Severinian Posted January 22, 2015 Report Share Posted January 22, 2015 Can animals such as dogs, cats and horses understand that other creatures are conscious? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devil's Advocate Posted January 22, 2015 Report Share Posted January 22, 2015 At a bare minimum they can be aware that other creatures are awake, well may be not possums... The term 'understand' moves the bar for 'conscious' even higher, and I doubt anyone here would say non-humans understand anything. Harrison Danneskjold 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harrison Danneskjold Posted January 26, 2015 Report Share Posted January 26, 2015 (edited) Can animals such as dogs, cats and horses understand that other creatures are conscious? Ditto DA. "Consciousness" can actually be used to refer to a number of different things, so the answer to your question depends on exactly which one you mean. Some animals (primarily mammals) certainly can grasp that other animals are perceptually aware, in the same sense that a person can be aware of their surroundings. However, I don't believe that any animal other than man is capable of knowing that something else is "conscious"- in the sense that you are conscious of this idea -because to know that would require a conscious knower. We can infer that none of your average animals are "conscious" (in the latter sense) from observations of their behavior. A cat, for example, cannot grasp that the light of a laser-pointer is not a tangible object (a fact which is nearly self-evident to every human being). This tells us something about what happens inside of the mind of a cat; they can never form the concept of "tangibility" (which strongly implies an inability to form any concept, whatsoever). Similar traits also apply to dogs, horses, pigs, cows and hamsters. There are some cases that could be considered borderline (such as elephants and apes) at the moment, but none that any of us usually have to deal with firsthand. So when we talk about "consciousness, in its uniquely human sense" we mean the sorts of mental activities that allow us to learn that you can't hold a beam of light. Edited January 26, 2015 by Harrison Danneskjold Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Severinian Posted February 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted February 1, 2015 Thanks for the answers. Perhaps qualia is a better term, experience of the world. The laser pointer argument is a good one, but that just goes for hunting, what about the social interaction, when cats and dogs are happy to see their owners? Do they simply think "giver of food and cuddles" or do they realize that we are experiencing the world just like they are? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dream_weaver Posted February 1, 2015 Report Share Posted February 1, 2015 This question reduces to: Do cats and dogs think, or do you just think that they think? Harrison Danneskjold 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harrison Danneskjold Posted February 3, 2015 Report Share Posted February 3, 2015 Thanks for the answers. Perhaps qualia is a better term, experience of the world. The laser pointer argument is a good one, but that just goes for hunting, what about the social interaction, when cats and dogs are happy to see their owners? Do they simply think "giver of food and cuddles" or do they realize that we are experiencing the world just like they are? No; they almost certainly can tell that we experience qualia. They know that we have first-person experiences, too; they just don't ask themselves what ours are like. Severinian 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devil's Advocate Posted February 3, 2015 Report Share Posted February 3, 2015 They can't realize what they don't understand, but they can fear it, or enjoy being around it. They can even be curious about it and remember what happens if they bite it. Dogs and cats are often compared to children, but any parent knows the difference between pets and their children. Dogs and cats share an emotional capacity with humans; that is what we see and identify affectionately as intelligence. We can work and play together, and they often laugh at our jokes, but they don't really understand (or realize) our sense of humor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiral Architect Posted February 3, 2015 Report Share Posted February 3, 2015 The difference between humans and animals is that humans can integrate while animals can only differentiate. Integration is the power we achieve with freewill and that is what makes reason possible. Consciousness is simply too wide an abstraction for an animal to understand. We have three cats (actually three rugs this time of year in zero degree winter). The cats know who the wife and I are, that we are good and part of their cluster, or even that the wife is good for food or warmth and I'm the go to guy for play and scratches. They do not "know that they know" that, or that I know that, or even how we know that. For them they conceive differences and it simply "is". Mom feeds them instead of me, but they will never understand how the food is paid for and arrives in the cabinet, or even how the food is made or how the money is earned to buy it. They know that our cluster is two of us and three of them, maybe even that I'm a different animal, but they cannot conceive that all five of us are mammals. Or that when combined with the bird outside that we are related by all being animals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JASKN Posted February 3, 2015 Report Share Posted February 3, 2015 Are you sure they're not just misintegrating? It seems my cat has possibly identified dry falling leaves with squirrels as two instances of the same concept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiral Architect Posted February 9, 2015 Report Share Posted February 9, 2015 Ha! Considering that one of our cats thinks my wife's head is a pillow at night you may be on to something... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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