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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:17
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I think someone should come up with the opposite side of veggie patties and the like. By this, I mean instead of, say, broccoli, you get a chunk of meat that looks like broccoli. Or an all meat salad.
Meat with a side of meat. Mmmmmm.....
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Elok
Meh. If they do have a consciousness, it's probably rather different from mine. And such contradictions taught me long ago to value my species for its kinship to me, not for any projected ideas of theoretical cognition. A tree probably "feels" every stroke of the lumberjack's axe. Something happens to tell it, biochemically, that it is being damaged. It's a more agonizing way to die than anything used on human criminals in the civilized world. We still do it though, because it's just a tree. |
True, but there are physical differences in how a tree "feels" things than animals. Trees don't have nerves, nor do they have centralized brains. I think that's so far removed as to be a non-issue.
But I dislike the hardline "we're self-aware, animals are not!" attitude, because it doesn't seem to be very realistic. First, we are animals, so such a distinction is arbitrary. Second, it seems much more reasonable, based on observation, to assume there is a gradual scale of consciousness among species. We lie at the most developed end of that scale, obviously. But it isn't all or nothing. Certainly, experiments working with primates have revealed a remarkable capacity for behavior that has traditionally been reserved for us self-aware sentients.
quote:
Trying to project ideas of "how it feels" will inevitably give you the heebie-jeebies if you think about it long and hard enough, it's just easier for some animals which are more readily anthropomorphized. That kind of vegetarianism strikes me as off-balance and overly sentimental, comparable to deciding which endangered species to save based on which one is most easily trained to do cute tricks. I reject all platforms of rights based on ability. |
I'm not a (mostly) vegetarian for moral reasons, only health and preference reasons. But if there is a gradual scale of consciousness (which I believe to be the case), then there is certainly, IMO, a good rationale to differentiate animals in this regard. Society does so all the time, as we are very concerned that dogs, cats, horses, primates and other such animals are treated well, but give slightly less regard to bovine and ovine creatures, and less so to rodents, and so forth. So the precedent of differentiation is there. The reasoning behind it, however seems to be more "it's CUTE!" rather than "it's SELF-AWARE!"
quote:
Imagine all the millions of bacteria you kill when you microwave a burrito. If you heat a microbe, does it not shrivel? If you ***** it, does it not bleed cytoplasm? If you wrong it, does it not mutate to a resistant form and revenge?  Suppose the burrito contains a rare and unique form of bacterium--you might be committing genocide! |
Addressed above. Bacterium don't have nerves, nor brains. Consciousness does at the mimimum require a brain.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:17
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Eh, if we loved human beings for their intelligence, Stephen Hawking would be the most popular man on earth, followed by Marilyn from Parade magazine. But we don't and they ain't. Chimpanzees, aside from rough "intellectual" ability, are not especially human in character at all; from what I've read, they're nasty, vicious animals. Even more than people are, I mean. The societies they form operate on a level not far above that of a wolfpack. It's all built on threat and dominance, even in bonobos where the threat is sublimated into displays of kinky sex.
They have the ability to form signs and understand their linguistic equivalence, but they do not "speak" in the same way people do, only repeat symbols they have learned in order to get what they want. They have little imagination or creativity, in which we're miles ahead of them. They "use tools" in the form of twig-fishing, but they've apparently been doing it the exact same way for most of five million years or so, without innovation. They probably developed the method by pure trial and error long ago and have passed it along, unchanged except by accident, ever since.
Early hominids were much the same, progressing veeeery slowly. Oldowan tools-rough cobbles-lasted a good while, and even Homo erectus, one of our most recent ancestors, kept using the same model of Acheullean hand-ax for over a million frigging years. In a thousandth of that time span, humanity went from the iron age to space flight. It takes more than a raw scale of intelligence to be human.
Or, to put it this way, your common raven has a remarkable level of reasoning ability. And I mean actual reasoning. I don't think it's quite proven that they actually envision the problem, think of possible solutions, decide on one and carry it out, but it's undeniable that they're pretty close to chimps or dolphins in terms of intellect. They're also vicious, brutal animals who live by cheating and extortion much of the time. And due to their immense cunning, they're just about everywhere in the world, and frequently pests to boot. Crows are only a little less intelligent. Does a corvid deserve more consideration, rights-wise, than a cow or a sheep? What about border collies, which are very smart (even if they are more than a little prone to neurosis)? Should an animal's worth be determined more by its raw cognitive ability than any other condition?
WRT Ozzy's question, minors do have equal rights; however, as by legal consensus they are not qualified to make decisions for themselves, that right reverts to guardians. Straightforward enough. Whether or not a child does have the power of informed consent by a certain age is open for debate, but the question of equality of rights is consistently answered in any case.
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Yes, I read your post, you seemed to have missed the point of mine--that your default assumption is groundless. By your logic, it would be just as reasonable to assume other humans aren't self-aware, that they're just automatons reacting to stimuli. Because the only "proof" we have of self-awareness is our own consciousness. |
Eh, that's what I said. And we are just machines reacting to stimuli. I happen to *know* that I am a self-aware machine, because I'm aware of it (duh). I happen to think that this self-awareness is an emergent property of matter, rather than some dualist thing, and therefore it results from the manner in which my brain operates. This suggests that something that operates in practically the same way should also be self-aware. Moreover, I have very strong evidence of other humans being self-aware in that I'm not the first person to come up with the idea - and I find it highly unlikely that an intelligent but non-self-aware machine would come up with the concept of self-awareness. (By this reasoning, any being that claimed it was self-aware, I would probably believe, unless it was clearly just parroting words.) I have no corresponding evidence for animals, and their brains aren't as similar to mine as other humans' brains are, therefore I don't believe that they are self-aware.
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To segregate humans out as the only assumed self-aware beings is silly, since we have *no* way of knowing whether anything else is self-aware or not. |
And so we should assume that, unless something suggests otherwise, other things are not self-aware. Without evidence, no belief.
quote:
But, the fact that we do have self-awareness is, in and of itself, reason to believe that other species possess it, to carying degrees. As Ernst Mayr said, human consciousness is an evolutionary product that arose from animal consciousness. |
Consciousness is binary. You are either self-aware or you are not.
quote:
I find it puzzling you are an atheist who believes in evolution, yet seem to think there is some magical "on" switch for consciousness that only humans have and other species don't. That doesn't make much biological sense. |
Actually, it requires a leap of faith to assign consciousness to animals, since there really isn't much to suggest that they have it. Such things as demonstrating fear, emotion, etc. - even recognition of itself in a mirror - are not indicative of self-awareness, because a robot that exhibits these reactions to stimuli but is clearly NOT self-aware is easily conceivable.
(In fact, my theory is that it may have to do with the development of empathy to the point where humans can recognize arbitrarily large and arbitrarily organized groups as 'self', a trait that no other animal seems to exhibit.)
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03-03-2005 22:38
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