Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by butcherguy

 

It is entirely possible that I am the only conscious being in existence and that everything else is just a construct in that consciousness.

Good thing you're not in charge.

To the thread. Life is sentient? OMG... who would've thunk it?

Yes, it didn't work too well when humans tried to shift the responsibility of blowing up stellar systems to autonomous sentient hyper-existential ordinance as in the movie "Dark Star".

www.imdb.com...

Having a debate with munitions exploring the philosophical possibility of reincarnation and karma is not something you want to be doing when several hundred light years from Earth.

reply to post by jiggerj


Thanks for the reply. and yes you are correct it was meant to read non human persons....It was a typo..

Originally posted by buddha
So it seems Human have finally risen to a level of Consciousness.
so that they can SEE Other animals have Consciousness too!

I still believe their is no hope for the humans.

Define hope. Billions of species died out by doing what was in their nature to do. Can this be a matter of right vs. wrong, or more or a matter of, it is what it is?

Whatever the future holds for us, we are humans doing human things. We are what we are. In order to gain hope we would have change what we are, but then we wouldn't be human anymore, would we? Ergo, hope is irrelevant.

reply to post by purplemer


What do they mean by "aware to the degree that humans are"?

Humans are aware of various moral categories. Are animals also aware of these categories? Are animals aware of global warming - a thing we humans are aware of? Do animals realize the danger of not stopping at a red light? Why do deer and ducks fail so often to wait for traffic to pass by, if they are "as aware" as we are?

This is what scientists with a clear mind would call "reductionism". Apparently, what these scholars call "the same conscious awareness" doesn't involve any of these capacities.

Animals have conscious awareness, obviously, but their conscious awareness is different from ours in many important ways. Like babies - animals cannot GENERATE attentive awareness. For example, a baby can be impressed by many different sites in it's purview, but it doesn't yet possess the ability to inhibit one thought, and initiate another thought in a direction of it's choice. Animals as well are limited in this way. A dog can be distracted by all sorts of interesting external stimuli - but a dog cannot stop, resist an external stimuli, and choose an opposing direction of it's own free will.

I guess that's the main thing. Humans can choose where we place the spotlight of our attention. No other animal on this planet possess this unique and powerful ability.

Also, patterns. An animal can figure something out through trial and error, but an animal cannot figure out HOW something works. To do so requires a theory of knowledge - an epistemological acumen. We humans can look at the moon and deduce that in fact it is many times larger than it appears to our finite senses. We can invent technologies (in itself an amazing feat of knowledge) like fMRI and peak into the human mind while its thinking or doing something. These are two fundamentally different types of knowledge.

As for India's declaration of dolphins as a "non-human person". This is clearly a philosophical position, and not a scientifically justified position. Native Indian languages attach a suffix meaning "person" to the end of animal names. In a sense, all animals have a "personality" of sorts, but they are not "persons". Only people - human beings - are persons, and to deny this is to pretty much throw out all sense of discrimination from your cognitive toolkit.

Originally posted by butcherguy

Originally posted by tkwasny

Originally posted by butcherguy
Difficult to prove.
Impossible actually.
It is entirely possible that I am the only conscious being in existence and that everything else is just a construct in that consciousness.

An animal that shows evidence of dreaming indicates memories are being processed in virtual (inside the mind) space-time. This, to me, is conscious awareness evidence. It also indicates a conscious mind and a sub-conscious mind since dreams occur within the subconscious mind. Thus the awareness navigates amongst conscious mind with sub-conscious mind serving as a foundation while awake. Just like humans do.

Dreaming is evidence.

Wih consciousness being at the root of this, it is not easy to prove. It is not possible for you to prove thatt I actually xist. You only have you awareness to rely on here. I and everything that you are aware of may be nothing more han a thought of yours.
You can't prove that I exist outside of your mind . How can you prove that an animal is conscious if you can't even prove that they exist?

Since there are two beings arguing the same conventions, and neither is aware of the other beings NEXT WORDS, it is beyond safe to conclude both have identical formats of consciousness. If ever anything is new to you it means there are others above your level of consciousness, on the same as your, below yours. You are one of many nearly identically functioning beings.

Ego is the foundation for the false premise that someone is the only one in the Universe and everything else is a staged show. Kill the ego as it is mental illness causing the illusion.

Originally posted by stormcell

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by butcherguy

 

It is entirely possible that I am the only conscious being in existence and that everything else is just a construct in that consciousness.

Good thing you're not in charge.

To the thread. Life is sentient? OMG... who would've thunk it?

Yes, it didn't work too well when humans tried to shift the responsibility of blowing up stellar systems to autonomous sentient hyper-existential ordinance as in the movie "Dark Star".

www.imdb.com...

Having a debate with munitions exploring the philosophical possibility of reincarnation and karma is not something you want to be doing when several hundred light years from Earth.

Outstanding bit from the film you reminded me of there. And very pertinent to this thread.

Arguing existence with a "smart bomb", lol.

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by buddha
So it seems Human have finally risen to a level of Consciousness.
so that they can SEE Other animals have Consciousness too!

I still believe their is no hope for the humans.

Define hope. Billions of species died out by doing what was in their nature to do. Can this be a matter of right vs. wrong, or more or a matter of, it is what it is?

Whatever the future holds for us, we are humans doing human things. We are what we are. In order to gain hope we would have change what we are, but then we wouldn't be human anymore, would we? Ergo, hope is irrelevant.

If you permit me to jump in, hope is an illusion as are most mental routines. We reverse engineer inputs from a thread in the present and search the memories of the past for parallel threads. Those electrochemical currents are a kinetic existence seeking refresh and replenishment of the past with the present. This current, we call it hope. Time is the most corrosive element in the Universe and we all fight it with all our will every moment while alive.

If cows,pigs,sheep and chickens have consciousness then presumably they have a right to a family life in Europe. (EU Law) and there is not much Theresa may can do about it.

Just wrote on this subject: www.ethicalatheism.com...

reply to post by tkwasny

If you permit me to jump in, hope is an illusion as are most mental routines. We reverse engineer inputs from a thread in the present and search the memories of the past for parallel threads. Those electrochemical currents are a kinetic existence seeking refresh and replenishment of the past with the present. This current, we call it hope. Time is the most corrosive element in the Universe and we all fight it with all our will every moment while alive.

Wow...extremism par excellence. I take it you agree with Daniel Dennet that conscious itself is the mere illusion of the "neurons firing in our heads"?

Please. You are not a genius. Our brains are not computers, insomuch as computers are not changed (neuroplastic) by the information they take in. Our brains will forever be more complex than computers; and although cognitive sciences are interesting, it is a crude approximation of the real thing.

Put it this way. We have a few trillion possible connections working in our heads. Although neuroscientists are trying to make isomorphic correlations between the brain and mental states, what's being discovered is that most parts of the brain are involved in most activities we engage in. When you look at this in terms of synaptic connections between various brain regions, the number of computations are simply too staggeringly large to fathom.

Scientists who talk about "reverse engineering the mind" are kidding themselves. Any attempt at reverse engineering would be CRUDE in the extreme.

As for hope. Hope is a beautiful thing.

I worked for about a year and a half as an histology technician. This involved making microscope slides in the mornings and assisting afternoons in either the surgical trimming room where surgical specimens were sent to be described and made into slides, or in the morgue assisting in autopsies. It was a pretty heady learning (and other) environment for a 20-something.

Turns out that the meat case in your local supermarket looks exactly like the interior of a dead human.

I haven't eaten red meat in a very long time although I'll admit to the occasional fish or crustacean.

Humans kill over a billion animals every day, day after day on this planet. It's the Great Holocaust and in my mind it's preventing the entire planet from achieving any sort of higher level of consciousness or awareness. I truly don't think we'll ever achieve either a peaceful co-existence with each other or with the planet at large until we realize that our nutrition can come adequately from plant sources and we no longer need to kill animals, whether you consider them sentient or not, for food. Our little troll friend up above with his 'I'll kill anything I want for food' mentality is proof that meat eating begets more violent thoughts and behaviors, and certainly doesn't enhance human intelligence. 'You Are What You Eat' includes the final thoughts of the meat you're eating; all that fear is taken in, all that adrenaline is in the tissue, as are the toxins inherent in decay.

Even an ant tries to evade a threat from something so large it can't even possibly know what that threat is, besides a looming shadow. Obviously mammals are sentient, there shouldn't be any question about that, as are birds.

Our behavior is barbaric across the board and it's pretty easy to see for what it is. We even kill animals with bigger brains than ourselves, like the cetaceans.

If I was an alien species checking out Planet Earth for the first time, I'd exterminate the humans as obviously not worth saving and start a dialogue with the whales and dolphins.

reply to post by signalfire

Humans kill over a billion animals every day, day after day on this planet. It's the Great Holocaust and in my mind it's preventing the entire planet from achieving any sort of higher level of consciousness or awareness.

A great holocaust? Oh puleaaseeee.. Don't get me wrong, I personally find much of the industrial sized meat making factories to be abhorrent, but the word "holocaust" does not come to mind.

I think Steven Pinker has it right. Although it may be good to eat vegetarian, fact is, were a biological species just like other animals. We evolved as omnivores - meaning MEAT and vegetation. So how can we really demonize what nature made essential to our survival?

Perhaps people will become vegetarian, or, perhaps there will always be people with a hankering for a burger and a steak.

The fact that so many people can even entertain this question puts the word "holocaust" completely out of possible use for this issue. A holocaust - given it's historical appearance - really only suits mass human extermination. Not killing animals, as painfully unnecessary as it may be.

I truly don't think we'll ever achieve either a peaceful co-existence with each other or with the planet at large until we realize that our nutrition can come adequately from plant sources and we no longer need to kill animals, whether you consider them sentient or not, for food.

By definition, an animal possesses sentience. Even a cricket is aware of the foot about to step on it - that's why it tries to get out of the way.

I also don't think there's any essential connection between meat eating and temperament. I eat meat (bout 3-4 times a week, mostly beef and chicken - no pork - one in awhile I'll have lamb or venison; I've also been eating alot more fish lately too) and I'm extraordinarily empathetic.

Our little troll friend up above with his 'I'll kill anything I want for food' mentality is proof that meat eating begets more violent thoughts and behaviors, and certainly doesn't enhance human intelligence.

Ahhh, but it is not proof, because I eat meat. To just give you an idea of my personality: I defend people. If my mom or sister is attacking someone, I interject and bring forth information that might exonerate them of any extreme opinion; I've never laid a hand on my dog. I'm in the kitchen, my dog comes behind me and causes me to fall and drop the glass in my hand. Most people would react angrily. I say "#.#". Then I look at her face, her folding ears, her tail between her legs, and I come to my senses and tell her "I know you didn't mean it" and I give her a kiss on the top of her head. When I walk the streets and see a hobo, I consider their situations - I even devise a narrative in my mind. Even then, I'll often pick something up, a coffee, a bagel, a sandwich (something healthy, nutritious, or energizing) and give it to them.

My life experiences dictate my behavior. Although food might incline someone this way or that, it's influence overall is marginal.

Someone can eat meat and still be a good person.

'You Are What You Eat' includes the final thoughts of the meat you're eating; all that fear is taken in, all that adrenaline is in the tissue, as are the toxins inherent in decay.

That's debatable. Also, I don't think anyone here is eating putrefactive meat.

reply to post by tkwasny

You may want to read your own post and take the lecture on ego to heart.
I have never stated what I believe, only that there are possibilities, and that to rely on your own consciousness to make a proof on the existence of other beings having consciousness is not possible.

If ever anything is new to you it means there are others above your level of consciousness, on the same as your, below yours.

So where do inventions come from?

To my credit, as much as I enjoy veil chops, I've stopped eating it. The process is really just completely amoral - paralyzing the poor little things for 6 months to make their flesh tender to the palate.

It's similar to frois gras. I'm sorry, force feeding a goose food until it reaches a plumpness suiting your taste buds - essentially, fattening it up to the point that it's liver is pure fat.. Honestly, this is an indefensible food practice.

Free range animals at least live a good life before they're eaten. If were going to perpetuate an evolutionarily evolved tendency (meat eating) we might as well make the moral effort to make the lives of the animals we eat comfortable.

Originally posted by Kali74
reply to post by mc_squared

 

Maybe your cat is just evil

Joking aside you have a very valid point IMO but I'd like to counterpoint that conscious awareness doesn't necessarily equal what you personally think of as moral. Morality is subjective, after all... humans still hunt when they don't need to. In western culture, we don't even need to eat meat, but most still do.

Always enjoy your perspective

To me the consciousness of each of us and all creatures, is the clear fear for our life when in harms way. The clear pain and begging for help when hurt physically. The protectiveness of offspring and the show of joy when living free and healthy.
Many animals are very picky when choosing a mate even many insects, they select things they want and reject things they don't.
I recognize the same feeling I have had when I see a tired mother dog or other animal struggle to keep their little ones in line and care for them, they look tired but glad to have them.

I don't need a scientist to tell me my animals have awareness, that is evident in their personalities. When my cat Sugarz wants food, she jumps up on the shelf in my office and throws junk down on me if I keep ignoring her when she tells me she wants food. My tomcat Gizmo will lay on my keyboard and roll over and let me rub his belly when he wants attention, and that's the only time he will allow me to rub his belly and not try to bite.

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by JohnPhoenix

 

I didn't know that Stephen Hawking was there. He sided for consciousness, right?

I wonder if some of these people are proposing we do not kill animals for food simply because they are conscious.

Seems that minority are usually somewhere in the crowd. I revere trees, but I don't go around hugging them either.

Why not? I do it all the time.

Tree Hugging Now Scientifically Validated,

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus
I'm wondering when they will finally admit that pre-born have awareness too. Why is it always to support animals but not pre-born humans?

Sounds like agenda 21 thing to me, as Agenda 21 proponents tend to want to stop people eating beef because cows emit co2 and co2 is considered pollution to the environmentalists. So if they just declare cows to be conscious, then they can guilt people into not eating beef. See how that works?
Did I mention Agenda 21 has a huge de-population agenda(depopulating only humans). ?

edit on 22-6-2013 by ThirdEyeofHorus because: (no reason given)

How can you state that a clump of cells not making up any brain yet is the same as an animal or anything else? it is most like your fingernails you cut or skin you scrum off a bunch of cells.

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus

 

So you'll eat dead turkey you just won't eat it not ground up?

And in a bun with cheese and all the burger fixings. Only way I can get past the "awareness", (lol).

Do fish have less awareness than turkeys? I wonder.

Did you know that all of a fishes nerve bundles end in their mouth? I used to fish till I found that out. No more hook torture.

Why do you continue to eat them? There are other choices?

I once had a chicken that made friends with our German shepherd, instead of roosting with the chickens in the trees, she slept on the dog by his hind leg. They went everywhere together and the dog protected her. Each one of these animals have a separate and very distinct personality.

reply to post by CryHavoc

It's not going to stop me from eating a hamburger.

Why will not people call it what it is then? Ground up-chopped up cows. Juice=body fluids and blood.