Are only animals likely conscious?
Consciousness is not observable. It can only be inferred.
We generally assume that other humans are conscious because we relate to the similar shape of their bodies and their actions.
Most of us believe other animals possess consciousness as well, but to perhaps a lesser degree of refinement.
Most of us, I guess, don't consider non-animals, nor Nature as a whole, to possess consciousness.
Is this only because non-animals are so different than us? Isn't that almost a kind of prejudice? You don't act like us, so you must be a mere object or a mechanical undirected process?
Especially when considering Nature as a whole, how vast, complex. How little we know and understand it. We can't know it possesses consciousness, but it seems to me like a fair guess that it possesses is, or is directed by it. Especially when we use induction to suppose that, since animals are less complex than us in behavior (at least in our opinion) they are probably less refined in their consciousness... well, then isn't it fair to induce that Nature as a whole being far more complex than us, is likely to be more conscious than us?
Good night.
We generally assume that other humans are conscious because we relate to the similar shape of their bodies and their actions.
Most of us believe other animals possess consciousness as well, but to perhaps a lesser degree of refinement.
Most of us, I guess, don't consider non-animals, nor Nature as a whole, to possess consciousness.
Is this only because non-animals are so different than us? Isn't that almost a kind of prejudice? You don't act like us, so you must be a mere object or a mechanical undirected process?
Especially when considering Nature as a whole, how vast, complex. How little we know and understand it. We can't know it possesses consciousness, but it seems to me like a fair guess that it possesses is, or is directed by it. Especially when we use induction to suppose that, since animals are less complex than us in behavior (at least in our opinion) they are probably less refined in their consciousness... well, then isn't it fair to induce that Nature as a whole being far more complex than us, is likely to be more conscious than us?
Good night.
Comments (34)
I like your humility. We now little of Nature indeed (though science paints a nice picture with quantum fields brushes, colors, and forms). It's a fact though that animals are conscious. When bitch Bo cries out her small lungs she is truly in pain (or just jealous maybe...). Is there panpsychism present? There has to be! How else can the hard problem (of consciousness) be explained?
I don't think it is because of prejudice that we believe animals to be conscious but not the rest of nature. It's the evidence, that non-human animals have brains which we know are used for thinking, we observe that non-human animals plan, become anxious, and depressed. This evidence isn't there for the rest of nature.
:100:
Quoting Bylaw
The planning and introspective type behaviour is evidence of consciousness, especially in light of the fact non-human animals have brains which are used for thinking, just-like-us. It doesn't make sense to say these non-human animals are by default not conscious, and we certainly shouldn't wait until we are overwhelmed by evidence to treat them as such.
Quoting Bylaw
Plants don't have brains for introspection, or nerves to transmit pain signals. The more a brain develops the more it is conscious of its own thoughts and feelings, and the world it inhabits.
Again: :100:
Don't get too smart! :smile:
Plants may generate consciousness differently. The complex nuanced features of their experience may have evolved in parallel, like flight in bats and birds.
I wonder this about this about computers and electronics. We spend all this time worrying about a future robot revolution, but I suspect all of our gadgets may already be conscious. They have a camera lens, they compute, they're structured on logic, et cetera.
On this, I myself am caught in between a quasi-solipsistic question and the question of "What is consciousness itself?"
People say somebody is a vegetable, or in a vegetative state, when they have no conscious awareness, generally because of injury or disease. If you are knocked out or if you are given a general anaesthetic, you lose consciousness. So that's what consciousness is. You know what it is.
It's produced by highly specific and exceptionally complex mechanisms and processes in the brain (and body). We know an astonishing amount about those mechanisms and processes.
The mechanisms and processes in humans and animals are very similar.
The mechanisms and processes in plants are not very similar. We know an astonishing amount about those mechanisms and processes. Plants grow towards the light. We know why this happens:
So a plant doesn't need to be able to see light in order to respond to it. And it doesn't have the kind of mechanisms and processes you have, the ones that make you conscious. So there isn't any good reason to think that plants are conscious.
Computers even less so!
But the major part, especially in the living brain, body, and world, we don't know.
You lose identity. No consciousness (in the relevant sense of the word) is lost.
The content of consciousness in a human is indeed determined by the structure and function of that human body. Just as the content of the consciousness of a rock is determined by its structure and function.
Yes, I think the unwillingness to carry the inference further is sometimes due to anthropocentrism, but it depends on the philosopher.
People with Multiple Personality Disorder, when they switch to another personality, they forget the memories of the other personalities. Most of us don't remember being babies or in the womb. We have to develop alternate personalities in order to adapt with the biological changes. We revert to our baby and pre-birth states or "personalities" when we go to sleep. The sleep state is similar to the in the womb state.
One of the reasons we get so tired when we are awake is it takes a lot of energy to repress our old traumatic memories from baby-hood.
Some meditators have developed the ability to maintain a sort of detached awareness even while their body and brain enter the sleep state.
Personal experience? Hitting yourself with an axe?
As a matter of fact... I just walked with our dog. She sniffed around a car unusually long. And found a small animal hiding beneath it quietly. Likely my dog and the animal are conscious beings like us. How would it be to smell like that? Would be great! How would it be to hide in fear? Not so great I guess.
I know what they let them sniff firstly... And then set them loose on hands and feet, but I don't dare to write it...
Therein lies the rub. A true blue skeptic can haul in almost anything through that gap between truth and inference, one being doubts about consciousness itself (the problem of other minds).
Quoting Yohan
I don't quite buy that argument. Goldilocks zone? Consciousness might be a property of medium complexity and may not exist in either the less/more complex kinda like a downward-facing parabola (with consciousness on the y-axis and complexity on the x-axis).
Nature is not far more complex than we are. Bigger yes, that She is.
:ok:
:smile:
Is this a confident intuition?
No idea what you said.
Thanks though, It's too out of my element for now for me to try to understand goldilocks zone, parabola with the axes
Edit: Except I get that you consciousness might be a property of medium complexity. I would agree with that if we are talking about where humanity en masse is at evolutionarily, as having a distinct ego identity
That's hardly evidence about plant conscoiusness. It could simply be bias, just as we used to, in science for exmaple, have a bias against animal consciousness.Quoting DaemonActually we don't. We don't know the mechanism that causes conssciousness. We know a lot of about mechanisms that cause various cognitive functions, but we know little about awareness itself. About why some matter experiences, that we know nothing about?
YOu examples of affecting mice memories is precisely humans affecting memory. Which is a cognitive function. It may or may not have anything at all to do with being aware. That some (or all) matter is aware. That it experiences.
This debunking would work on humans also. The only reason it doesn't is because each of us experiences. It would work on debunking animal consciousness, since one could reduce an animals seeing to a mechanistic process and throw in chemical names. But we no longer assume that animals are not conscious. You have demonstrated nothing with this reduction.
It's reality.
So humans are as complex as the whole of nature.
Is that true of every creature?
Sounds intriguing.
In fact, every process in Nature can be represented in the human brain. We have virtual infinite memory capacity (in fact a 1 followed by 10exp40 zeros!).
Or both!
Wait till you find out the earth,the sun,the wind and the ocean are living concious beings....Then you will really loose your plots!