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Animal consciousness

rickolasnice

rickolasnice

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Apr 19, 2007
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I've heard it be said many times by many different people that animals do not possess the same type of consciousness as us.

It's fair to say we are the most conscious animal on the planet (barely) but people seem to believe we are somehow disconnected from the rest of the animal kingdom when it comes to consciousness..

Just spend ages looking for this video I watched ages ago but.. I'll try to explain what he was saying.

He was basically saying that there is more to consciousness that the physical brain (I remember him saying you can't feel a thought from looking at a brain scan*). He then goes onto say that human consciousness is different that animal consciousness (implying theirs are products of the physical brain).. he goes on talking bullshit about how animals don't plan for the future or feel empathy.

Is this common belief among the immaterial conscious believers?

Because they are slightly related and make me smile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdYAouQwyG8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcv2e9qvO9M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZckyUgrcaTg

And if you know nothing of Kanzi the bonobo.. prepare to be amazed

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kanzi+bonobo&sm=3
 
Since consciousness somehow emerged in the evolutionary process of life on earth, I find it likely that there's some gradient of consciousness, spanning from complete unawareness (lack of any qualia whatsoever) to the type of meta-cognition, abstraction, and creativity that we engage in.

ebola
 
imo, a better way to distinguish animals from humans goes as follows
[Heidegger] Human beings, Dasein, are in the truth
Click to expand...
where truth means
i) intelligibility, we see things AS ..., X as Y, things appear with meaningfulness, or semantic content (i.e. a cat may very well be aware of a tree, but it is not aware of the tree AS tree, i.e. its "treeness")
ii) we are the only beings who make truth-judgment (i.e. a cat is does not ask the other cat "is it true that you ate my food?")


Such a characterization seems more primordial and avoids the fallacy of pre-loaden conceptions of consciouness (i.e. consciousness is something non-material).
 
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What of dolphins, elephants and great apes?

How would we get over the language barrier when asking such abstract things such as "do you understand truth?"
 
Ironically, animals are much more consciously aware of their 'true existence' than are humans.

Some humans do not possess the same type of consciousness as other humans. Consciousness is ever changing ever expanding.

Consciousness is not limited to this physical plane of existence. (as humans are encouraged to believe)

Many, many different levels of conscious perception. It literally comes down to "the eye of the beholder" You take any point of out Infinity and it will be the center.

Your 'truth' is not their 'truth'.

Your truth may not even be my truth.

They would most likely ask you the same question. Do YOU understand truth?

Who are you do define what truth is?

The average lifespan of a human being is what 75 years? A little spec of dust in Eternity.
 
In other words consciousness is not set in stone... You use the word 'us' or in other words 'our consciousness' ....as if everyone's conscious perception is identical.

You can't define consciousness in this way.
 
Well I'm pretty fckin sure my level of consciousness is closer to yours than any other known living being (excluding all humans)..

Consciousness can be measured, especially when you accept evolution. This is how we can relate so closely to animals with genetic make up not too dissimilar to ours while we find it hard to empathize with an ant. An ant is so much less conscious than a dog it's unbelievable. They are literally biological machines with very basic external stimuli receptors which allow them to function. They have no conscious thought.. Moving up the ladder to rats and it's not hard to see that they are more conscious. They are more aware, they have emotions, thoughts, etc.

There is only one (objective) truth as far as I am concerned and I am a lot more equipped at understanding it that an earth worm.. And no I doubt they would ask me the same question.. I doubt 99.99999% of life on earth are not even capable of asking a question, let alone understand the concept of it.

I could cut away layers of your cerebral cortex and literally peel away your consciousness.. If I cause you massive brain trauma, are you as conscious as you were before?

I think it's safe to say that the bigger the cerebral cortex (including surface area for folds) the more conscious a being is.. at least on earth.
 
Consciousness can only be measured SUBJECTIVELY. Who's system of measurement are you going by any way? The same people that bring you Viagra? Evolution has absolutely nothing to do with how consciousness is measured or even with how human beings perceive consciousness.

Do you even know what it means to be conscious? To be aware of being aware?

What makes you think consciousness is confined to the physical brain?

Let me ask you a question... Do you believe right now... that in order to be 'conscious'.. you need to have sensory input from the five physical senses?

Yes or no question.
 
I believe that I would have needed input from external stimuli to develop conscious.. now that i have it i could cut it off and still be conscious.

Ooooookkkk.. so what is more conscious? You or your shoe? You or one of your many white blood cells? You or one of the billions of bacteria that make you you? Your skin cell or your dog? Your hair or your mother?

Is a brain dead (severe brain trauma, scans show no sign of life) person conscious? Is a dead person conscious?

I summed up my OP in my New Testament thread, care to chime in?
 
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rickolasnice said:
How would we get over the language barrier when asking such abstract things such as "do you understand truth?"
Click to expand...
I was not implying that one must be aware of the concept of truth. Also, I was not reducing the issue to language per se.

My argument, then, went as follows:

1) Every act of consciousness is a judgment*
2) Every judgment has a (un)truth value.
----------------------------------------------------
Ego, every act of consciousness is essentially related to (un)truth.


My claim was not that animals don't understand the concept of truth, but rather that their experience of reality is only sensible and they don't have the intellectual faculty of judgment (which concindently is the condition for consciousness, cf. Kant).


======
* This holds for basic experiences, e.g., you are now conscious of your computer. This is a judgment. Probably you are not aware of it, but the judgment is always made implicitly. Being consciousness of your computer, is actually, making the judgment "This is a computer." This judgment can be pre-linguistic or linguistic. Only by making a judgment you can create an object of awarenes against the background of many other sensations (e.g. the other stuff in your room).
 
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And do you know or are you assuming that no other animals think in this way?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwJaUFHs-C4

Dolphins seem very aware and conscious to me.

As do great apes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNuZ4OE6vCk

And I'm guessing elephants and whales.. although i have no video to support my claim.

But appologies i think i may have missed your point.. could you explain in laymen terms for a very sleep deprived man (or give simple examples)? :)

And reading again I'm pretty sure I don't understand your post.. what do you mean by untruth?
 
untruth = falsehood

The judgment "This is a giraffe" is untrue, when the object in front of you is not a giraffe, but let's say a cat.

Making a judgment is either: 1) true or 2) false.

===

My whole argument is based on: "sensible awareness" vs. "intellectual awareness"

Sensible awareness, which may very well be found in animals, does not imply intellectual awareness. The latter is uniquely human (i.e. making judgments about reality, making (un)truth claims, making abstractions,...).
 
Would an animal using an object for something other than intended count as it making an untrue claim? What about when an ape claims to have less food than he does?

There's a video on the tip of my brain that demonstrates an animal exhibiting this "uniquely human" trait but.. argh.. gimme a min.

An orang-utan once used a piece of wire to flip the latch of it's enclosure. It bent it into the shape of his mouth so as to hide it from keepers. If it could speak, do you not think it would lie as to what the wire was or what it was for?

Or am i still not getting it?

Edit - Did my stupidity scare you away? haven't slept in days gimme a break.
 
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psyduck said:
1) Every act of consciousness is a judgment*
2) Every judgment has a (un)truth value.
Click to expand...

Is this related to your claim elsewhere that one needs root contradiction at the very basis of ontology? It seems to me that if one makes such a metaphysical 'commitment', it follows that all apprehension of objects of consciousness would involve judgment of "truth". Eg, "object X appears to be (of category) A, yet it is also not-A (in terms of characteristics B, one might surmise...or just in terms of some 'gut feeling'), and thus both the percept of X and conception of A develop in concert".


rick said:
Edit - Did my stupidity scare you away? haven't slept in days gimme a break.
Click to expand...

Chill, dude. I don't think psyduck was trying to intimate that you're being dense or anything of the sort.

ebola
 
I know Psyduck wasn't thinking that.. but i was (and am)..

Am I way off with my reply as to what you guys are talking about?
 
I don't think that your last post really speaks to Psyduck's point. Concealing one's behavior to facilitate its execution in the face of surveillance is one thing, but Psyduck is talking more about the type of experience that humans produce in their apprehension of the world: we confront objects before a perpetual backdrop of evaluation of these objects as not-something. It is from this orientation toward the world that the ability to abstract stems. It is likely more typical for animals to inhere in an un-problematized stream of sensoria, I think. I accordingly find it likely that instinctual drive to conceal developed far before this ability to engage in counterfactual contextualization.

ebola
 
ebola? said:
I don't think that your last post really speaks to Psyduck's point. Concealing one's behavior to facilitate its execution in the face of surveillance is one thing, but Psyduck is talking more about the type of experience that humans produce in their apprehension of the world: we confront objects before a perpetual backdrop of evaluation of these objects as not-something. It is from this orientation toward the world that the ability to abstract stems. It is likely more typical for animals to inhere in an un-problematized stream of sensoria, I think. I accordingly find it likely that instinctual drive to conceal developed far before this ability to engage in counterfactual contextualization.

ebola
Click to expand...

I have to ask....When you post.... Do you sometimes, yourself, not even know what your talking about?

Who speaks like this in real life?

Why make communication more difficult for yourself than it already is?

What is the point of over complicating simple constructs?
 
Indeed ebola? .. you are among the commoners of society now.. please.. dumb it down a bit :p
 
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