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> The only reason why animal consciousness has been controversial historically is a religious one—the Bible has typically been read as placing humanity in a cat
by slibhb 2y ago
> The only reason why animal consciousness has been controversial historically is a religious one—the Bible has typically been read as placing humanity in a category of its own. And yet we see countless secular scientists clinging to that perspective when even a cursory glance at the evidence and a basic application of Occam's razor would suggest the opposite.
It's not just the Bible. It's virtually every religion and it's probably pre-religious. There's also no reason to assume that animals don't think the same way. It's probably the case that crows, for example, place themselves in a separate category than other animals. That's how they recognize each other, mate, etc.
I think most animals are conscious but a qualitative distinction between humans and animals is very reasonable. Animals didn't land on the moon or discover quantum mechanics. Whatever it is that allowed humans to accomplish things like that is a worthy basis of a distinction.
And are all animals conscious? Amoebas? Virions? Bacteria? I reject panpsychism as going against common sense; I think there probably are very simple (read: small) animals that aren't conscious.
- ben_w 2y agoI'd guess at the continuum, too — "going against common sense" is, unfortunately, a thing I have seen often enough of true things to reach the conclusion that "common sense" as a phrase means only "inside the Overton window of the person who just said or wrote that". But it's a guess, it has to be, especially as we're not all agreed on what the thing even is in the first place: > About forty meanings attributed to the term consciousness can be identified and categorized based on functions and experiences. The prospects for reaching any single, agreed-upon, theory-independent definition of consciousness appear remote - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#The_problem_of_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#The_problem_of_d...
- lolinder 2y ago> I reject panpsychism as going against common sense; I think there probably are very simple (read: small) animals that aren't conscious. Yes, I can definitely agree with this. I'm more reacting to the idea that it's somehow an unresolved scientific question whether dogs and cats and other mammals have emotions. There isn't a sufficiently large difference in neurology between humans and other mammals for me to believe that they're entirely unconscious machines while we're not. > I think most animals are conscious but a qualitative distinction between humans and animals is very reasonable. Animals didn't land on the moon or discover quantum mechanics. Whatever it is that allowed humans to accomplish things like that is a worthy basis of a distinction. Yes, it's a worthy basis of distinction, but is it a qualitative one or a quantitative one? Do we possess intelligence that is orders of magnitude higher than the next smartest mammals, or do we actually possess something that other mammals have none of? It's not clear to me that landing on the moon and discovering quantum mechanics require a different kind of mental process than building a beaver dam or discovering a use for medicinal herbs. That feels more to me like the same sort of thing multiplied a thousand fold. And if it is the same sort of thing, then we're not projecting emotions onto our dogs, our dogs actually do have emotions of the same general sort that we do.
- slowmovintarget 2y agoDogs definitely have Theory of Mind. There was a study done that placed a treat in a room where the dog was instructed not to eat it. A handler was in the room with the dog. When the lights were turned out, the dogs would eat the treat, because they knew that the human couldn't see in the dark.
- squigz 2y agoWouldn't another explanation be that the dog thought the human literally didn't exist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence
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- slowmovintarget 2y agoNo, because the dog could smell and hear the human, just like they could smell the treat.
- lolinder 2y agoFrankly, as a parent of three I'm not at all convinced that human infants lack object permanence, much less adult dogs. I've never observed anything in my infants that would indicate they lost track of something's existence, and I've seen plenty of things that suggest the opposite. See also the section of that article entitled "Contradicting evidence".
- slowmovintarget 2y agoI reject panpsychism on the grounds of the Standard Model. There are no possible fields at the energy levels we've explored that could have an effect such as panpsychism claims (and fields at any other energy levels couldn't have such an effect). Sean Carroll published a paper on this, and it's worth a read, as is his draft response to Phillip Goff. [1], [2] [1] The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884 https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884 [2] Consciousness and the Laws of Physics: https://philarchive.org/archive/CARCAT-33 https://philarchive.org/archive/CARCAT-33
- llamaimperative 2y agoHaven’t read the first paper but the second is a fairly naive straw man argument. If anything, it’s arguing against free will, which many panpsychists reject anyway. Free will or “outside forces” is not at all a prerequisite for panpsychism. Actually his paper is a (decent) argument for panpsychism: we know that we ourselves (as individuals) are conscious, and we know that there’s nothing special at the physical level about our brain-stuff as compared to tree-stuff or rock-stuff or anything else. Particles in a brain are not somehow specially imbued with consciousness "energy", yet they obviously have it. Ergo the reasonable prediction would be that other things have it too and it’s much more a question of configuration that yields more or less of the emergent property of consciousness (much like different configurations and states of atoms can yield more or less magnetic force, conductivity, energy, temperature, etc) - all of which are only possible in certain configurations of energy/matter because all energy/matter itself has the properties required to yield those effects. That is the panpsychist argument, and it has nothing to do with free will.
- timeon 2y ago> Animals didn't land on the moon Isn't this conspiracy theory? One species of mammals actually did.
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- BatFastard 2y agoBut animals(dogs) were first to go into orbit!
- czl 2y agoThe first animal in orbit was Laika, a Soviet space dog. She was launched aboard Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957. The first animals in space were fruit flies, launched by the United States aboard a V-2 rocket on February 20, 1947.
- hnfong 2y agoI wonder whether some large asteroid hit the earth and blasted some poor animal into space some millions of years ago...
- nick-of-time 2y agoIf an animal were imparted enough energy to be thrown into space, it would not get there intact.
- mr_toad 2y agoTiny spiders can float high enough in the air that it might be possible for some to be carried beyond the Karman line.
- sitkack 2y agoYou just did it! You made the Tu Crowque fallacy.
- bowsamic 2y agoAnimals are definitely fully conscious in Buddhism
- rodcon 2y agoAlso in Islam : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_Islam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_Islam
- damsalor 2y ago> Whatever it is that allowed humans to accomplish things like that is a worthy basis of a distinction. Probably due to walking upright and eating meat
- heikkilevanto 2y ago> Animals didn't land on the moon or discover quantum mechanics For most of the history, neither did humans.
- circlefavshape 2y ago> There's also no reason to assume that animals don't think the same way. Indeed. I wonder do they see us as special at all? It'd be pretty funny if they didn't > Animals didn't land on the moon or discover quantum mechanics Humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years before they did either of these things
- robofanatic 2y ago> It's not just the Bible. It's virtually every religion and it's probably pre-religious. There's also no reason to assume that animals don't think the same way. except Hinduism.
- sgu999 2y agoI _think_ it's also the case for buddhism and taoism, so the shift may have happened somewhere in-between proto religions and abrahamic ones
- hughesjj 2y agoAnd Jainism, and while I don't know much about the religions I'd imagine there's a ton of new world ones that don't treat animals as conscious
- robofanatic 2y ago> Animals didn't land on the moon or discover quantum mechanics. Whatever it is that allowed humans to accomplish things like that is a worthy basis of a distinction. Not every human knows how to land on the moon or understands quantum mechanics, so how do you make the distinction?
- sgu999 2y ago> And are all animals conscious? Amoebas? Virions? Bacteria? I reject panpsychism as going against common sense; I think there probably are very simple (read: small) animals that aren't conscious. Probably worth mentioning Kristof Koch's book, "Consciousness" – who happens to be a Christian. He puts it as a gradual thing correlated to complexity, which makes it more likely that it "feels like something" to be a mycelium network or the internet than an mussel.
- ysavir 2y ago> I think most animals are conscious but a qualitative distinction between humans and animals is very reasonable. Animals didn't land on the moon or discover quantum mechanics. Whatever it is that allowed humans to accomplish things like that is a worthy basis of a distinction. Is this not a very self-serving assertion, though? Pointing at things that we humans have accomplished and are proud of, and saying that sets us apart, or are in a sense categorically higher than other animals? Other animals may well look at this and look down at us for having to do all these things in order to feel accomplished. Octopuses may draw a qualitative distinction between them and us because we lack the means to alter our appearance--surely they're more physically manifest than other animals due to their color shifting abilities! Plants must belittle us for our inability to passively absorb energy from the sun. We could definitely say that our ability to get to the moon sets us apart. But in doing so, we also have to acknowledge each and every other trait that would set an animal species apart from the rest, and there's no shortage of those unique elements.
- Vegenoid 2y ago"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." - Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
- gadflyinyoureye 2y agoI’m at a lost as to why I should care? Everything comes down to force. Those animals can opine all they want, but humans have the means, motive and opportunity to make them into tasty food. Their conscious or lack there of has no impact.
- ysavir 2y agoI'm not sure what this is responding to. Can you explain how this relates to the parent and grandparent messages?
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- meristohm 2y agoDoes having gone to the moon or formalized quantum mechanics make us better than other animals? What harm has our manner of animal had on the rest of life on earth thus far?
- mr_toad 2y ago> And are all animals conscious? Amoebas? Virions? Bacteria? Single celled organisms, and multicellular organisms that lack nervous systems seem to be severely limited in intelligence. I think that anyone who argues against intelligence being closely correlated with the complexity of the organisms neural network is arguing against mountains of evidence to the contrary.