You've got the hang of it now: Please post your questions and 20-minute responses to this week's reading under the comments section here. This might also be a good venue to make public some of the anecdotal outside sources that come up in discussion, too.
Friday, February 13, 2009
What is is like to see with your ears? Animal Consciosness
You've got the hang of it now: Please post your questions and 20-minute responses to this week's reading under the comments section here. This might also be a good venue to make public some of the anecdotal outside sources that come up in discussion, too.
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Here's a good link if you want to hear and see the vervet alarm calls:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/media/vervetcalls.html
Chalmers’ piece describes, rather effectively, a large chasm between subjective and objective realities that cannot, with our current levels in technology, be bridged with a detailed explanation of the physiological inputs and outputs that are argued to have caused them.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting, it appears as though Chalmers is arguing that the subjective experience is not one that can be remedied with a behaviorist, or physicalist viewpoint. He seems to argue that there is something inherently personal to experience, and that a physical constitution alone cannot account for it.
The primary problem with tackling Chalmers’ argument is that it cannot effectively be proved or disproved. That is, technology, nor the human brain, can guarantee an objective fact that clearly demonstrates that human experience does not allow a human to know ‘what it is like to be a bat’. One of the main causes of this is that we cannot, without a doubt, identify the physical processes that constitute human experience. It can be said that, “Yes we can. Regions of the brain can be attributed to logic skills, others to anger, still others to memory”. This is true, to an extent, but not entirely, as I will explain in a moment. Additionally, these regions of the brain allow only an explanation of physical inputs and outputs, that is, they can say what parts of your brain allow you to activate your diaphram which enable you to modulate air into sounds which compose words, or which parts of your brain control your hearing system which can translate sounds into electrical activity within the brain that is then somehow, percieved within the brain as a coherent picture. But, none of these regions can determine why we are conscious of the picture that we are perceiving, or how we are able to view, and philosophize about, the coherent image that we are seeing.
Another reason I am skeptical of the proposed reductionist model is that it fails to tackle the multifarious nature of the mind(I know, I seem to create a single conglomerate out of reductionism, physicalism, determinism, and behaviorism. I understand these are not the same principles, but they appear to drive toward the same goal: Materialistic ideologies concerning the human experience; Hence: why I seem to merge them together.) Itzhak Bentov, a physicist who’s name could easily be described by the word ‘pseudoscience’, in a book called “Stalking the Wild Pendulum”, cites an effective scientist who could locate the regions of the brain that accounted for specific memories. But much more interesting, was the scientist who utterly destroyed this “fact”. The counter-science that disproved the former’s theory included activating regions of the brain that very clearly showed no correlation whatsoever between specific regions and specific memories, even more interesting was when this scientist showed that when subjects had partial-brain removal surgeries that supposedly got rid of specific memories entirely, the scientist was still able to activate these 'lost' memories using electrical current in apparently random locations on the brain. ( I lost this book on an airplane this summer, so if you choose not to believe my very possibly erroneous memory, I entirely understand – I will repurchase this book before the term is over as it is a real gem.)
But there is still a very obtrusive issue at hand: That is, we still cannot prove, nor disprove that subjective experience is not subject to science. I know this and I have no problem with this. I am not using this fact as leverage, but I am arguing against those who do. It has been said that saying, “you can’t say that God doesn’t exist since you can’t prove it” is erroneous, it depends on proving a negative. I agree with this, but also, saying he doesn’t exist because you can’t prove he does depends on the strength of our technology, and the presumption that all things are subject to the physical realm. This seems to be what we are contending, Chalmers is implicitly arguing, whether he knows it or not, that not all things, dimensions, realities, what-have-you, are subject to physicalist models.
The fact that you cannot disprove Chalmers’ claim is very evident in Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”. Dennett’s argument against Chalmers begins, most clearly, with some simple examples on the bottom of page 442: The ‘A:’, ‘B:’ hypotheticals. These are very misleading arguments – they all, without question, tackle purely physical traits that animals have and discuss nothing in relation to the experiential nature whatsoever (Using inanimate objects for exeplification, color-blindness in deers, and the keenness of bat sonar systems). Moreover, Dennett lost brownie points in the third hypothetical by making the first speaker sound like an ass, rhetorical style will not help Dennett in the face of intelligent humans.
But most importantly, I would like to point one thing out to Dennett. If the physicalist model is correct: If all things are subject to physical laws (which greatly supports deterministic principles), then our experience depends, 100% without question, on our physical constitution. That alone, if granted, makes it entirely impossible for humans to imagine what it is like to be a bat unless: a) We have all the systems that a bat has (buried within our physical constitution), and b) We have an ability to ‘silence’ our superfluous physical systems relative to a bat. We have no sonar…
So I have a question specifically for Dennett: Does he know exactly what it is that he is arguing for? Against? Do I know what he is arguing for?
There is a huge issue with the whole deterministic, physicalist model of reality: They do not create a coherent story. We can suppose evolution occurred (or at least adaptation), but we cannot necessarily prove that we all converged with a single parent species a long time ago (a very interesting video darwinists may want to take a look at is on youtube: “Richard Dawkins Stumped by Creationists’ question”). But obviously, if everything is subject to physical laws and darwinism, look at the beginning of creation. Where was the causation there? Something from nothing? This doesn’t make sense, let’s be honest here. Something had to start the cycle, something presumably that did not have a physical constitution in the way that we understand physical constitutions. I’m afraid that our brains are not powerful enough to grasp the underlying concepts at work here, so ascribing to an old man in the sky the creation of the universe I believe is a little unrefined for the actual nature of the beast.
But at the very least, I hope that we can realize that engaging in these topics (human vs. animal consciousness, evolutionary consciousness, physicalism) cannot be fruitful unless we keep an open mind and are willing to suspend our presumptions.
Christ, that was longer than I expected.
ReplyDeleteJack
ReplyDeleteNot quite finished with my 20 minute write and will post soon. Nice post John, and I agree with you that the entire article can be boiled down to 'not all things are physicalist models'. My daughter and I were thinking Nagel's focus on 'what it is like to 'be'' reminded us of another Philosophical Bee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iSssOpLTPM
Here is the link again to the Monty Python's 'Bruce's Philosophers Song' that was posted the first week as well:
Bruce's Philosophers Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQycQ8DABvc
Jack
ReplyDeleteDoes Dennett not believe the Dog Whisperer either?
I read this week’s assignments with the anticipation of who would spring Descartes’ animal consciousness theory first. Good selections for the analogies that have been provided by many in class to represent both sides of the fence. Dennett had some fun at the expense of Nagel’s Bat essay in both of his, but was at least consistent, so that is a good place to start.
I personally enjoyed Nagel’s essay, not necessarily for the position he took, but for the fact that he was willing to take it, and he used arguments that tied in with so much of our other reading. Nagel jumped right into the argument in the 2nd paragraph where he took sides with Marks and his similar concerns of trying to reduce an argument by comparing unlike examples. Nagel also seems to be taking a shot at Descartes argument right away, for he labels anyone willing to deny a conscious experience of mammals other than man an ‘extremist’ a little over ½ way through the first page. Nagel then proceeds to build a rather lengthy case to make a simple point – that is simply ‘how can we observe something from a different point of view’ without knowing what it is to ‘be’ that something. This again seems pro-Marks (don’t mistake the part for the whole) and anti-Descartes. He tries to quantify his argument in the remaining pages with a ‘mental states are physical states’ effort – perhaps in a further effort to discredit Descartes argument.
In both of Dennett’s essays, he works hard to discredit Nagel. Again, I may not agree with Nagel, however I disagree with Dennett’s selections of arguments to discredit Nagel. For example, page 442 of the 2nd essay – middle of the page – Dennett implies that our thought processes must be the same to understand a bat. This seems like a Wright argument and something that Nagel did not mention in his essay, in fact Nagel argued that our consciousnesses could be quite different but both still exist. Dennett also went in to great detail about the physiological workings of a bat in an effort to extrapolate its consciousness – again a very Wright-like position. As Nagel came from Marks’ camp, hoping to not mistake the part for the whole, the application of Dennett’s argument to Nagel’s essay here is unfair. While Dennett mentions later in his analogy to a languageless creature that everything is adjusted ‘downhill’, so too should his arguments be adjusted downhill from here, such as comparing a bat’s mind to it’s digestive system (purely an ‘organ driven’ Descartes argument) & that consciousness is all nothing in the first essay and wearing out the third person perspective analogies in the second.
All in all, while I may not agree in full with Nagel, I found his presentation much more acceptable. I didn’t find Dennett’s arguments that compelling until the very bottom of page 449, where I was left wondering if I am witnessing my dog suffering every time she knows I am going for a hike and she can’t go. She then displays disappointment and waits by the door for my return. Is this conscious suffering?
Taylor
ReplyDeleteSince reading about the relationship between language and thought, and constantly recalling the example of beavers building their damns to the sound of running water, it has been very hard to look at animal behavior and deduce that there is any thought at all going on. In thinking over examples of animal behavior that may reflect consciousness or thought in general, it is far too easy to reason that it doesn't exist. I have tried to approach this question of consciousness by thinking about what we consider the most advanced and intelligent animals and see if their behavior is reflective of such processes.
Look at such a study done on dolphins for example. In this study and subsequent similar studies, a dot was drawn on the subject dolphin somewhere where it couldn't see. The dolphin then would proceed to the other side of the tank to use a mirror to locate the dot on itself. This type of test has been used to defend animal recognition and self awareness. These kind of findings blow my mind. These are animals that are presumed to be extremely intelligent, and we are excited that they can find a dot on themselves? I would be more impressed if the dolphin tried to rub the marks off, or started wearing makeup. The truth is there is no justified basis for presuming their intelligence, let alone consciousness.
Or, how about video of killer whales "playing catch with seals" and eventually releasing their prey? This is all we have on this highly advanced animal? I've seen my cat participate in similar activities with bugs and mice. Toying with them and eventually becoming un-interested and releasing them. The fact is it is very possible, and highly likely that animals are not conscious. That they are merely designed for their specific purpose and function and have all the necessary instincts and faculties to carry out their purpose.
When questioning consciousness in animals I tried to approach the problem with the presumption that animals might be conscious and what that would mean. That would mean an awareness of themselves and their surrounding environment at the very least. If that were the case wouldn't we see more animals attempting to break out of their established roles. The bird that decides, "I want to sleep in tomorrow". The dog that decides, "I want to go live with the family the next block down." This doesn't happen.
I don't argue that this is reason alone to determine that animals are unconscious creatures, but it is interesting to think about.
-dolphin example: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/05/0502_dolphinvanity.html
Dennett writes that “The very idea of there being a dividing line between those creatures ‘it is like something to be’ and those that are mere ‘automata’ begins to look like an artifact of our traditional presumptions." How does Dennett define consciousness?
ReplyDeleteIn some ways, it seems as though Dennett is discussing a form of consciousness slightly different than how I was interpreting it previously. Dennett writes that consciousness is not an all-or-nothing sort of thing, that there are, in some sense, varying degrees, consciousness is something we sometimes display and sometimes do not display. This seems like an answer to a different question than ‘do animals display conscious behaviors?’. The question is not if animals continuously or regularly act consciously. The central question, so far as I can tell, is if they have consciousness ever. Dennett writes that even our consciousness is not an ‘on-or-off phenomenon’ but this seems like a different discussion. Without question, several of my behaviors are unconscious or instinctive. This does not mean that I never act consciously. It makes sense to discuss individual consciousness along a scale. Some of my behaviors are conscious, some are not. If we imagine this scale of frequency of consciousness, at one end a state of continuous consciousness and at the other one no consciousness at all, some individuals might act consciously more frequently than others. But that is not the question I am asking. If an animal can act consciously once, that is enough affirmation of animal consciousness. I do not mean to suggest that one animal showing consciousness would prove the consciousness of all animals but that a single act of consciousness is enough evidence that that particular animal has the capacity for consciousness. In this understanding of consciousness, there is no room for a scale or varying levels of being a conscious being or not being one. An animal would not then be semi-conscious but perhaps sometimes conscious, nonetheless that animal would be a conscious animal. I am most certainly missing important parts of Dennett’s arguments so I haven’t really provided any answers to my question but how does Dennett’s definition of consciousness allow for varying levels of consciousness?
-Katie
The question is whether or not do animals have a consciousness. I tend to believe that at some level that have a conscious, but that level is a most very basic. I would like to base this on the observations of my cat. I will look to the actions of my cat and try to extrapolate some understanding of what is going on in his head.
ReplyDeleteTo start, when I get home from school I see that he is waiting for me. His first reaction to me approaching the door is to get right under foot. He meows loudly and is greedy for my attention. One could argue that my cat loves me and that he notices my absence. I would not disagree with anyone on the seeming fact that my cat notices my long absences and is in some way conscious of this fact. This issue of does he loves me in any conscious level, I would have to pause and say no. My cat does not love me in the sense that humans understand and apply the word and its meaning.
I would also like to point out that my cat shows no sign of remorse when he kills a mouse or a bird, but rather a sense of enjoyment I suppose one could say of his actions. He also shows little consideration of me when he wants to go in and out at all hours of the night. I happen to think that he is not conscious of these actions, and is rather working on some base instinct that even he is not even conscious of.
Colin K.
ReplyDeletePlease note that the following is a rant more than anything else.
In the last Dennett essay "Animal Consciousness: What Matters and Why" we get to see what I think is the most condescending and peer bashing thing I have ever read by a serious author. He starts out by saying that it's okay for people to balk at learning the truth about animals because it may be better to live ignorance. What is this about? He says that if he were to find out what his friends had done and thought and visa versa he would be unable to face them. I truly don't see what this has to do with the question of whether or not animals are conscious beings. I hope that someone can help me out with this. The next thing that he does is to dismiss and insult every one who ever thinks to disagree with Descartes and his methods as being idiots who never learned to appreciate decent evidence or otherwise believes anything that they happen to be told. You know, it seems to me to be worse to believe only what one person says than many different people. So Mr. Dennett, please leave all man-crushes that you may have in the bedroom and leave them out of your philosophy. Thanks. Anyway, a quick twenty minute Google search basically showed quite clearly that Descartes did in fact dissect animals while they were still alive and that he did blow off their cries of pain as irrelevant, noises produced as a mechanical response to the torture he inflicted upon them. Now, obviously the information could be wrong or heavily biased but I don't think that all of it would be. You know, if someone stabs me with a fork the scream that I emit will be automatic. And if someone dissects me without and anesthetic, well, let us just say that it will all be automatic. Loud, frantic, and automatic. And I won't be thinking "ow this is hurting me greatly and I want it to stop" no, I will be thinking something more along the lines of "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!" Very articulate. But that is just my own personal bias—back to Dennett. I have to say that I do agree with Dennett when he refers to Elizabeth Marshal Thomas and her combining her observations with romantic declarations. I do think he was right about needing better scientific process to covering the answers to all these questions also think that going through a through process that shows all sides equally and leaves out all the fanciful thoughts from the evidence. However, I just want to say that no matter how much he goes off one the one-sidedness of others his writing seems pretty on-sided to me. I also want mention his example of the elephant and the vultures where he decided that the birds did not share his "olfactory quality space." This seems odd to me. My mother loves the sent, taste and texture of licorice but to me it smells like my cat's litter box when it is full. So what does a birds desire to eat a carcass have to do with anything? He goes on to say that his assumption was a bit premature but then goes off on whether or not they actually like the smell of the rot. I wonder if Dennett would have such acute smell responses if he were unable to go home to the smell of roasting garlic and instead grew up eating what he could catch and eat raw. This is why his example seems irrelevant. How the hell are we supposed to know if the birds like the smell? Anyway for all the faults that Dennett is so thrilled to point out in others he doesn't do the best job at following his own advice on how to stay credible.
February 18, 2009
ReplyDeleteJohn S. Sonin
Eng. 418—Maier/Klein
It looks as though my initial reaction to Dennett was ‘on the mark’ when it comes to his perceptions about… life. How anyone can insist that everyone and everything organic interacts with everything else only with the aim of gain for itself is beyond me. His persistence with Cartesian perception won’t float if he, or anyone else, wants to understand another animal’s perception, cognition, anima, essence…. Machines made by man may make it easier to study the inter-relationship of component parts in a system, and that’s where the solution to our contradictory ideology exists, but if we can’t even know what another human is thinking—even its perceived “morality” (our perception of it) as a stanchion of behavior is insubstantial as a predictor (we all can choose what serves us better)—how can we expect to understand a different species?
The benefits of Biological evolution help but only to the point of divergence. I remember C.S. Lewis once said, and I concurred then—and still do—though it was an inarticulate understanding, that “everything is becoming more like itself and unlike anything else.” And I believe that humans developed language as a way to articulate that conscious or our sense storybook, but we can’t expect to know another specie’s storybook based on our adaptation and theories of how that ability came into existence.
That language gave humanity, at least Western humanity, the qualia to perceive things optimistically or pessimistically (as a pessimistic perceiver, Dennett can be astringent in his diction ergo sarcastically entertaining), and language enabled us to connect with our opposing “me, egocentric, self-complimenting” renditions of reality, but the avenue to understanding the misunderstood is not through cognizing differences, instead echoing the similarities. Who knows? Maybe that’s where the mammalian divergence for bats is vectored?
No matter which week it is, I always come back to this question in class: If humans ever figure out or decide what makes us tick differently than animals, who will pat us on the back and tell us that we finally figured it out? The readings from these past two weeks include this idea of subjective and objective experience and the relation to the existence of consciousness. The importance of these arguments reflect most strongly to me on the Chomsky argument for the importance of determining the meaning and root of human language and communication. In searching for the source of consciousness we are only looking for the answer to this question: How do we define the acts of humans in this world and how do we define the acts of animals? If we decide that animals possess conscious existence, then what? We must decide if this consciousness is comparable to our own, if it is at a lower or less complex level of existence, and if we let it decide our actions. I read this Dennett quote online:
ReplyDelete[Others] note that my 'avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters' often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless — a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors.
– Daniel Dennett, The Message is: There is no Medium
A greater question that only some of these readings address is, if one is correct on their supposed beliefs or arguments in the question of consciousness, then what? Investigation into this topic should work towards and solution to our most accessible problems and develop from their- if an argument doesn’t create solutions, then it doesn’t advance the progress of the topic at hand.
A huge part of the philosophy of consciousness existence attempts to decloud the mysticism of behavioral theories of animals and people, but I agree with Dennett there is a whole new mysticism that is pervasive in the bare bones approach to consciousness where an argument is inferred from a set of interpretive statements. Further than being responsible to my supposed sense of correct and incorrect/ agree or disagree/ or understand or misunderstand, what I am missing is what makes this question of consciousness important? What makes our temporary existence more important or different than the temporary existence of animals? In proving that this argument is only important to humans (which we can’t prove, etc.) we only prove that it’s a temporal question anyway. Consciousness is a tool for problem solving, and when it comes down to it, we really only want to solve our own problems. Animals don’t want to solve our problems, we realize that we create many of their problems, a lot of the philosophy of consciousness just seems like a big guilt trip.
To what extent can feelings inform us about the nature of consciousness?
ReplyDeleteTo not extent. Dennett makes a very good point when he talks about the robot, Cog, and how his basic mannerisms tend to make people feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Yet we know the robot isn't conscious—it has a motion sensor that controls the eyes.
And yet the "proof" people often offer when they talk about their dogs or cats is entirely intangible. They'll say, "if you've ever had a pet you'd know" or "you can see it in his/her eyes" or, in the case of my dad, "she pissed on the floor because she's a spiteful bitch."
All silly arguments, of course. For millennia people have felt similar attachments to inanimate objects and fictional beings and have attributed the same qualities to them. Some still do. We call this "superstition." I'm not comparing a dog to a rock or Zeus, however, as a dog clearly exists and is clearly alive; but whether the dog is conscious or not is a matter that requires evidence, not simply feeling or wanting it to be true.
Back in 1966 a computer program called ELIZA was created with the goal of simulating human-human interaction. It was so effective that many people became emotionally attached to the program. Was it conscious? No, but it was able to simulate human interaction well enough to fool many people.
Dennett makes an argument that one can't judge the intent of an animal or human simply from its behavior, which makes it extremely difficult to say for certain whether animals are conscious or not. It makes it extremely difficult to say for certain whether other people are conscious, too (and some of them certainly don't seem as if they are), as for all I know you're all a bunch of robots or zombies. I would even go a step further and say it makes it impossible to know if I am even conscious, because for all I know all my feelings, thoughts, and actions are a product of chemical and electrical interactions in my brain that give me only an illusion of self-awareness. After all, the brain is pretty good at producing other illusions that we wholeheartedly believe are real in the moment—dreams. And while we do have access to our conscious thoughts and feelings, we are for the most part shut out from our subconscious mind. Who's to say that all conscious feelings aren't simply products of subconscious processes we have absolutely no control over?
Maybe the only difference between us and ELIZA is that we have a body and more pre-determined responses to draw from when faced with stimulus.
Are there objective and subjective phenomenological facts?
ReplyDeleteI’d like to address Nagel’s discussion of subjective and objective phenomenological facts. I doubt his characterization of the latter. Nagel claims that “the point of view in question is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather it is a type” (p. 222). But what are these types? Are there bat types and human types of points of view? Clearly, Nagel would resoundingly say “no.” He obviously thinks that human points of view and bat points of view are close enough to compare, and further argues that human points of view are often dissimilar to other human points of view: “The subjective character of the experience of a person deaf and blind from birth is not accessible to me, for example, nor presumable is mine to him” (p. 221). So, unable to rely on differences in subjective characters between different animals, Nagel posits the explanation “the more different from oneself the other experiencer is, the less success one can expect with this enterprise” (p. 222). The reason, I guess, that one human cannot understand another human’s point of view is because the two are two different – for instance, one is blind and deaf and one can see and hear. To me, this seems nice and easy and convenient, but I’m not convinced by the argument. I’ll posit here the case of Julian English, the protagonist from John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra. Basically, Julian inexplicably throws a drink in his boss’ face one night at a Christmas party, and allows his life to unravel from there. For good measure, he does things like commit adultery with a mob boss’ mistress. His seemingly perfect life is completely ruined in less than a week. The reason that I think this is an interesting case to bring up is that no one in the story understands Julian’s motives. That is to say, people who grew up with Julian –were of the same species, had shared experiences, were white upper-class males like Julian from the same town with shared experiences – could not understand Julian’s point of view (I don’t think that we can call them mistakes because of he repeatedly makes similar actions. If he could do it all over, I think he would do the same thing – to me indicating a point of view). And after reading the book documenting his actions, life before he ruined it, and experiences of the other pertinent characters, I’m not sure that I understand why he would act the way that he acted either. I bring up this example, because I think that it throws off Nagel’s idea of a proportional degree of understanding another’s point of view. There are blind and deaf people with points of view that I am far more apt to understand than I am Julian English’s. So, the ominous question becomes: to what extent are there objective phenomenological facts about animals? I have no idea… maybe I just got a paper topic.
I think that the problem is that we blur that line to be whatever we want it to be. If it helps my case to say that we can’t know anything about any other animal, it becomes easy to find a trait that we have and they don’t (i.e. language) and then conjure reasons why this single attribute separates them from us. While on the other hand, if it helps my case to say that there are objective phenomenological facts that we can know about other animals, it’s equally as easy to use a blanket statement like Nagel does and say ‘well, we can know things about the subjective experience of animals that are like us and not those that aren’t’.
I’ll do the manly thing that philosophers love and try to tear down someone else’s statement without offering an alternative. I think that it’s pretty clear that we can all empathize with each other, to some extent at least, so there must be objective phenomenological facts, which unfortunately means that I can’t go as far as to claim absolute privacy of experience to its possessor. But I can’t say, either, where to draw the line – what facts are important for deciding if we’re enough like something to understand their point of view; what it is (or isn’t) to be them? I don’t know. But, I don’t think that anyone else that we’ve read so far does either.
Nagel starts out with the relation between a “consciousness” and “what it is like to be something”. If an animal has a consciousness, and if a human could “listen in” on what is going on in the head of dog or a raccoon or a monkey, there would be something going on. It would not be a blank slate, but it is impossible for humans to imagine it.
ReplyDeleteDennett says, on the contrary, that we could know what it is like to be an animal, but that there seems to be no animal behavior that suggests that they have consciousness. This is because their environments have never created situations where consciousness was an advantage.
I am defining consciousness as knowing that you have a thought or desire or fear, which may be wrong, but that seems to be the simplest way to put it.
Is there any way to “act” without a consciousness? For example, could the dog on the beach decide to stop chasing the other dog and start chasing the Frisbee without knowing that it just chose to do that? It could be argued that humans do it all the time, but I think that what this actually is is the mind quickly “forgetting” that it just decided to do something to avoid over clogging the brain. So couldn’t animals just have a lower volume of memories and thus forget more? Could this be a way to describe which beings have consciousness?
This actually seems pretty silly, because then we would have to give trees consciousness.
What is it like to be a bat going to bed?
ReplyDeleteDaniel Dennett used the shared sensory experience of the smell of rotting flesh to his own consciousness in relation to a vulture's. I thought it would be interesting to make a similar philosophical comparison using not a shared sense but a universal experience: Going to Sleep.
It is hard for me to imagine an animal simply mechanically falling asleep. No doubt, there have been times when I've been ridiculously tired and have immediately fallen asleep after laying down, but 99% of the time, there is the purgatory of thought before sleep envelopes me. This is a huge part of my consciousness, utilizing reflection, preparation, contemplation, imagination, etc. It seems very unlikely to me that animals do not also experience this in-between state, though what runs through their mind is quite beyond me. Possibly a reflection of the day's activities? Warm thoughts of their offspring? Abstract mental visualizations of shapes and colors?
My conclusions are the same as Dennett's- We do not know and have yet to find a way to figure these things out. But due to my own conception of the consciousness of animals, it is impossible for me to imagine them as simply blank during these twilight moments, and therefor impossible for me to imagine them without a sort of consciousness; something it is like to be them.
-Tucker Campbell
In Dennett’s Animal Consciousness paper, he asks the question: are animals conscious? After the obligatory several pages of letting the reader know how much better and more precise of a philosopher he is than his colleagues, Dennett attempts to prove whether or not animals are conscious using objective reasoning. By the end of his article, I don’t think that he really comes to any solid conclusion, which is of no real surprise; how can you conclusively prove something like that? I think that his own words from the second page hit the problem pretty straight on “Certain questions, it is said, are quite beyond science at this point (and perhaps forever)”. So as long as there is no way to solidly say “yes animals can think for themselves” or “no, Descartes was right, they are robots” all we can really do is take an educated guess and call it a belief. I believe that most animals are conscious. If humans are conscious and humans are a species of animal, it must follow that other species out there must have similar abilities. I also don’t think that it is at all a black and white thing-there are probably some animals out there such as jellyfish or insects, that are a whole lot closer to being on full autopilot than others. Just like all the authors that Dennett shot down though, all I have to back up my argument is my own observations, feelings, and one basic connection from humans to animals.
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.dreamhost.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/ugly_dog2.jpg
Animal blog 5
ReplyDeleteI just recently had some idea about consciousness after reading Katies's and Jacks post. Jack, you asked, if the dogs suffering is 'conscious'. I then asked myself, 'don't you have to be conscious to suffer?
and then I really liked Katies idea of conscioussness as being something you can do, not just some ethereal possession.
At least one more question on my part. Under what circumstances does consciousness occur? I think we need to know what a consciousness is for, not just what makes it.
Imagine for a second what we would witness a consciousless, completely unaware living being doing. it still needs to eat and make shelter and preserve itself, but how? This 'animal' I think would instead be the most amazing machine possible; the acts required to keep an organism alive are vastly complex on many different levels; if a being is unaware of itself, then how could beavers have even developed a process by which they build dams? consciousness seems to be an ability to be aware of your surroundings and yourself. If something lacks this ability completely, like Descart would say about animals, then its complexities are completely outside of my comprehension. I know that I am mostly able to function because of an ability to think about something, in other words, to be aware of something.
So, I think I am working my way back to what Jack said about the dog. I think we can say with relative certainty that animals do indeed suffer, and there could be no such thing as an unconscious suffering. Suffering implies that you know things can be better and that requires you to be aware of yourself and others. but lets take a step back. Every one will agree that all living beings have sensory devices that let us experience sight, smell hearing, etc. Now, we also all have an inherent understanding of what is good for our survival. It doesn't take a lot of know how to know that eating a piece of fruit is good for our survival. We are aware of what we feel and need, but then the next step is action. As far as I can tell, sensory input cannot possibly explain action. It might warrant action, but it doesn't create action. So, I have a theory,(not too sure about it yet) that consciousness is a basic need of every living being.
Thanks for letting wax philosophical!
Jon Hays