Proof of Animal Consciousness Thread

Story in CBC about a tiger befriending a goat in a Russian zoo with footage of them

Please post gifs, videos, stories, etc

A stray cat befriended me, it's curious that it does the exact same thing as the tiger in that video, it will roll on its back from one side to the other while moving the paws. I have no idea what that's supposed to do.

This forum is proof.

Surely you only need to deduce that, since humans are conscious* and intelligent*, then other animals must also be, at least to some extent? That conclusion should be obvious to anyone except creationists and Rene Descartes

*whatever those mean

PS awww cute

  On 11/28/2015 at 12:57 AM, vasio said:

A stray cat befriended me, it's curious that it does the exact same thing as the tiger in that video, it will roll on its back from one side to the other while moving the paws. I have no idea what that's supposed to do.

rolling with your belly exposed illustrates that you are not a threat because you are exposing a weak point. In predators it means that they want to play or hang out with someone new. There are more specific signs with different animals, like dogs, bow.

And yes, this hangover in biology from when we were religious, that the action of every animal is solely down to fulfilling some biological function that will further it's species is rather irritating. That BBC presenter Chris Packham is a rather trying adherent to this outmoded concept "no you see, those birds aren't playing, they are incapable of play, there has to be some..." blah blah fucking fuck you cock in a codpiece *. Back in the days of the bible, every animal and plant was put on earth for us to exploit as a resource, and the idea that they might be humons light and have their own emotions and so forth was considered blaspheme. The fact that this one dimensional reading of the animal kingdom has remained with us, illustrates just how bound by orthodoxy the human mind really is.

* apart from this indiscretion he seems ok

Crows wait until your back is turned before swooping in and claiming that french fry someone dropped on the ground.

They do this because they're ashamed to be seen eating food off of the ground.

Need I say more?

i like this comment from the amur tiger plus goat thing in the OP, "He only saves that goat for Christmas....nothing weird with that."

Also, i wonder what the goat will think when the tiger gets given a rabbit or perhaps another goat. Also the goat is perhaps staying close to the tiger, so that it knows where it is, and won't get attacked by surprise.

first you must acquire a taste for harsh noise

  On 11/28/2015 at 1:03 AM, delet... said:

 

  On 11/28/2015 at 12:57 AM, vasio said:

A stray cat befriended me, it's curious that it does the exact same thing as the tiger in that video, it will roll on its back from one side to the other while moving the paws. I have no idea what that's supposed to do.

 

this hangover in biology from when we were religious, that the action of every animal is solely down to fulfilling some biological function that will further it's species is rather irritating. That BBC presenter Chris Packham is a rather trying adherent to this outmoded concept "no you see, those birds aren't playing, they are incapable of play, there has to be some..." blah blah fucking fuck you cock in a codpiece *

 

your most enlightening post yet ;)

elephants & dolphins both recognize themselves in mirrors, no-one's really deciphered whale songs (although i thought Derrick May have cracked these for a while with all the humpback samples in his late 80's/early 90's sets,,,,,,,,,but alas)

what did Coil sing about the eyes of animals?

i think Attenborough could maybe corroborate part of the elephant/dolphin analogy anyway

1) animals being awesome isn't proof that they're conscious. (P-zombies and all that jazz)

2) http://io9.com/5937356/prominent-scientists-sign-declaration-that-animals-have-conscious-awareness-just-like-us

3) determing whether a being (other than yourself) is conscious *might* be impossible (again, see the "P-zombie" literature for the state of the debate)...it may well be that the best we can do is amass 'circumstantial evidence* (e.g. find evidence of factors that correlate to consciousness in humans): the simple fact is, you can't directly observe someone else's consciousness

4) there is a recent theory being kicked around called the Information Integration Theory (IIT) that purports to measure consciousness...but again, not directly

  On 11/28/2015 at 12:57 AM, psn said:

This forum is proof.

Came in here to post this.

surely self recognition is a sign of self awareness?

i'm no biologist but have you ever seen an elephant confronted with a mirror for the 1st time?

they do all the things humans would do (without thumbs of course and shaving foam)

  On 11/28/2015 at 2:34 AM, cwmbrancity said:

surely self recognition is a sign of self awareness?

 

i'm no biologist but have you ever seen an elephant confronted with a mirror for the 1st time?

 

they do all the things humans would do (without thumbs of course and shaving foam)

This is the point of the P-zombie debate:

You can design robots to 'recognize' their own reflection...having certain pattern recognition capabilities doesn't necessarily mean you're conscious

(p.s. I take it as a probabilistic likelihood that cats, dogs, elephants, dolphins, etc are conscious...the problem for me comes when talking about "proof")

It seems fairly obvious to me that most mammals at least are conscious to some degree or another, based on some necessary assumptions of course. We have to make similar assumptions in order to accept that other people are conscious as well though, so it seems like a reasonable approach to take.

It's even conceivable that an ant colony might be conscious, in some manner at least. Not an individual ant, but the entire colony. Same with bees and other social insects. Even networks of plants seem to have primitive information processing abilities that aren't well understood. If consciousness merely arrises as a by-product of the information processing capacity of the brain (and there's not many better theories around), then there's no good reason to think it can't arise from the information processing capacity of other biological systems either (though there may well be some limit with regards to required levels of complexity that could rule these types of things out).

We have close to zero idea how the subjective experience of consciousness comes about, and what it is exactly, so it's easy to speculate without having to completely rule this kind of stuff out.

The trippiest thought experiment I've ever encountered was the one about getting all the people in the world and having each person perform the duties of a neuron (or group of neurons, or higher-level 'module') to whatever degree of detail is required to produce consciousness.

(For reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie )

The problem with the p-zombie argument (i.e. that you could have two physically identical people, one conscious and one not) is that if consciousness is an emergent property of (say) a sufficient level of computational complexity (or some other 'sufficient complexity') then you *couldn't* have two identical people where one is conscious and one isn't: the 'non-conscious person' would also be conscious by virtue of having identical 'sufficient complexity' as the 'conscious person.'

if we make a matrix and make idm with our minds, i bet cats would make some great stuff

I love cats, I have two of them. The small household sized kind. One of them has a personality like a sensitive human and I have to be careful not to hurt his feelings... the other has a personality of a reptilian shape shifter. I love them dearly and surprisingly they get along great together.

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

  On 11/28/2015 at 2:53 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 11/28/2015 at 2:34 AM, cwmbrancity said:

surely self recognition is a sign of self awareness?

 

i'm no biologist but have you ever seen an elephant confronted with a mirror for the 1st time?

 

they do all the things humans would do (without thumbs of course and shaving foam)

This is the point of the P-zombie debate:

 

You can design robots to 'recognize' their own reflection...having certain pattern recognition capabilities doesn't necessarily mean you're conscious

 

(p.s. I take it as a probabilistic likelihood that cats, dogs, elephants, dolphins, etc are conscious...the problem for me comes when talking about "proof")

 

Except animals are not robots and have evolved through the same natural processes as humans.

  On 11/28/2015 at 3:22 AM, LimpyLoo said:

The trippiest thought experiment I've ever encountered was the one about getting all the people in the world and having each person perform the duties of a neuron (or group of neurons, or higher-level 'module') to whatever degree of detail is required to produce consciousness.

How do you know this isn't already happening?

Dogs are smarter than humans. I you disagree you're wrong and a racist.

  On 11/28/2015 at 1:03 AM, delet... said:

 

  On 11/28/2015 at 12:57 AM, vasio said:

A stray cat befriended me, it's curious that it does the exact same thing as the tiger in that video, it will roll on its back from one side to the other while moving the paws. I have no idea what that's supposed to do.

 

rolling with your belly exposed illustrates that you are not a threat because you are exposing a weak point. In predators it means that they want to play or hang out with someone new. There are more specific signs with different animals, like dogs, bow.

 

And yes, this hangover in biology from when we were religious, that the action of every animal is solely down to fulfilling some biological function that will further it's species is rather irritating. That BBC presenter Chris Packham is a rather trying adherent to this outmoded concept "no you see, those birds aren't playing, they are incapable of play, there has to be some..." blah blah fucking fuck you cock in a codpiece *. Back in the days of the bible, every animal and plant was put on earth for us to exploit as a resource, and the idea that they might be humons light and have their own emotions and so forth was considered blaspheme. The fact that this one dimensional reading of the animal kingdom has remained with us, illustrates just how bound by orthodoxy the human mind really is.

 

* apart from this indiscretion he seems ok

 

Turns out they do it because they want to massage their torso. They do this when they are leaving or alone not when you are petting them.

not that I know a lot about this, but seems like consciousness is often seen in a binary fashion, either you have it or you don't.

sorry if this sounds like wank:

but even in humans, throughout the day, your level of consciousness varies wildly, and also probably quite a bit between humans.

when asleep, when obsessively videogame, drunk, stoned, loving, working, meditating, all different levels of consciousness.

and we can be unconscious.

maybe rocks are conscious but in a really slow way,

personal conclusion: everything is conscious to a degree.