since I'm not a Latin-speaker). To confuse matters further, "amygdalae" is correct as the plural of both the Latin "amygdala" and the Greek "amygdale" ("αμυγδαλή - αμυγδαλαί"). Of course, "αμυγδαλή" itself is derived from "αμύγδαλον". In any case, it may be easy to see what is meant by "amygdalas" but it is not right. "Amygdalae" is the right form of the word, whether you want to take it from Latin, Greek, or, indeed, English. Btw, there is a lot of confusion about what is Latin and what is Greek. Both languages are used for scientific terminology (for reasons unknown, this habbit has persisted in modern times) but Latin words often borrow from Greek, but keep their Latin endings... which are often similar to the Greek ones. So it's hard to know which is which. I used to resolve this kind of confusion by perusing a good etymological lexicon of Ancient Greek, but unfortunately this was taken from me in a flood and I can only now rely on the internet, and my native knowledge of Greek.
- kderbyma 3y agoHow do people still not know this. I am azed that every year another article comes out claiming that it's somehow a novel idea..... I understood this when I was 4-5 years old.....it's obvious if you have pets, go to a farm, anything with animals....squirrels....birds.... seriously....pet fish....haha
- soultrees 3y agoBecause our western agriculture demands depends on us believing they don’t. But in the end I suspect everyone believes it internally but that Big Mac tastes so good that we’d rather be blind to it. These studies bring it to the forefront again.