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A comment on Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition. Parent comment

Re:Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition by mannykannot on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @04:57PM (#19157486)
'Consciousness', as a word denoting a concept, has at least two problems: firstly, it means different things to different people and in different circumstances; secondly, it is often assumed to be a binary attribute, rather than a continuum.
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Re:Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition by cs02rm0 on Thursday February 14, 2019 @04:16AM (#19160645)
I once read something about flies exhibiting signs of consciousness. It made some sense to me; you try and swat them, they fly off in a direction of their choosing.

It crossed my mind recently in respect to AI consciousness, that all animals appear to be conscious at least to an extent - there aren't any that appear to be zombies I can think of, maybe they all got killed off. It made me wonder if consciousness as we know it, rather than requiring some step change for AI, is simply an inevitable outcome of sufficient processing, information storage, evolution and maybe some other factors. And therefore very much a continuum.

IDK.

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Re:Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition by mannykannot on Thursday February 14, 2019 @08:29AM (#19161677)
Indeed - you only have to watch infants grow up to see them moving through the continuum, and something analogous probably happened in the evolution of our various hominin ancestors.

In the former case, and probably the latter, there is a definite acceleration when they begin to appreciate the power of language.

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Re:Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition by TheSpiceIsLife on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @05:02PM (#19157539)
These two issues can, and do, apply to a raft of words.

This hasn’t stopped anyone, on the whole, from investigating and debating the problems and concepts of the fields.

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Re:Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition by mannykannot on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @06:01PM (#19158002)
That is true, but it also often leads to an increase in unproductive noise and diversion, such as the suggestion that there is a definition of consciousness that rocks can meet.
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