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Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness
- ekianjo 13y agoOld. July 2012... EDIT: to clarify, the title is very confusing because it makes you think they just signed it. It should be completed by a "2012" in the end. That's why I was disappointed when following the link. Nothing new.
- gwgarry 13y agoI guess it is no longer relevant.
- ekianjo 13y agoNo, it is, but I am just wondering why it pops up here in a sudden while there's no specific news attached to it.
- gwgarry 13y agoFuck the news, acquire knowledge. :D The reason it pops up is someone noticed it, posted it online, and it grew viral because it's something people like to hear.
- ekianjo 13y agoAGain, why not mention its from 2012 in the title then? That's what people do on HN for older contents. and if you f* the news then why do you come on a website that has NEWS in its title?
- nitrogen 13y agoHacker News is called Hacker News because it used to be called Startup News. The only mention of the word "news" in the Hacker News guidelines is in the line stating that "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoWhat!? I was not consciously aware this was a news site! What if there was some way to discuss things ?
- cdooh 13y agoDoes this mean they know right from wrong? The article isn't very clear on what conscious awareness means.
- cpa 13y agoHow does consciousness imply morality?
- codezero 13y agoNot that correlation implies causation, but as of yet, consciousness is only considered in creatures which also recognize morality.
- mseebach 13y agoThat is of course a big philosophical question. But in lieu of diving into that, because Wikipedia says so: Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgment may derive from values or norms (principles and rules). In psychological terms conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits actions that go against his/her moral values and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when actions conform to such norms.[1] The extent to which conscience informs moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are or should be based in reason has occasioned debate through much of the history of Western philosophy.[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience
- mseebach 13y agoThat's nice. But too many people can't tell the difference between supporting an idea and publishing a repeatable experiment to test a falsifiable hypothesis in a peer reviewed journal.
- regal 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test
- mseebach 13y agoWell, then, what's the point of signing a declaration 40 years later?
- RivieraKid 13y agoIt should be possible with current technology to create a robot, that would react positively to mirror test.
- mseebach 13y agoThe experiment should be blind, which would be quite hard to design. At least, the robot designers wouldn't know that the mirror test would be the test, but ideally they would never have heard of the mirror test, indeed, they should have no good grasp of what a mirror even is.
- Zigurd 13y agoWhy is "self concept" equated to consciousness? When a split-brain patient's self-reported notion of "self" makes up a story to cover for not knowing why they performed some action, what part of their mind actually made the decision to act?
- aptwebapps 13y agoThe difference is that the second is science and the first is every thing else. They are signing it to give the idea greater credence outside of their community, not within it. Obviously they hope to influence the world at large.
- weavie 13y agoSo no turning cockroaches into cybernetic devices you can control with your iPhone then?
- agravier 13y agoNo, but spraying them with neurotoxins is fair game.
- Nux 13y agoThe day we stop hurting other creatures is likely to be the day we stop hurting each other; wondering whether this day will ever come.
- cristianpascu 13y agoIt will not. "Hurting" is such a meaningless word nowadays.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoThe day we stop kidnapping, murdering and eating animals will be the day we stop kidnapping and murdering each other? I honestly don't think the "animals have conscious thought" is the most effective way to change agriculture, but I will struggle to deny that gorilla whose eyes I looked into at Aspinalls was not looking back at me with the same understanding and knowledge. Yes they are as conscious and thoughtful as humans, but humans are as unthinking and hard-wired as animals
- EthanHeilman 13y agoWe are animals certainly but there is strong evidence that complex vertebrates (humans, big cats, etc) can adapt behavior from prior experience. It's a pretty big stretch to claim that we are unthinking and hard-wired.
- bencollier49 13y agoThat is actually the best summary of the current state of consciousness research that I've ever read. That said, they don't talk much about whether they can prove degrees of conscious awareness. There may be homologous structures, but are they as large as in humans? If they're not, then perhaps you'd expect the animal to have a comparable and yet less-detailed experience.
- frobbin 13y agoAgree with them that it is very likely that animals have conscious experience, I believe it to most likely be the case as well. But it seems irresponsible, and possibly self-serving for the NCC research crowd, to escalate this evidence to the level of proof on consciousness in animals. There is just no way to know what it is like to be any creature other than yourself. It seems reasonable to assume other humans with the same anatomy and physiology, with whom we can communicate extensively, are also likely conscious. But we just can't ever tell what the experience is like to be any other creature. Signing a such a statement smacks of an attempt at bullying policy with scientific credentials. This is bad because then in other areas, such as global warming, it gives opponents with ulterior motives fodder for claiming scientists shouldn't be trusted since they are prone to the same irrational belief systems as other people. It would be better to present their story for mainstream consumption with an attitude of Isn't this a compelling story? Maybe even educate people and attract people to the field of neuroscience in the process. But claiming they've figured it out and we all need to get on board will only have negative repercussions.
- RivieraKid 13y agoWell, that's interesting, because there's no good scientific definition of consciousness.
- stiff 13y agoThere is no philosophical definition of consciousness, but there is none of gravity either, in the sense of "what gravity really is". Science doesn't examine what things "really are", but tries to make useful predictions and the definitions employed are only means to this end. In fact there are operational definitions of consciousness and I think they certainly deserve to be called "scientific", see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlate... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Defining_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Defining_conscio...
- ciex 13y agoNo they are not. Omitting qualia disqualifies almost all existing models of consciousness. One of the only ones I know that attempt an explanation of this phenomenon may be Tononi's IIT [1], but it is of course criticised for being too broad a definition. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory
- smosher 13y agoThe problem is without any philosophical backup the neural correlate is entirely uncompelling—it's merely a clinical definition of a measure of... nothing meaningful. One that can be just as easily applied to a recording device, modulo the explicit mention of neurons. It gets worse. When you look at it closely there's no useful reason to restrict any of these measures with arbitrary criteria to the things we consider candidates for consciousness, other than to reaffirm our prejudices. In other words, there's no such thing as a good scientific definition without the philosophical context. You can have as accurate an arbitrary measure as you like, but that doesn't imbue it equally arbitrarily with your desired meaning.
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- LatvjuAvs 13y ago"Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Rocks have Conscious Awareness" Until this is done, we will stay where we are :D
- contingencies 13y agoWhat is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life. - Einstein (as quoted in Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934)
- sneak 13y agoProminent Humans Sign Declaration that They're Still Tasty
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ggreer 13y agoIf I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet a lot on our treatment of animals. Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships and mourn the passing of their kin. Despite all indications that our treatment of these creatures is reprehensible, cultural inertia and the tastiness of meat are enough to prevent us from changing our behavior. To treat even 1% of humans the way we treat animals would be to perpetuate the greatest war crime in history. But do the same thing to some funny-looking microencephalitic relatives of humans and hardly anyone bats an eye.
- Swizec 13y agoThere's another part to this story. We have brought animals back from the brink of extinction purely because someone realised they were really tasty. A lot of our domestic animals, in particular, wouldn't even be able to survive without us ... but they're tasty, so we make them live, breed them in large numbers, feed them, etc. Isn't that what biologists call symbiosis?
- Carwajalca 13y agoWolves do fairly well without humans, bees as well. Which animals did we bring back from the brink of extinction? I'll admit that new subspecies have emerged thanks to humans, but we hardly need to keep e.g. 1.3 billion cows (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#Population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#Population) just to save the species from extinction.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Swizec 13y agoBuffalos are a good example. Red Panda as well if I'm not mistaken. The sad part is, we've also made species extinct just because they weren't tasty. Dodos for instance. Taste bad, so we just killed them for fun. Then they went extinct.
- stephengillie 13y agoThere's nothing sacred about machine learning, machine vision & feedback loops, assembled into robots. This is what we are.
- scotty79 13y agoSacred, no, but still worth recognition and respect proportional to complexity.
- stiff 13y agoMachine learning might be a useful model of what happens in the brain but just like the map isn't the territory this doesn't make us robots, what would that even mean? Everything aside, biological systems are completely different than everything we have ever built and so far it seems current machine learning techniques not necessarily have to have much to do with what happens in the brain.
- michaelgrafl 13y agoNo, that's a crass abstraction of what we are. To a philistine the Mona Lisa is nothing but a bunch of pigments applied to a surface. That's what makes him a philistine, after all.
- kryten 13y agoIt's an apt description of what we are. Only we think we are more. Perhaps we're not and the thought is just part of that feedback loop. Art, wine, music, maths. It's all just more inputs...
- michaelgrafl 13y agoIt's a marginal description of what we are. It takes a true nerd living in a nerd bubble to interpret a human being as a data processing device.
- kryten 13y ago
- scotty79 13y agoHow could you have dreams without consciousness? Every cat or dog owner knows that animals obviously dream.
- adv0r 13y agothat was 2012 .
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gnoway 13y agoThis is great news. Now that we've proven the animals are conscious, we can put more resources into communicating and reasoning with them, and convince them to stop maiming, killing and eating each other. Peace on Earth, maybe within our lifetimes! Edit: </sarcasm>
- i_cannot_hack 13y agoAre you equating consciousness with rationality and intelligence?
- mtowle 13y agoLiterally nobody has ever done that. Try understanding his comment a different way. Like, say, that the human protections against violence preclude humans who chose to act violently, ergo if we extend that protection to animals, many of them would lose that protection as soon as it was extended to them.
- gnoway 13y agoTo clarify, mtowle means 'them' as in 'the humans,' i.e. omnis will go to prison, be killed or endure some other form of violent punishment if caught eating meat. Good luck with that. Maybe it happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
- ErsatzVerkehr 13y ago
- scotty79 13y agoI think we are fairly close to achieving consciousness in silicon (graphene or whatever). We will improve algorithms, increase computing power and achieve system of consciousness of a mouse, then just by tossing in more computing power and optimizing speed of algorithms one of consciousness of a dog, then monkey, then human and then we'll be surprised that when we toss in even more computing power we'll get even more conscious system because there's no reason to believe that evolution that gave us consciousness we recognize is capped in any way by some objective limit. It's more likely that our level of consciousness is just accidental value nowhere near theoretical upper limits.
- stiff 13y agoI think we are fairly close to achieving consciousness in silicon. It would be nice if you presented at least one reason for believing this.
- kryten 13y agoRay Kurzweil said so! That was sarcastic for reference - I think the guy is a crackpot.
- alokm 13y agoConsciousness is not solely a matter of computation. Even if we are able to simulate the brains of lesser beings, doesnt necessarily mean that there will be self awareness in the simulation. I think this is one area where we still have a lot of catching up to do.
- IanDrake 13y agoWhen these "scientists" can get lions to stop eating gazelles, I'll stop eating cows, chickens, and fish. That being said, I am concerned about how animals are treated during their lifetime.
- mrspeaker 13y agoYeah, stupid "scientists". That's why I refuse to poop in a toilet, and won't use antibiotics: 'cause the gazelles aren't doing it.
- IanDrake 13y agoI get what you're saying we're more advanced than animals. That's why we domesticated our prey, which is what everyone seems to be complaining about now.
- dharmach 13y agoWhen consuming resources and producing pollution, you do not remember this comparison. Besides, animals kill to eat, not to sell.
- vacri 13y agoIf it's the selling that's bad, isn't the same true of plant matter? Most of us also outsource obtaining vegetable matter in the same way.
- IanDrake 13y ago>Besides, animals kill to eat, not to sell. I don't understand. Ultimately it ends up in someone's stomach and provides sustenance. How is it any different?
- tladendo 13y agoAt present, ethically-raised animal meat is not practical on a mass scale. Also, this is a ridiculous justification for meat eating, since lions cannot reason about morality.
- blueprint 13y ago> Consequently, say the signatories, the scientific evidence is increasingly indicating that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. That's because neurological substrates don't generate consciousness. There is no evidence to the effect that they do. However, when we understand the structure of the system of consciousness it's very easy to see how consciousness is generated and maintained. The role of all neural systems is 1. to transmit to the consciousness what the body sees, hears, learns, etc., and 2. to express what is in consciousness through the body.
- jessedhillon 13y ago<citation needed>
- blueprint 13y agoFactual authority does not derive from socially validated papers. The law of nature and all the facts exist in nature itself. The problem is that if you don't try to confirm my words through 'what is' you can not recognize the evidence in front of you.
- fatjokes 13y agoDo they recommend a sauce for conscious awareness?
- nickmain 13y agoThis recent HN comment about Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is worth following up on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404 As I understand it the theory posits that consciousness is only a very recent development in humans. How can we ascribe consciousness to any other form of life when we do not even understand what it means for ourselves ?
- blueprint 13y agoWell put. However, please note that there have been a few individuals in human history who did have complete understanding of consciousness. The story of this world is that nobody wanted to learn from those people when they were alive. The reasons that modern scientists do not understand consciousness is that 1. they do not apply a specific principle to their research (In math, when we want to solve a question, we apply the equality to operate the question.) and because 2. their research only investigates half of the set of existent relevant phenomena - that which can be seen with the naked eye. Once a human recognizes the simple law that governs natural phenomena it is simple to recognize what consciousness is.
- sageikosa 13y agoI am fairly certain that a large percentage of the human population still operates regularly without the consciousness as described by Jaynes. At the very least, the genetically built neural machinery that our species would've had 3000 years ago is still likely to reward behaviors such as assuming gods and spirits in almost everything, enthralling oneself in crowd dynamics, and yielding to charismatic authorities.