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Are animals conscious? New research

• ilaksh 2y ago
  This doesn't add up to me. The majority of scientists really thought that animals didn't feel or experience things? That can't be true for scientists that actually observed animals. I can see how there might some type of conflict with a dualist or religious view of the soul though. But not a scientific conflict.
  • Joker_vD 2y ago
    Decartes, for example, did actually believe that animals don't feel or experience things, that they're purely mechanism-like entities, with simplistic (I'd even say, "behaviouralistic" but that'd be a bit anachronic) stimulus-response built-in reactions — they were not able to geniunely experience pain or distress, they could merely exhibit outwards signs of it, that's all. Fortunately, with computer-based AIs we know for sure that the analogical beliefs are actually true, and there are no future developments that could possibly change that.
  • sedan_baklazhan 2y ago
    Yes. It is considered normal to make a statement that all animals don't have self-awareness. Because, well, you can't ask them and prove they do, right? Scientist are even afraid to make those statements as they would be ostracized by the scientific community. (I've read an actual elephant-studying scientist's book which told exactly that).
  • npteljes 2y ago
    >The majority of scientists really thought that animals didn't feel or experience things? I can buy it. "As recently as 1999, it was widely believed by medical professionals that babies could not feel pain until they were a year old, but today it is believed newborns and likely even fetuses beyond a certain age can experience pain" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies
    • dahart 2y ago
      Was it widely believed? That statement seems bizarre to me, as pretty much all pediatricians have poked infants with needles and witnessed them start to cry, ever since needles were invented. Same goes for other medical procedures since long before needles, and for parents since forever.
      • npteljes 2y ago
        Wouldn't be the wildest thing people, or medical professionals, believe. Even clearly displayed aversion to assumed-painful stimuli doesn't mean that people will believe that it's pain that the organism is feeling. Where this comes up pretty often is how crabs are often cooked, when cooks just chuck them alive into hot water. The other thing that people have to do is drawing lines, life's issues are otherwise overwhelming. Now, where they draw the lines differ widely. It's common to take external markers and make the separation according to that - a safer bet, given that others can see those markers as well, and so, maybe more readily validate the discrimination. Skin color, gender, age, signs of sickness, mental conditions are easy targets for this. In most cases, they are coupled with vulnerability as well, so the history of their abuses is as old as humanity itself - hence I don't think it's that wild that people think such a thing. Unfortunately they think the wildest things, myself included. It's actually quite scary to me.
        • dahart 2y ago
          You are rationalizing some assumptions and making overly broad generalizations about “people” and what they believe. Some people ignoring evidence doesn’t mean everyone does. The temporary misguided academic debate over pain in babies was specifically about the displayed aversion to painful stimuli. I do not buy that a significant number of people nor practicing pediatricians ever thought babies can’t feel pain. This claim that it was “widely believed” babies didn’t feel pain is a narrative that prioritizes the opinions of a few academics, who were wrong, above the opinions of parents globally. The same is true of the abstract idea of drawing lines. If you say that people drew lines and it lead to abuse, and therefore it’s wild what “people” believe, you are talking about the abusers who were wrong. The people on the other side of those lines didn’t have such wild beliefs, but the framing of your story is implicitly ignoring them. You’re choosing to focus on the “wild” beliefs of one group and make that the conclusion of your argument on human behavior. There’s another story you’re not telling where “people” did not have “wild” beliefs, and turned out to be right. It’s not clear what “widely believed” means; what evidence there is for that claim, or who its referring to, or how many people it’s talking about. They don’t mention that it was widely believed by many others that babies do feel pain, nor how many of those people there were in comparison. Just because a few academics argued about it at conferences doesn’t mean it was actually believed by a significant number of real practicing doctors. Some academics have a very bad habit of thinking nothing exists outside of other recent academic papers they can reference in their own language. BTW why does the Wikipedia link cite 1999? The paper arguing babies feel pain is from 1987. Digging further, the academic idea the babies didn’t feel pain seems to have originated in the 1940s with some academic papers that had methodology problems. So what about before that? If the assumption was babies did feel pain until then, summarizing this as being a belief that changed in 1999 is totally misleading. What about other countries? Was this temporarily incorrect belief about babies shared by doctors in Asia, Africa, and India?
• dorongrinstein 2y ago
  Do people not have dogs? They have more emotional intelligence than most humans and love, fear, play, plan, think, reason and communicate well. This is true for many animals. I'd say that most animals are just like human in terms of consciousness but less advanced in thinking and communicating (without debating about whales, dolphins, octopuses etc.)
  • jbotz 2y ago
    Less advanced in symbolic thinking and communicating. There are other forms of thinking (like fast tactical thinking, some predators are conceivably better at this than most humans) and communicating (emotional communication; if we could quantify that I would bet on elephants).
    • mvid 2y ago
      Orcas are better at communicating than humans are, their languages more directly resembles telepathy than the “encode thoughts into grunts that then need to be decoded” that we have. They are essentially beaming waveform pictures to each other
      • kbrkbr 2y ago
        That is a very narrow definition of better it seems.
      • ozim 2y ago
        Good luck landing on the moon with that way of communicating. Symbolic communication is much more precise. Just like people thinking low-code or diagram based software development should be better. It isn’t an it was tried multiple times already.
  • ben_w 2y ago
    As all the discussion about AI has shown, what we even mean by intelligence in humans is a huge and ongoing debate. IIRC, canine emotional intelligence has been tested, and dogs have the emotional intelligence of a 14 year old human. Just don't take my word for it as I've not been able to find an actual citation.
• jschveibinz 2y ago
  92 Billion animals are killed each year for food.[1] That doesn't include the 110 million that are killed each year for science. [2] These animals must not be conscious, or we would never do such a thing, right? Oh, and we keep over a billion pets in our homes and call them our friends. But they can't be conscious. The science must be flawed. /s [1] https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/more-animals-ever-922-billion-are-used-and-killed-each-year-food https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/more-animals-ever-922-bil... [2] https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/killing-animal-name-science https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/killing-... [3]
  • Aerbil313 2y ago
    Why is killing conscious stuff bad? I see absolutely no reason for that. And if you do, that won’t be normative, because you’re a fallible person just like me and there’s no reason for why I should live my life according to your reasoning instead of mine.
    • uxcolumbo 2y ago
      With conscious stuff I’m assuming you mean conscious beings. It is against the law to murder another human. In many countries it is also against the law to kill or torture your pet. Are you not living your life according to those agreed upon ‘reasoning’? As humanity evolves, the circle of compassion and common sense will expand to also include those conscious beings that we currently don’t deem worthy of compassion, since having a factory farmed burger on our plate is currently more important than reducing our carbon footprint, pollution, habitat destruction, deforestation or simply not inflicting pain and suffering on sentient beings.
      • guilhas 2y ago
        So our evolved consciousness will be superior to other animals that still eat other animals
        • uxcolumbo 2y ago
• salesynerd 2y ago
  I sometimes think that animistic belief - objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence - is more respectful of the ecosystem than some of the modern ones. Lots of ancient cultures, across the globe, tried to live in harmony with their natural environments. I wish that we can go back to that stage.
  • chimpanzee 2y ago
    I agree. You should check out “Becoming Animal” and “The Spell of the Sensuous”, both by David Abram
    • salesynerd 2y ago
      Thanks for your suggestion; I'll read the two books.
  • goatlover 2y ago
    To what extent did they really, or was it more low impact for smaller tribal groups? There’s plenty of examples of civilization with roads, waterways and larger buildings in the Americas prior to the Europeans. Same for most of the rest of the world. Humans cleared areas with fire, they damned rivers, and built cities.
  • gen220 2y ago
    I also often think about this. "Animism" was a super efficient way to program a culture for respect towards nature. From that perspective it's a shame that it's gone. I'm hopeful that with all this research, we're sort of traversing a longer cultural arc that terminates at the same "symptoms" of animism (respect for nature, good stewardship of natural resources, following the precautionary principle). Those symptoms would now be supported by different load-bearing pillars, called "Environmental Science" and "Biology". I don't think we can go "back", but I think we can go "forwards" and still end up in a good (albeit, ironically, more or less the same) spot, where capital-S Science basically endorses most native land management practices. We've already made pretty good progress in the last generation or two.
• poikroequ 2y ago
  The trouble I have with much of this discussion is it assumes many traits of animal behavior are indicative of consciousness. Bees play with balls, therefore consciousness? You can't just jump straight to that conclusion. There is so much our brains do that is subconscious, that we are not aware of. Heck, even signs of self awareness may not be indicative of consciousness. Arguably we are at the point that we could train a robot AI to recognize itself in the mirror. I'm in the camp that believes animals are conscious, I'm not arguing against that. But what I'm arguing is that the current body of evidence doesn't conclude anything. Until we have a better fundamental understanding of consciousness, I don't think we can make such conclusions merely from observing animal behavior. Who's to say that one behavior is evidence of consciousness and another behavior is not? What do we base that upon?
  • jbotz 2y ago
    I don't think it's really the case that "much of this discussion assumes" certain behaviors as being indicative of consciousness. Rather, it has been the case until recently that behaviorists pointed to various behaviors as being unique to humans, and jumped to the conclusion that this indicates that humans are conscious and other animals aren't. What has been happening recently is that one by one these behaviors have been show as not being truly unique to humans. It is becoming more and more undeniable that even when humans are fairly unique in the quantity of some of these characteristics, none of them are completely absent in all other animals, and many can be found to some degree even in very simple animals.
    • squigz 2y ago
      I think we're going to realize soon that consciousness isn't really all that complex
      • poikroequ 2y ago
        I believe consciousness started off simple but evolved to become much more complex. Like how eyesight began with simple photosensitive cells.
• jerrygoyal 2y ago
  consciousness is a spectrum. Humans are more conscious than animals.
  • jbotz 2y ago
    I agree but would word that as "...more conscious than most other animals." Humans are animals, and we don't have an agreed upon definition of consciousness that would allow us to quantify it so precisely that we can be sure of the way you worded it. Many of the smarter animals may have just as much (but somewhat different) consciousness as humans, and you we can definitely come up with a reasonable definition of consciousness under which some animals may have more of it. For example, if one of the major measurable dimensions of consciousness involves spacial awareness (and it might, as it helps delimiting self from other) then cetaceans could easily have more of it.
    • jerrygoyal 2y ago
      Some animals have better senses than humans (as you pointed out) but that doesn't make them more conscious than us. Maybe 2 aspects to measure degree of consciousness is intelligence and metacognition.
• kbrkbr 2y ago
  Speaking about this topic is already hard. It's not like the words needed can be learned in observing the world. There is a lot of reflection going on to sharpen their meaning to the nuance that's needed for serious discussion. Conscious, self-aware, sentient, thinking, to name just a few, mean quite different things - not only in themselves, but also per philosophical school of thinking their connections and subdivisions are different. Plenty of room for misunderstanding... I think it was Augustinus who said about time "when no one asks me I know what it means". And then went on a journey to try to understand what it is that he knows.
• erelong 2y ago
  I think this ultimately becomes a religious discussion; even the article (wrongly in our view) calls Darwin "god-like" and suggests that belief in animals having consciousness is "heresy" (this perhaps borders on theological error, rather than heresy?) It is a long-standing religious belief that animals do not possess a rational immortal soul and neither do they possess the ability to choose good or evil but are instead governed by instinct, which is why we don't put animals on trial for crimes as it is presumed they have no consciousness of what is right and wrong like humans do It might be worth reviewing many of the characteristics unique to humans to by way of contrast appreciate how different humans are from other creatures Animals lack the "moral consciousness" and dignity that is unique to humans which is why most people are comfortable even killing animals and eating them as food, while "cannibalism" is thought to be a barbaric immoral practice contrary to unique human dignity Articles like these in our view are being pushed possibly to degrade humans to the level of animals so as to justify animal-like immoral behavior
  • defrost 2y ago
    Just for reference: > the article (wrongly in our view) calls Darwin "god-like" It does not. The exact quote is: Charles Darwin enjoys a near god-like status among scientists for his theory of evolution. It's an idiom that does NOT claim Darwin is like an actual god, it's also a statement that I disagree with as not all scientists consider Darwin to hold that status, a good number credit Wallace with the theory, with holding it first, for having better evidence, and Darwin holding the home court advantage being in England and able to present in person to the Royal Society. > which is why we don't put animals on trial for crimes You may not but many animals have been put on trial for crimes throughout history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_trial > Animals lack the "moral consciousness" and dignity that is unique to humans Your opinion is noted .. although appears to have been eronously made as if a statement of fact which is debated, as discussed in the article.
    • sitkack 2y ago
      > Animals lack the "moral consciousness" and dignity that is unique to humans This is a ridiculous statement! Step on a dog and apologize and it will understand, step on a dog and don't apologize and it will be angry. Animals definitely have a moral code.
• guilhas 2y ago
  Should we stop eating chicken, fish, and other small animals, in favour of bigger ones like cow? That would reduce farm animal suffering by more than 80% What about the meat alternative insects? Are they conscious? If so there are people investing millions. to kill gazillion lives a year Or are they definitely "inferior"? Do we even know what suffering and consciousness is? Why did nature evolved for animals to eat each other?
  • 39896880 2y ago
    > Should we stop eating chicken, fish, and other small animals, in favour of bigger ones like cow? That would reduce farm animal suffering by more than 80% We should stop eating all animals. > Why did nature evolve for animals to eat each other? Because evolution “cares” only about gene propagation. The nourishment obtained from eating animals allows that.
  • NayamAmarshe 2y ago
    > Why did nature evolved for animals to eat each other? Animals are inherently different than Humans when it comes to food choices. They do not have a choice, we do and yet, being an 'intelligent' animal does not equal to being 'wise'. Humans will kill and eat anything and everything that their senses like and that only happens when you trade sense pleasure for intelligence.
• elicksaur 2y ago
  Regardless of whether you agree with the proposition, this seems to be the conclusion society is trending toward. Personally, I fear that instead of treating animals and machines more like humans, we will end up treating humans more like we currently treat animals and machines.
• jraph 2y ago
  It doesn't take a genius to notice animals are conscious. Only to prove it and convince their human peers that this is the case. I guess.
  • epgui 2y ago
    To prove this would require being able to very clearly define consciousness, but we know that consciousness is not “a thing”— it’s rather “a collection of things”, and it’s not either there or not; rather it’s largely a question of degree. And I don’t just mean this as inter-species variation either: even if we only look at humans, humans exhibit the whole spectrum and/or patchwork of states of consciousness, both developmentally and pathologically. And to some extent, physiologically too. I find it annoying how we’re even entertaining the idea that animals wouldn’t be conscious. Like what does that even mean? All these people who aren’t convinced that animals are conscious… I’d really like to know what specific behaviour would convince them one way or another. Pick pretty much any behaviour, and you’ll find animals (and even insects) displaying it.
    • delecti 2y ago
      I can't help but believe that people who think animals aren't conscious are starting from that assumption. If you start from the belief that there's some inherent "human-ness" (soul, etc), then nothing you see will convince you that animals have it too.
      • panarky 2y ago
        Could you prove that another person is conscious? Could you prove that you are conscious?
        • delecti 2y ago
          I can prove that I am conscious, at least to my satisfaction, because I can think the thought "I am conscious". Outward behavior of other humans also proves to my satisfaction that they're conscious. And when interacting with animals, I see many of the same qualities that lead me to believe other people are conscious, with the difference largely being a matter of degree.
• klyrs 2y ago
  > Prof Chittka’s experiments showed that bees ... seemed to be able to play, rolling small wooden balls, which he says they appeared to enjoy as an activity. But can they understand the offside rule?
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • kaycey2022 2y ago
    Neither do most people. Which implies ...
    • klyrs 2y ago
      ... we won't need to understand the rules, we'll just yell at the referees whether it's bees or humans handling the ball?
  • unclenoriega 2y ago
    They said "intelligent", not "superintelligent".
  • dumbo-octopus 2y ago
    Call me when they not only understand the offside rule and the reasons for its introduction, but can provide a comprehensive summary of the ways it has contributed to the perception of soccer as a slow paced & uninteresting sport, and go on to advocate for its removal in favor of a more tactical distribution of players on the court and higher points per game, along with the various benefits those entail. Now that'd be intelligence.
  • qingcharles 2y ago
    I heard a rumor from a guy on Twitter that GPT5 can explain it...
• throwup238 2y ago
  > We now know that bees can count, recognise human faces and learn how to use tools. I was curious what that means in this context and found this research (co-authored by Prof Chittka mentioned in the article): https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002564 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou... Apparently only a small minority of bumble bees can figure out how to pull a string to access a reward, but then other bees adopt the behavior by mimicry. IMO I think we're doomed to move the goalposts on intelligence for a while, like with the statistical abilities of LLMs to manipulate language and insects' ability to use tools. Moravec's paradox keeps rearing it's ugly head as more and more complex systems turn out to be relatively easy compared to basic cognition (the system that keeps them flying and identifies threats, flowers, etc.). It'd take a lot more to convince me that bumble bees are conscious just because of the their brains' simplicity compared to humans or other animals that appear more intelligent like pigs, corvids, octopuses, etc. I'm not categorically against such a possibility, but I think the bar for recognizing intelligence in general has been set too low. This sidesteps the main problem anyway: What is consciousness? I don't think we're any closer to rigorously defining that anymore than intelligence.
  • sitkack 2y ago
    Bees even play! https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347222002366 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000334722...
  • albertopv 2y ago
    "Apparently only a small minority of bumble bees can figure out how to pull a string to access a reward, but then other bees adopt the behavior by mimicry." Replace bumble bees with human beigns and "pull a string" with an engineering task and you'll find we are not so different. /sarcasm, but not too much, average human being is quite dumb, tbh.
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    • Jensson 2y ago
• self_awareness 2y ago
  Once I had a dog and I watched him as he slept. One minute, he suddenly started moving the tips of his paws as if he were running somewhere. A moment later, he began to move his jaw as if he started to eat something. Right after that, a bit more paw movement, and he began to smack his tongue as if he were drinking something. Then again, he started moving his paws as if he ran off somewhere. So: he ran to the bowl of food, ate, went over to the bowl of water, drank some water, and ran off again. A little while later, he woke up. That’s when I invited him to eat. Since that time, I have never doubted either that animals have some kind of consciousness or that animals can dream.
  • ang_cire 2y ago
    Dreaming in animals is a well researched and proven phenomenon. https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/lifestyle/what-do-dogs-dream-about/ https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/lifestyle/what-do-dogs-dre... > One of the most famous of these dream experiments involved lab rats. Rats in the experiment spent all day running in a maze. Scientists monitored the brain activity of the rats in the maze and compared it to the brain activity of the rats during REM sleep. What they discovered was that the same areas of the rats’ brains lit up during REM sleep as when they were running the maze, suggesting that the rats were likely to be dreaming of the maze. By comparing the data, the researchers could figure out where exactly in the maze the rats were dreaming about. There's more in that article on dogs specifically, including studies where they chemically disabled the pons, which is the part of the brain stem in vertebrate mammals (humans included) that stops us from acting out our dreams while asleep (and which is involved with disorders such as sleep walking and night terrors). Just like you deduced, the dogs are just literally dreaming about all the stuff they usually do while awake.
  • mensetmanusman 2y ago
    Studies have been done where they deactivate the sleep paralysis chemistry from dogs and they literally run at full speed while dreaming. Pretty wild.
  • SoftTalker 2y ago
    I think few people could deny that animals can dream, or feel pain, or fear, or happiness, or change behavior in response to reward/punishment, or figure out how to use simple tools, or how to work together to hunt or find food, as all these things are trivially observable. I don't think that animals have a higher-order awareness of these things in other creatures. A bird will eat an insect, or a cat will hunt and kill a bird without troubling itself over whether its prey is conscious. They just see it as food. So maybe not so different from humans, after all!
• ajuc 2y ago
  Obviously they are. If consciousness even means anything. They have theory of mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saRsq9pe9Hc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saRsq9pe9Hc
• lxgr 2y ago
  > An early effort came in the 17th century, by the French philosopher René Descartes who said: "I think therefore I am." He added that "language is the only certain sign of thought hidden in a body". That line of reasoning is exactly how some people can consider LLMs conscious, yet seriously doubt whether any animals are.
• workingdog 2y ago
  If they weren't conscious, then their love for us would be meaningless.
  • spywaregorilla 2y ago
    Meaning is something you create for yourself.
  • CalRobert 2y ago
    Sometimes... believing is all we have.
• luxuryballs 2y ago
  Does this mean self-awareness? I feel like this topic is sometimes mincing words, why would an animal not be conscious? My computer knows exactly how much free memory it has, which is more than I know about my own capacity… why is it not considered conscious? Isn’t this ultimately all just inputs, outputs, and the ability to keep record of things changing over time?
• grantcas 2y ago
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• reso 2y ago
  We need to ban the word "conscious" until people can agree on what it means. That being said, its obvious to me that many animals have similar emotional complexity to humans, and many outperform humans on some cognitive tasks. Humans have complex language, and that's about it, to separate us from other animals.
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  • goatlover 2y ago
    There is a philosophical definition. Our sensations which make up perception, dreams, imagination. Or subjective experience.
  • orwin 2y ago
    > We need to ban the word "conscious" until people can agree on what it means. In modern philosophy, it ultimately mean self-awareness, if i read Chalmers correctly. Which is hard to prove (we do have mirror tests that only some animal pass, which prove they do have self-awareness, but failure to understand it doesn't mean the animal isn't self-aware, as young children also sometime fail the mirror test when left alone in front of it).
    • dmbche 2y ago
      I had understood it was nociception as it relates to a physical property https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nociception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nociception
• lolinder 2y ago
  > Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds. What's always been funny to me about the scientific approach to animal consciousness/emotions/empathy is that in a perfectly rational world the default assumption would be that animals and humans exist along a spectrum and there isn't a sharp cliff where humans are 100% conscious and empathetic but dogs are 0%. The claim that humans are categorically different than other animals is the extraordinary one, not the claim that we are made of mostly the same stuff. The only reason why animal consciousness has been controversial historically is a religious one—the Bible has typically been read as placing humanity in a category of its own. And yet we see countless secular scientists clinging to that perspective when even a cursory glance at the evidence and a basic application of Occam's razor would suggest the opposite.
  • mgh2 2y ago
    > a cursory glance at the evidence and a basic application of Occam's razor would suggest the opposite. Care to elaborate/expand? PS: Being downvoted for a simple question shows how biased (sometimes toxic) HN can become...
    • lolinder 2y ago
      The evidence: animals exhibit numerous behaviors that resemble our emotional responses in various ways. Anyone who has ever had a pet dog or a cat will have countless anecdotes. The explanation with the fewest moving parts is that our brain and hormonal systems look an awful lot like the brain and hormonal systems of a cat or a dog and therefore the simplest explanation is that cats and dogs have emotions and thought patterns that resemble ours in very meaningful ways. The actual scientific explanations that people tend to put forward (as discussed in TFA) revolve around us projecting our own thoughts and emotions onto the animals. To me that seems substantially less rational than just believing that similar neurological structures produce similar neurological results.
      • 2y ago
• mathgradthrow 2y ago
  Based on the standard definition of consciousness, no one is conscious but me.
  • NayamAmarshe 2y ago
    Solipsism.
• cf100clunk 2y ago
  Humans have been thinking for millenia about animal consciousness and how to ethically treat other beings. To wit, the Jain principle describing animal consciousness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism#Overview
• librasteve 2y ago
  the article illustrates the low level of achievement in cognitive science (particularly in the light of the investment being poured into so called AGI / FSD right now) … we clearly need a scientific definition of consciousness that can capture what (birds(cats(dogs(humans)))) have in common and the incremental distinctions … literacy, spoken language, non verbal modelling, predictive ability, causation/reasoning, dimensions (physical, emotional), pain, emotions, empathy, initiation and so on. with a research framework that can hypothesize and test the neuronal services and mapping.
• aspyct 2y ago
  Sorry, why is this even a research? It's uh... pretty obvious they are conscious.
  • etrautmann 2y ago
    In what way would be possible assume that animals are not conscious? It's such a bizarre question
    • randomdata 2y ago
      Most philosophers have assumed that animals are conscious. Science, however, cannot assume – fundamentally. This comes from the science side of life.
      • etrautmann 2y ago
        I'm a neuroscientist who used to work with animals, and while I didn't focus on consciousness, I don't think it's a reasonable scientific perspective to start from the assumption that animals don't and require proof that they do. Clearly there's a spectrum of intelligence across species, but plenty of animals appear to have theory of mind, complex emotions, object permanence, tool use, long term memory, spatial navigation, some idea of the self, etc. Humans are better at language, and math, and destroying the planet, but that doesn't explain why our feeling of consciousness wouldn't be substantially similar to a great ape or an Australian shepherd.
        • defrost 2y ago
          Is that casting shade on Australians or on shepherds? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn1_vUe_Vws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn1_vUe_Vws Leonard Webb was an Australian shepherd, he grew out of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Webb_(academic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Webb_(academic)
          • etrautmann 2y ago
• animanoir 2y ago
  Are animals conscious. Yes.
• cupcakecommons 2y ago
  Humans that are blackout drunk are emotional but non-conscious. They can carry on full conversations without a sense of being. Basically every animal exists in this state continuously. It's why human behavior is vastly different from animal behavior. Self-referential consciousness is as much of a curse as it is a blessing. It's spoken about in this way by basically every human religion for a reason. This article is misses the mark entirely. This kind of sloppy thinking about consciousness exists in part because it's incentivized by fiat economics that require replacing economization-resistant traditional human food staples (like meat) - with less expensive alternatives to hide economic mismanagement.
  • timeon 2y ago
    Blackout drunks are barely emotional - it is just level of how much they are sedated.
• 1970-01-01 2y ago
  Isn't the real question how to rank this level? Is an elephant smarter than a dog? Does that mean it feels more emotions?! Is a cat smarter than an octopus? Does that mean it knows how to better manage time?
• kazinator 2y ago
  Suppose a dog is unconscious. For what purpose does it sleep and what is the difference between its sleeping and waking state? And between those and human sleeping and waking states?
• abeppu 2y ago
  What Ghosh chose to include and not include in this leaves some really weird gaps. He mentions Descartes, and the "cogito", but quotes Seth in attributing to Descartes an "unholy trinity, of language, intelligence and consciousness", and then links that "trinity" to behaviorism. This would make one think that until "recently", most scientists were in the same boat as Descartes, but I think this is really misleading. Descartes believed that mental stuff and physical stuff were categorically different ("cartesian dualism"), whereas almost all scientists would subscribe to some form of monism / physicalism. But the reason for the cogito, which has persisted until at least "recently" is that subjective phenomena are intrinsically not accessible for objective observation. At best, we can capture the "correlates" of consciousness, whether those be behaviors, fMRI BOLD signals, EEG readings, etc, none of which directly shows that there's an inner subjective experience. There's still maybe the possibility of a philosophical zombie, who has the right objectively available signals but doesn't have any internal experience. But scientists have all the while been working under the operational assumption that animals have something like our experiences. When we study aggression or stress or motivation or whatever else in animal models, and draw parallels between the brains of mice or monkeys and humans, we're assuming that their emotional states feel at least somewhat like ours do. A classic protocol for rodents, relevant in testing anti-depressants (where the whole point is to change some aspect of our subjective experience) is the "forced swim", where you drop a mouse in water in a vessel with smooth vertical sides, and time how long it takes for them to stop struggling. This is taken to be a measure of "despair". If scientists decades ago didn't believe animals experienced anything, they wouldn't do this research. Descartes' "I think therefore I am" was the minimal statement he could make with absolute certainty -- but we all operate with at least a smidge less solipsism if we assume that other humans are conscious. And it's of course only a small extension to guess that other primates, who have rich social relations and brains similar to ours have a lot of overlapping experiences. And that other mammals, like rodents, who have a bunch of stuff in their brains like ours, have overlapping experiences. And then suddenly you're open to this landscape of different kinds of creates with different kinds of mental experiences.
• squigz 2y ago
  What's with the title on this post?
• mbfg 2y ago
  I can't say this is backed by anything, i don't know, but my gut feel is humans are somewhat different in that they have developed language both spoken and written to such an extent, that now there is a constant journaller as part of most people's minds documented everything we do, feel, think. This journaller basically happens autonomously, without direction. This journalling mechanism, i think, is what most people consider consciousness. I suspect we fool ourselves into thinking this journaller has any control over our situation and so we give it more value than it has. I don't see how it would give us free will, for instance. But it is a powerful illusion, none the less. I've had lots of dogs, horses, cats, and think they all are on the consciousness spectrum, but i'm guessing (couldn't possibly know) that they lack this constant overarching journaller in their brains. For species that have a richer communication, i still don't think they would have this... I think the need to write down language, and make it available to others asynchronously plays a part in it. Interestingly, some people report that they have no such journaller, or sometimes called inner voice that talks to them. I have no way to know what it's like to be them, or if my understanding of what they are saying is indeed what they are saying, but if true, i wonder if these folks are more like what other animals feel in their heads. I have no clue. Frankly, i can't imagine that someone wouldn't have a journaller in their heads, and so it's even hard for me to imagine. I assume i just don't understand.
  • jbarberu 2y ago
    I definitely don't have an inner voice. I certainly can "enable it", for things such as composing this reply. But in general I'd describe it as a stream of thought, not bound to any language. Then when I need to actually communicate I "pipe" it through whatever language I need (I grew up in a home with multiple languages, don't know if that influences it). One way I notice this is how thoughts are generally unpacked and stored without a language association, meaning I can't remember how people phrased something, only how I interpreted it. I feel like this is a decent memory optimization, but it drives my wife nuts and can be very unhelpful during arguments...
    • Unbefleckt 2y ago
      I'm the same but I tend to remember very precisely what people say. My partner is the opposite and yeah it's frustrating as hell especially when I'm being misquoted from mere minutes ago.
• QuantumGood 2y ago
  Are humans conscious? I have learned to note when they are not, when they are talking and unaware of their surroundings, and stand next to them and say to others "They're not conscious right now, they can't hear what I'm saying". You would think this would be incredibly rare, but it's more common than I ever expected. Awareness of surroundings does not equal consciousness, but "consciousness" measures can can assume things that are not always true.
• zzo38computer 2y ago
  I think animals do have consciousness, and I had thought that many times in the past. However, it is also necessary to define "consciousness". (Even this article admits that, though.) About placing humanity (or something else) in a category of its own, that depends on how the categorization is made, and it could be done in any way, so such a categorization of humanity does not really help, and can be deceptive to think it is the only one or the best one. I also think that "intelligence" would not be simply defined by higher vs lower; it is more complicated because of different kind of intelligence and more subclassifications of those too, and then there is the difference of e.g. speed vs knowledge vs etc. There is a sense to identify the intelligence of kind of animals (and of the same kind of animals, e.g. human), but if you merely say it is higher or lower then it is imprecise. This article also mentions colours, such as red colours. (And other things that you can also feel.) But, not all kind of animal can see all of the colours; some can see some colours that humans does not see but also does not see some that humans does see. Humans can see three colours, but some animals might see four colours. (And, some people also are partially or fully colour blind.) I had also read in a book once, they said, they are sure that insects have feelings but is not sure about emotions. Well, my guess is probably they do; but, it would be a mistake to think that having emotion would necessarily mean that it is like humans emotions; it can be difference. Nevertheless, many things that people have said are only for humans and are not what other kind of animals are. In many cases, I think they are wrong (and may even apply for some kind of plants, etc); "conscious" is not the only thing. However, there are also differences (including differences in the details of the things that actually are similar in many ways); and probably some of the differences have been missed as much as many of the similarities have been missed. (There are also differences between individuals, but that is a different thing.) > And this is important because we need to set rules to protect them either in the lab or in the wild. You do not need to know exactly how those animals will feel to justify avoiding treating animals badly. Differences of different kind of animals does not justify to treat them badly. But, it is good that scientists are actually finally figuring out this stuff scientifically, now. Although I and others had said such things before, that is not the same as doing it scientifically; so now that it can be done scientifically, it will be understood better scientifically, too.
• kull 2y ago
  Super interesting topic. Long and boring article.
• swader999 2y ago
  Can they think about the future, are they aware of their mortality? The degree we do seems to fundamentally set us apart.
  • NayamAmarshe 2y ago
    Memory and intelligence are not the same as consciousness. Yes, we're different in the way that we use our intelligence but it doesn't prove that other beings are without consciousness.
    • swader999 2y ago
      What about humour? Only rats, people and chimps can laugh.
      • NayamAmarshe 2y ago
        All of this is very much dependent on the types of senses. The Sāṁkhya metaphysics system gives a breakdown of everything that exists on top of the conscious entity: 1. Intellect 2. Ego 3. Mind 5. Sensory capacities 6. Action capacities Humor would be a part of the Mind and Sensory capacities which reflects back the changes in Action capacities. So 'consciousness' is actually none of these things. It's the irreducible entity, or in simple terms energy or force that animates what would otherwise be dead matter.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• swader999 2y ago
  As soon as we ate the forbidden fruit we became self aware, aware we were naked, aware we were vulnerable and mortal. We learned about the future and that we could sacrifice things now to perhaps make it better. So we work, we pass on more than instinct with language to our children. Read of the transformation that Helen Keller went through once she learned language, many similarities to this biblical narrative. https://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-helen-keller-on-her.html?m=1 https://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-he...
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• utkarsh858 2y ago
  In Indian culture, various species were regarded as being on a certain place in a spectrum of consciousness. Vedic literatures regarded even plants as beings who can have feelings. From zero (a rock) to almost 100% (a human) differentiation of species was primarily based on level of consciousness (bodily features as another factor, ofcourse) and interestingly, according to philosophy, selection of a specific species depended on a living entities 'karma', one gets a body with a certain level of consciousness according to the 'good' or 'bad' deeds one does in ones life.
• imposter 2y ago
  Next up, are LLMs conscious?
• moi2388 2y ago
  I’ve never understood these questions. “Are animals conscious?” Well, could you give me the definition of consciousness? No you can’t. So now you’re asking me both to define it and show if animals have it or not. Are animals aware of their surroundings? Yes. Are animals showing the behavioural signs of pain when you hurt them? Yes. Can animals direct attention? Yes. Can animals remember? Yes. Can animals learn? Yes. Are animals self-aware? Some of them, some only sometimes, some not. To think of consciousness as a dichotomy instead of a spectrum is baffling to me. As is thinking of consciousness as being a single, indivisible thing.
  • tuatoru 2y ago
    Do animals have friends, enemies, cliques? Yes. Do animals play practical jokes on each other? Yes. I've seen all of these in cows.
    • King-Aaron 2y ago
      Cows are just big dogs
      • naikrovek 2y ago
        big, curious dogs, sorta like cats. they want to know what you're doing when they see you and they want to smell everything you're doing and they want to play all the damn time. I did IT work on a farm for a few weeks and was there 3-5 days a week. The cows were far more active than any other animal I saw. They clearly liked each other and had friends and non-friends in the group. They would run and walk dozens and dozens of miles per day and a horse would move 1/4 mile in total over the course of an entire day.
    • sleepychu 2y ago
      Cow practical joke anecdotes, please! :-)
      • tuatoru 2y ago
        Real simple stuff. Luring a cow over near a bank and then pushing her down it. Pretending there's some lush grass in the gap between trees. Nudging each other into the electric fence, or into the gatepost when going through a gate.
• 0x20cowboy 2y ago
  Maybe if we made LLMs out of steak people would stop thinking they were conscious.
  • ysofunny 2y ago
    don't worry, some people already do or at least that is my read of academics that say the universe is deterministic
• NayamAmarshe 2y ago
  Modern science is so clueless that it's now trying to answer metaphysical questions with physical processes. What's next? Using empiricism to negate the concept of justice since none of us are the same in any shape or form?
• knallfrosch 2y ago
  I'm not even sure you other guys are conscious. Let's test it with some electric shocks.
• nprateem 2y ago
  The philosophical zombie idea needs to be put to bed. Instead we should be thinking on the balance of probabilities instead. This is far more pragmatic. We can't know anything for certain, and the zombie idea is a convenient stonewall that allows us to ignore the behavioural evidence and continue to abuse animals as a society (mainly by killing them).
• jumploops 2y ago
  I once witnessed a spider controlling a motion activated flood light to catch prey. At first I assumed the flood light in my backyard was just being triggered by the wind, as a spider had built a web in front of the sensor, however I then noticed that the light would turn on even when there wasn’t any wind. Upon closer inspection, I found that the spider had created a singular strand of webbing, thicker than the rest (5x-10x), directly over the front of the sensor. It would then pluck this thicker strand whenever it wanted the light to turn on. I had previously read a few papers on spider intelligence, specifically the planning capabilities of certain species, but this seemed like another level. Not only had it discovered the sensor, it crafted a tool to use it for it’s own advantage. Humans think they’re something forever unique and special in the evolutionary timeline, but the remembered words of our ancestors trick us into thinking individuals are larger than the herd. Intelligence comes in many shapes and sizes, and claiming to be above the rest parallels, in my experience, the likes of a liar more so than a truth seeker. What is consciousness? That which separates us from the animal kingdom. A lie we tell ourselves to sleep at night and die for false prophets.
  • efilife 2y ago
    Just a heads up - for its own advantage
    • jumploops 2y ago
      The fun thing about language is that we define it. (On a serious note, this one always gets me after midnight!)
  • machiaweliczny 2y ago
    Yeah spiders are uniquely smart for their size. I had one using stone and some complicated physics to catch pray (don’t remember exactly the details but was impressed)
  • solardev 2y ago
    Don't those motion lights typically use passive infrared sensors? I'm surprised it's sensitive enough to see spider silk moving. Could the strand possibly have been blocking some radiative source behind the strand (the sun?)? Now if the spider knew THAT...
• Hoasi 2y ago
  It seems unfortunate that they inflicted pain and negative experiences on animals to prove common knowledge.
• formvoltron 2y ago
  given that we don't remember what happened before our lives, and most likely when we die we enter a similar state... so that life starts whenever a physical life begins (later a mental life starts and exists until the time that physical life dies)... Then the idea that all creatures are conscious is a pretty bad idea. It means that being a conscious being such as a human is ridiculously improbable, given the very high ratio of all conscious creatures count vs human count.
  • NayamAmarshe 2y ago
    > enter a similar state Sāṁkhya philosophy covers this. This state is called 'tamas', the state of ignorance. > It means that being a conscious being such as a human is ridiculously improbable Yes it is. Human birth and animal birth is similar if you notice: eating, sleeping, mating and defending. What's different then? Human birth is the only birth where it's possible to philosophize and ask questions about existence and ask about teleology, objective purposes in life. This is why human birth is rare and Sāṁkhya philosophy would say that every animal's consciousness will at one point experience the human body as consciousness keeps leveling up after each death, say from a tree to an insect to a fish to a bird to an animal to a human. Animals are bound by their senses and instincts. They follow whatever their senses want them to so there's not much free will, it's compulsion by the senses. Human beings have free will due to intelligence. One has 2 minds: the higher mind which is intelligence and capable of controlling the lower mind and, the lower mind which basically is connected to the senses (so mind would be like a hardware interface device controller). The higher mind, intelligence would be like an OS scheduling tasks. When the HID Controller takes control, it allows anything and everything at once but add intelligence or OS to that equation and you have everything running in a systematic manner. The senses would be like the hardware devices: Mouse, Keyboard, Speakers, Camera. All providing data and the HID controller trying to just take it all in, as much data as it possibly can get. > so that life starts whenever a physical life begins Consciousness is still consciousness. It's what enables this 'physical life' and it's what powers the 'mental life'. If you take them to be 2 different things, then that would ensue that the arrangement of subatomic particles in a particular mechanical configuration is capable of producing this 'physical life' but that is not the case. Consciousness is the irreducible entity, separate from matter, that animates matter.
• johnwheeler 2y ago
  Unquestionably. No study required.
• ShuffleBoard 2y ago
  First of all it's crawfish not crayfish. Second of all that's a hermit crab not a crawfish.
• nullstyle 2y ago
  For those of you who think we have crappy definitions for things like Intelligence, Consciousness, Sentience, or even just Existence, I invite you to ponder Joscha Bach's thoughts on these subjects: https://youtu.be/cs9Ls0m5QVE?si=E2TKfnuV8tXo4J_3 https://youtu.be/cs9Ls0m5QVE?si=E2TKfnuV8tXo4J_3
• booleandilemma 2y ago
  Anyone who has had a pet knows they're conscious. Of course they're conscious.
• m3kw9 2y ago
  Consciousness is a spectrum, it’s the best bet because there are too many biological similarities the difference being the amount of intelligence
• jsz0 2y ago
  Here's one of the most simple practical examples that proves to me cats are conscious. When my cat sleeps in my bed occasionally I accidetanlly kick or bump into her in the dark. Instead of fleeing, hissing or attacking me she lets out a very unique earnest meow that clearly means 'hey I'm here' and she goes back to sleep like nothing happened. She clearly understands my motivation wasn't to harm her. She clearly understands we share a common motivation of sleeping in the comfy bed. She clearly understands a concept of the future where she lets me know her position and expects me not to accidentally bother her again. If I continue to bother he she will simply get up and move just far enough away to avoid further trouble.
  • ok_dad 2y ago
    Cats are definitely conscious in my mind, but when I kick my cat at night she gets up and looks at me like I just beat her on purpose, then usually attacks my foot. I guess my cat is an asshole at night! Thankfully she’s cuddly and nice when I’m not disturbing her cat naps.
• banish-m4 2y ago
  The most anthropocentric thing I've read all year.
• doodpants 2y ago
  "But his ideas that animals are conscious in the same way humans are have long been shunned." ...except by every single dog or cat owner ever. Seriously, I've never understood how anyone could interact with or observe animals for any length of time and not perceive obvious signs of conciousness.
• dboreham 2y ago
  WTF? Who said animals aren't conscious? Edit: reading below, the answer appears to be: God.
• senordevnyc 2y ago
  How is it that neither the article nor anyone here has mentioned the seminal paper by Nagel, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F
• pjs_ 2y ago
  One day we may even prove that BBC journalists are conscious
• SpaceFarmer 2y ago
  I've always had trouble with people's definition of consciousness. What is amazing to me is that I've lived my whole life, from the perspective of this one seemingly random guy. I can't prove anyone or anything else is consciousness, but I know "I'm in here" so to speak. As amazing and complex as the configuration of atoms in the human brain is, it doesn't even begin to explain to me how "I" ended up perceiving reality from this one object in particular. Or even explain what "I" am.
• bvan 2y ago
  Of course they are.
• __lbracket__ 2y ago
  No, animals arent conscious. Kill them indiscriminately and brutally. Happy Bakrid everyone !
• tomcam 2y ago
  Anyone who's met my stupid stupid chickens would appreciate that the stupid stupid chickens can totally manipulate us by making pathetic sounds when we know we are near, so they can get treats. Pre-chicken it was obvious to me that dogs, dolphins, higher primates, etc. were conscious. But stupid stupid chickens? Yes, stupid stupid chickens, it turns out. I love them despite the fact that they are ruthlessly committed to training me. All which is to say that objectively and scientifically speaking they are obviously conscious although stupid.
• jarjoura 2y ago
  Research also suggests that we only domesticated ourselves 40-50k years ago. Language and culture are fairly recent additions in our evolution and so when people start comparing how we understand the world, to that of other mammals, I struggle to find it fair. I do try hard not to anthropomorphize my dog, but the little dude is very clever, and I just can't help but consider him conscious on some level. Him and I definitely have a way of communicating with each other without using sentences, so I know he's self-aware far more than I would have given dogs credit before he came into my life.
• ribcage 2y ago
  Humans are animals, not plants or mushrooms.
• blackhaj7 2y ago
  I am shocked there is debate on this topic. I feel like you can’t have spent much time with animals if you don’t think that at least some animals have consciousness
  • ornornor 2y ago
    It’s very convenient to think animals aren’t conscious. Think about the ramifications: eating meat is eating a being, not just food; treating animals the way we do becomes unethical; we’re not at the top anymore; etc etc. Reassessing all these values and behaviors is hard, and we’d rather not, ergo animals aren’t conscious and are inferior to us.
• matt-attack 2y ago
  Funny that we struggle determining if animals are conscious - when I think a deeper question is in front of us: is anyone BUT YOU conscious? Science isn’t usually settled simply by taking people’s word for something. And yet the ONLY creature on this planet I can ever truly know is conscious is ME. You might tell me you are and I might sort of assume you are since you’re the “same model” - but really, I have no way of knowing you’re experiencing subjectivity the same way I am. Let’s start with our fellow humans before we got onto sperm whales.