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.
See also the section of that article entitled "Contradicting evidence".
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...
I'm all for the 'consciousness as a spectrum' view, but as TFA says, anyone looking for a eureka moment [in this matter] will be disappointed.
pun intended?
(And it is not our dog handling, as our control groups are happy to wrap circles around a tree.)
To the contrary, I do think landing on the moon and QM requires a different kind of mental process than a beaver.
However, the problem is that this implies that consciousness is a function of intelligence, and if only exceptional intelligence is sufficient evidence of consciousness, then would less intelligent people be considered having no consciousness, just like animals?
If one entertains the additional argument in the form of "all humans are the same, and some are shown to be smart (spaceships, QM, etc), thus all humans are conscious", then the question becomes why don't we apply the logic to all animals/mammals/apes, since it's clear the biologically we are constructed with the same parts?
My grandma is the same.
My take is organic breathing = consciousness. There may be different levels of it. Otherwise it’s like trying to say all colors can be trimmed down to two values, black and white. There is a variety of consciousness and the definition we try to make of it orient the whole debate. It will never be the same between humans and animals but it doesn’t mean because it’s not human it doesn’t exists.
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_d...
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
[2] Consciousness and the Laws of Physics: https://philarchive.org/archive/CARCAT-33
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.
Isn't this conspiracy theory? One species of mammals actually did.
> a qualitative distinction between humans and animals is very reasonable
but for someone who considers otherwise, such as the commenter to whom you're replying and whom I quoted, "animals didn't land on the moon" qualifies as both a sound and a valid statement.
Probably due to walking upright and eating meat
For most of the history, neither did humans.
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
except Hinduism.
Not every human knows how to land on the moon or understands quantum mechanics, so how do you make the distinction?
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.
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.
- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
Then I'm at a loss as to why you read the article and are participating in this conversation.
> 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.
So might makes right, all the time? One can quite reasonable hear some like King Leopold II of Belgium uttering this as he committed atrocities throughout the Congo. Many European settlers and American slaveowners held the exact same view of African humans.
What harm has our manner of animal had on the rest of life on earth thus far?
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.
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.