I have been reading a little on consciousness, and I think an interesting topic is the controversy over whether and to what degree animals have consciousness. If you own a pet, then certainly there have been things that your pet may do that makes you go "oh my god, look at how clever he is". I know that when I was cat-sitting for my friends, their cat would see me putting on my coat and then would create obstacles for me to leave. I thought "oh my god, look at how clever he is", because this requires him to have some understanding of past experience (to recognize me about to leave (i.e. putting on coat)), and apply an emotion to that (i.e. loneliness), and then react in a way to assuage that emotion (i.e. try to block me from leaving). That's impressive even compared to us fancy humans, I think.
So we know that there are many levels of consciousness, and the term is a bit vague to begin with. There are aspects of (1) simple consciousness: we experience "awake" and "sleep" different, and also we are able to make simple observations about the environment, and to things to change the environment. Then there is an (2) experience of consciousness--i.e. we "experience" pain, etc. its an extension of "observation" in that it affects our consciousness--more than us just knowing if it is there or not (i believe this is called phenomenal consciousness or sentience). Then there is (3) self-consciousness, which is the ability to have "thoughts about thoughts".
So I think its agreed on that cats, for example, have simple consciousness, but its up for debate if they phenomenal consciousness (and to what degree) or if they have self-consciousness. They at least appear to have a notion of pain, but its not clear if that is just reactionary or if that is something that affects their conscious experience. And I seem to recall that cats and dogs are easily confused by mirrors--they don't understand that it is them. They aren't able to quickly comprehend what the mirror is doing. I wonder if they are not able to understand, or if it is "cultural"--i.e. mother cats don't show their children how to use mirrors.
Why is any of this interesting? If cats and humans both experience the world via consciousness, and we agree that humans have a more advanced conscious experience than cats-- then we can see that we are more intelligent than cats (thats at least one aspect of intelligence). However, this is only accounting for aspects of consciousness that we humans have. We can't evaluate a cat on aspects of consciousness that we ourselves are not aware. If a cat does not have any self-consciousness or meta-cognition, its intelligence is limited--and it doesn't even know it; it doesn't miss what it doesn't know about. Maybe there are more advanced aspects to consciousness that humans do not have. Maybe more intelligent creatures will look at us and try to guess about our "limited" experience of the world. Or are we somehow unique in that we have 'hit the wall' of evolution (with regards to cognition at least). I would like to think no-- I would like to think that the "blip" of 1 million years of human evolution (compared to the >14billion years of the universes life) is not the end all be all of growth. Maybe out there in one of the 50 billion galaxies with 50 billion stars...some other planet has a "human" population that has been evolving for 10 million years, and they have an entirely different experience than us (almost certainly)... what will they think if they discover us?
I imagine they will conclude that we spend too much time buying cute shoes, worrying about our hair, sculpting our bodies in gyms, drooling over cute guys, and arguing over the thousands of gods that we have created throughout history.
Now I am off to pick up some shoes, get a haircut, go to the gym, and drool over some hot guys! :-D
Much Love,
Steve
Happy Thanksgiving!
1 year ago
8 comments:
Hmm... That's really interesting. I'm not going to make a decent comment though because i fear it may be out of my depth. lol
Maybe cats are smarter than we think. I know mine guilt me into feeding them. :)
NO- I want to know everyones thoughts-- I just use fancy words :-) I think all are entitled to their opinion... I enjoy talking (guessing) about things regardless of if I don't know what I'm talking about :-)
Hmm... Im curious how your cats do that? Do they drag pictures of starving african children to your feet or bring the water bowl to your face? What it would be like to be a cat....probably frustrating!
Steve
I think cats are more intelligent than we give them credit for. But what I think is more important than intelligence is emotion, and I know for a fact that cats have emotions. My cat loves me lol. I know you could just say its some biological thing or that Im fooling myself into thinking it, but I'm sure of it.
It's hard to imagine what the level of consciousness beyond ours would be. Maybe if we think of God, and his omniscience, it could give a clue. But between our condition of thinking about our thoughts and is, I don't know what else there might be. Maybe we'll have it in heaven.
As for animals loving us, I agree with Kyle T. I'm convinced that our cats can love us, and obviously dogs love people too. There must also be a form of love between the animals that bond for life.
@kyle
I would definitely agree that animals have emotion. Emotions seem like they 'come before' consciousness. I.e. we get 'scared' all the time, but when we use our intelligence, we can reason more accurately whether or not we should feel scared. This is why horror films still work!
@natur
absolutely- it is probably by definition impossible for us to know anything about what we cannot comprehend. None of us can really know...especially without those aliens trying to describe it to us :-) But I imagine that would go as badly as me trying to explain my experience to my pets.
As far as god, heaven, and omniscience-- I will defer to our countless previous conversations. Although these are all interesting things I will have to blog about one day...
ugh...monday and school starts this week :-(
Steve
From my experiences with my cats, I think cats are a lot more intelligent than many people give them credit for. They use their 'meows' to get my attention and then use some other form of communication to indicate what they want me to do for them, like feed them, or play with them. Of my three cats, not one behaves in the same manner. They have unique personalities, and have moods also. Sometimes, they are very affectionate, and want to be social. Other times, they will go off and hide for a little alone time. And sometimes, i even think they are feeling either happy or sad about something. Maybe it's just me as a human ascribing human attributes to a cat, but i don't think so. And as several others have said, I really do believe my cats love me.
As for us humans, that is something else altogether. I have read a couple of books on physics (particle physics and quantum theory) and how it relates to eastern philosophy. The similarities are sometimes very disturbing. That something as purely scientific as physics would so closely resemble something as meta-physical as eastern philosophy is mind boggling. For example, our very observation of an experiment can alter the outcome of the experiment. And as such, our perception of reality can alter reality. And for that matter, what we define as real might not be so real after all. What we view as reality might merely be a construct of our consciousness. Sounds crazy, right? But given enough time to evolve, we humans might just be able to experience a higher level of consciousness, and a oneness with and understanding of the universe that we are unable to even conceive of at this point in time.
KP
Yes, you are referring to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle and quantum superpositions. I am curious about the books you are referring. There are surely some 'neat things' about quantum mechanics that seem strange enough to be human, but there is plenty that is unique as well (quantum entanglement). Sure- its easy to take something like superpositions collapsing the wave function or Feynmans Sum over Histories and ascribe them to ambiguous human philosophies, but it seems like a stretch :-) Have you seen 'What the Bleep do we know?' This is a perfect example of 'exotic' interpretations of quantum mechanics, and just like everything else- Im not sure what we gain by lots of unjustified speculation.
However in all cases, the point is the same and you are right-- 'reality' is something that we only guess at--it may be completely different from how we expect it to be. For example, M-Theory requires there to be 11 spacetime dimensions...but we only experience 3. This is mind-blowing to me.
So what have we learned from all of this? Cats are much smarter than I imagine! I should keep an eye on them because they may band together and revolt over us human rulers :-)
Steve
One of the books is "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukav. It was originally published in the late 70's, so it's kind of old (my copy is a 2001 reprint). But many of the ideas are still relevant. The title of the other book escapes me right now...I borrowed it from a co-worker. If I think of it, I'll let you know.
KP
Post a Comment