Proof of Animal Consciousness Thread

[Adieu]

There's an animal collective making music and they seem somewhat conscious.

 

I think the sounds they make are pretty decent proof for lack of consciousness

[Guest]

 

 

I thought this was interesting. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/02/06/genius-of-dogs-brian-hare/1861497/

Q: How do you know dogs can retain thousands of words?

A: The interesting finding there is that from a scientific standpoint, it's not amazing. What's amazing is how the dogs learned the words. They learned it through inferential reasoning, the same process kids learn words. ... You can put a dog in a room full of toys and put new ones in, and give the new ones odd names. The dog will bring back the toy it's never seen before because it's called by a name he's never heard before.

Q: And dogs can make inferences? Explain.

A: That's one of the main things we're trying to communicate. They have the ability to use inferential reasoning. There are problems you have to solve quickly. Nature has equipped them with being able to make inferences. They can read our gestures. They're inferring what we're trying to tell them.

 

 

 

The majority of these so called "animal studies" are bs to the highest degree, specially cat and dog ones because they're always trying to make them more than what they really are.

 

 

it's incredible how stupid cats really are, superficially they're smarter than dogs but they so dumb

[Hoodie]

.

Edited January 16, 2016 by Hoodie

[caze]

yeah, cats are pretty dumb, operate far more on instinct and have less personality than dogs. cats are still cool though.

[triachus]

shut the fuck up, cats are not du-

 

 

 

 

nvmnd

[eugene]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHWbZvsrAk

[YO303]

At least it is smart enough to known there should be something solid there, just not smart enough to realize there isn't.

[eugene]

[YO303]

i cri everytime, what have we done to dolphins is so sad when you think they are so complex!

 

Edited December 1, 2015 by Deer

[delet...]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHWbZvsrAk

 

maybe it's eyesight isn't so good. Or like many humans, it's been conditioned to adhere to and maintain itself within invisible boundaries.

shut the fuck up, cats are not du-

 

 

 

 

nvmnd

 

but how was it going to roll off the couch if it didn't do that. cat knows what's up. cat doesn't spend any time pitying your ignorance, she has couches to roll down.

[Adieu]

Probably good of us to kill off all the reasonably intelligent animals otherwise we might have competition for apex status at some point.

[delet...]

the rate at which we're getting stupider, i wouldn't be surprised. But then again, they've got fins and paws and even the most dumb dumb can trigger a gun gun. Or use mexico as a caveat creator in the TPP to get tuna safe labelling removed, because it's unfair to maxico, so bye bye dolphins. And then the doggies, well i hear they're nice in stew.

[cruising for burgers]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGsKZRDgS2c

Edited December 2, 2015 by THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON

[cruising for burgers]

ignore ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Edited December 2, 2015 by THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON

[Braintree]

It's pretty silly to assume that other mammals don't have a consciousness. Is it that they don't or that we don't have the mental tools in which to perceive it?

 

Having thumbs really helps to prove your intelligence, fyi.

[LimpyLoo]

It's pretty silly to assume that other mammals don't have a consciousness. Is it that they don't or that we don't have the mental tools in which to perceive it?

 

Having thumbs really helps to prove your intelligence, fyi.

There's no way to directly prove that other beings are conscious

 

How do you know that I'm conscious? You can infer it, but you'll never ever know for certain

 

 

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[Hugh Mughnus]

 

It's pretty silly to assume that other mammals don't have a consciousness. Is it that they don't or that we don't have the mental tools in which to perceive it?

 

Having thumbs really helps to prove your intelligence, fyi.

 

 

How do you know that I'm conscious? You can infer it, but you'll never ever know for certain

 

 

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Are you suggesting a being could unconsciously/accidentally type out that message you just typed? =/

 

On an iPad using Tapatalk, no less?

Edited December 3, 2015 by StephenG

[Braintree]

 

It's pretty silly to assume that other mammals don't have a consciousness. Is it that they don't or that we don't have the mental tools in which to perceive it?

 

Having thumbs really helps to prove your intelligence, fyi.

There's no way to directly prove that other beings are conscious

 

How do you know that I'm conscious? You can infer it, but you'll never ever know for certain

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

 

With that line of logic, you won't be able to prove much of anything. I'd rather skip some of the basic philosophical elements here since most of us are older than 15.

 

You can observe and identify whether something has a consciousness by noting when they do things that aren't essential.

 

Also, many humans are only aware of their mind and place in the animal kingdom* through education. So, in a way, the question posited is a loaded one since it denotes one type of human that is willing to wonder about something more than eating and fucking.

 

*(and 'universe,' although that term denotes the awareness of things outside their environment)

[Braintree]

https://youtu.be/zsXP8qeFF6A

[LimpyLoo]

 

 

"With that line of logic, you won't be able to prove much of anything. I'd rather skip some of the basic philosophical elements here since most of us are older than 15."

 

You make fun of my philosophical rants, but then you demonstrate that you are oblivious to the state of the debate within philosophy and neuroscience

 

since you seemed to have solved the 'p-zombie' problem (as well as a few other persistent problems that have plagued the philosophy of mind for centuries) you should publish and collect your Nobel prize

 

"You can observe and identify whether something has a consciousness by noting when they do things that aren't essential."

 

You can't, though

 

Did you know slime molds can reliably solve rat mazes? does that mean they're conscious? Also, you are (unfoundedly) assuming that intelligence and consciousness go hand in hand

 

If you want to demonstrate this, you have to use more than simply your gut feeling on the matter

 

 

As I said before: as a probabilistic matter, of course all the people around me are conscious, as well as some large portion of animals

 

But this is 'synthetic' knowledge, not 'empirical' knowledge...you will never directly be able to prove that I'm conscious

 

 

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[may be rude]

just like you can read a person and narrow down what they are feeling and thinking to an often high degree, looking at an animal you can often discern the feelings at play. if they feel then how can they not be conscious? who would be doing the feeling otherwise? this is evidence. when there are 20 signs exhibited at once that correlate to a distinct feeling which is corroborated by the circumstances, i think the skeptic's last ditch is to suggest that maybe the entire universe is a simulation.

Edited December 3, 2015 by very honest

[LimpyLoo]

just like you can read a person and narrow down what they are feeling and thinking to an often high degree, looking at an animal you can often discern the feelings at play. if they feel then how can they not be conscious? who would be doing the feeling otherwise? this is evidence. when there are 20 signs exhibited at once that correlate to a distinct feeling which is corroborated by the circumstances, i think the skeptic's last ditch is to suggest that maybe the entire universe is a simulation.

I've been killing hordes of cockroaches in my apartment for the last two weeks (I really hate to kill a living creature, but there's really no other solution)

 

They have a fear/stress response when you approach them

Are cockroaches conscious?

Or are they what PKD called 'reflex machines'?

 

Plants have the same response (seriously)

If you have two plants, and you start bashing one with a baseball bat, the other will have an extreme physiological response

Does that mean the plant is having an experience like you or me?

Or is that merely a reflex of some sort?

 

I am not saying you guys are wrong

(Hell, I ultimately agree with you)

 

 

I swear I'm not trying to be needlessly contrarian

I'm just saying that inferring consciousness from intelligence or emotion requires assumptions that are not rock solid

 

The much simpler solution is Bayesian inference ('he is probably conscious because it would be silly to think that I'm the only truly conscious being in the universe'...or something to that effect)

 

 

 

 

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Edited December 3, 2015 by LimpyLoo

[may be rude]

you ask me if cockroaches are conscious i'll guess yes but then i entertain the possibility that everything is conscious. i think humans can only sympathize so much. they run out of energy and patience to empathize with every fucking thing. especially when it's hard to extrapolate the nature of the mind in question. it's easy for a human to deduce the mind of another human. many other species also demonstrate minds with aspects recognizable to us. then there are the cockroaches. it's hard to imagine what it's like to be one. doesn't mean there isn't somebody in there.

 

what if you could feel someone else's feeling? how could you prove that you felt their feeling? if you could prove that then that would solve your zombie problem wouldn't it? but if it's you feeling that other person's feeling then it's your feeling isn't it? even if you really were absorbing their feeling through their aura, hypothetically, since it is you processing that feeling through your mind, it is technically your feeling and could never be said to be the other person's feeling, even if it did come from that person! did i just prove a faulty premise in that zombie problem?

[usagi]

my dick is conscious.

 

proof of my dick's consciousness: it makes cummies. would an unconscious entity make cummies? I think not.

 

also my dick has a better personality than both cats and dogs because I like it more than either of them.

[LimpyLoo]

you ask me if cockroaches are conscious i'll guess yes but then i entertain the possibility that everything is conscious. i think humans can only sympathize so much. they run out of energy and patience to empathize with every fucking thing. especially when it's hard to extrapolate the nature of the mind in question. it's easy for a human to deduce the mind of another human. many other species also demonstrate minds with aspects recognizable to us. then there are the cockroaches. it's hard to imagine what it's like to be one. doesn't mean there isn't somebody in there.

 

what if you could feel someone else's feeling? how could you prove that you felt their feeling? if you could prove that then that would solve your zombie problem wouldn't it? but if it's you feeling that other person's feeling then it's your feeling isn't it? even if you really were absorbing their feeling through their aura, hypothetically, since it is you processing that feeling through your mind, it is technically your feeling and could never be said to be the other person's feeling, even if it did come from that person! did i just prove a faulty premise in that zombie problem?

Yeah I mean that's the nitty gritty of the problem right there

 

This is a huge open problem in AI research: how will we know if a machine we create is conscious? We can already create machines that exhibit emotion and intelligence...are they conscious?

 

(This may seem like a minor curiosity, but the moral implications are huge: if we create billions of robots to do painful menial work--and then tear them apart when they break--we damn well should figure out if they are actually having conscious experience or not)

 

And like many open problems in science and philosophy, I think the 'p-zombie' matter is inherently unsolvable. You've hit on the problem why.

You may simply never know (and never be able to know) for certain whether I am conscious or not...

 

But first, we haven't even figured out how the brain produces consciousness: is it created by a specialized 'module'? Or does it automatically emerge from intelligence and/or complexity? We have no fucking clue at the moment (although there are some theories kicking around)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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