
Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition - jdnier
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/what-the-crow-knows/580726/
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nikkwong
It surprises me that people could claim that the inverse would ever be true.
As in, why would the default be to assume that animals are not conscious?
Claiming that consciousness is unique to humans seems like quite a high-horse
proposition for us to make about our species.

The question as to how far down consciousness goes is still a matter of
debate. The idea that consciousness goes _all the way down_ , i.e. to rocks et
al. is called panpsychism in philosophy. I don't think that's likely, since
our best bet is that consciousness is maybe/probably an emergent property of
information processing in the brain. How complex that information processing
has to be to result in consciousness is an interesting proposition, and could
be hard to determine given the subjective nature consciousness to begin with.

Still though, I can't imagine experiencing consciousness, responding to
stimuli the way I respond to stimuli, and thinking that animals/bugs that also
respond to stimuli in the same manner as we do are not conscious. The fact
that this assumption has permeated culture throughout history seems like a
very obnoxious oversight and has probably led morally sane people to enact
morally insane abuses towards animals and I think that is a shame.

~~~
hirundo
> It surprises me that people could claim that the inverse would ever be true.
> As in, why would the default be to assume that animals are not conscious?

It's known as motivated reasoning. Specimens of our species are not known for
disinterested rationality. We have deep interests in doing things to animals
that animal cognition could make more unpleasant or expensive. An ancestor
without this talent would have been less likely to become an ancestor. Think
of how much tougher it would be to put a spear into a boar if you thought it
was as sentient as your mother. You'd still do it if you were hungry enough
but would pay a greater price.

~~~
war1025
I think the closer you are to the actual killing of animals, the more you tend
to revere them, if anything.

From my viewpoint, our current views on the killing of animals are as much a
reflection of our cultural fear of death as anything.

Death used to be an ever-present part of life. Killing an animal was viewed as
taking the life of something else to prolong your own. And all to often,
people would die in horrific ways anyway.

Now, death is a thing we try to hide away and not talk about. So we also hide
away the killing of animals for meat. Death is a taboo in our society in some
ways.

~~~
blunte
> I think the closer you are to the actual killing of animals, the more you
> tend to revere them, if anything.

This is clearly not the case, else nobody would be willing to work for a
factory farm.

The opposite appears to be true. People become desensitized - at least the
ones who can handle the initial shock. Also, in some regions of the world (and
in developed countries), generations have grown up with a company mentality
and seem incapable of considering things from any other perspective.

~~~
goldenkey
Its different when you are slaughtering animals endlessly as a job versus
hunting for food. The former will make you a morbid psychopath. The latter
will give you reverence for the animal and the hunt and your position in it.

~~~
blunte
I don't disagree. However, I would argue that there are vastly fewer food
hunters than factory farm workers.

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Bucephalus355
The entire trend of research in animal consciousness over the last 300 years
has always been “animals turn out to be more conscious than we think”.

If you look at how the London Zoo treated animals in the mid 1800’s, you’ll
see how even the most scientifically advanced group (at the time) that was
working with animals could have been so cruel without realizing it.

Sometimes it unnerves me that we’ll realize 100 years from now that animals
were more conscious than even we me imagined possible and our treatment now of
them (specifically livestock) is was really really bad.

~~~
rafiki6
Same argument can be made for how humans have and still do treat other humans
who they decided to label sub-human and thereby less worthy of living a
suffering-free existence. The trend is when humans have too much power over
literally anything, they almost always tend to abuse it.

~~~
cpeterso
As recently as the 1980s, doctors did not provide anesthesia to infants
undergoing surgery. They thought infants' pain response was just a "reflex",
not a conscious experience of pain.

[https://www.livescience.com/28848-babies-have-
consciousness....](https://www.livescience.com/28848-babies-have-
consciousness.html)

~~~
david-gpu
My understanding is that that was in part due to the difficulty of providing
the right dosage that would provide pain relief without causing harm. Source:
dad was an anesthesiologist.

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aklemm
I recently slaughtered and butchered two young pigs as an exercise in getting
closer to my food sources and an experiment in economy. The situation was six
pigs in a trailer, and our task was to shoot two of our choosing.

When the first pig was shot, he fell and lurched for a bit while blood spewed.
The rest of the pigs were alarmed by the noise and the human in the small
trailer. One pig came to investigate the dying pig. Quickly it went back to
eating with the others.

I mentioned this to the farmer and he said the pigs seem to understand _fear
of death_ but not death itself.

Each year I get closer and closer to the idea that humans are shockingly not
that different from other animals, but this set my idea back a bit. Of course,
elephants are a counter-example to this behavior with their apparent mourning
of the dead, so that has to be considered too.

~~~
rv-de
Next step is going to India and yelling at children to stitch faster? Then you
can justify wearing cheap clothes :D

Possibly the pigs are just traumatized. Read Frankl's "Search for Meaning" to
get a perspective on how even educated and highly civilized human beings can
become insensitive towards death and dead bodies.

~~~
ASalazarMX
This remembered me a story someone told in Reddit months ago, which may or may
not be true:

Said guy had a wild hog family persistently ruining his crops, until he
decided to camp and shoot them. When the family finally arrived, he aimed and
shot the first in the head. The other hogs became curious, but continued
eating while their relative lay bleeding right there. He shot another with the
same effect, but missed a third shot, which hit a metal container and scared
the bejesus of the remaining hogs, which fled. He was curious about why they
were more scared from a loud noise that their brothers' heads mysteriously
exploding.

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Causality1
God I hate articles that start with five pages of fluff. I don't care what the
weather was like. I don't care what you did with your shoes. I don't care what
the expression on your contacts face was when he greeted you.

~~~
faitswulff
To each their own, but I appreciated the cultural knowledge of the Jains, a
group I wasn't familiar with before this, and it dovetails with the topic
quite well.

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jillesvangurp
It's funny how animal cognition and animal welfare tend to be conflated. We
are projecting our own empathy in a very irrational way. E.g. eating dogs is
being frowned upon in large parts of the world because our empathy gets in the
way. Even though it is a perfectly good source of protein. However, We eat
pork and beef without much guilt even even though especially pigs are
apparently quite smart compared to e.g. a purse sized dog with a brain the
size of a pea. It's completely irrational. Cuddly-ness rather than cognition
seems to be what drives our empathy.

If you think about it, everything that lives (cognitive or not) also dies.
Mostly this happens of natural causes and a lot of that involves being eaten
by something else or if you lucky enough to avoid that by dying some long and
painful death because of some disease, parasites, or accident. Natural death
is mostly not very pleasant and typically really nasty even.

So considering that, I feel quite OK about eating animals. The alternative of
not eating them means that they would not have lived at all or that they would
have died a nasty "natural" death. So, I'm not saving them from some terrible
fate by not eating them.

Arguably, it's the opposite (or it can be). If we stop eating meat, there are
entire species of farm animals that will likely go extinct because they only
exist because we breed them. So, we stop the cruelty of killing them that
hurts our feelings but we instead wipe out their existence. Not that I'm
advertising animal cruelty but I'd say modern responsible farming produces
good quality lives for the animals and good quality meat when we end them in a
way that is comparatively quick and painless to what nature has to offer. I
enjoy eating meat but am aware that eating a bit less is probably good for me.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree, this topic needs to be decomposed much further for people to have a
productive discussion on it.

Some extra decompositions:

> _So considering that, I feel quite OK about eating animals. The alternative
> of not eating them means that they would not have lived at all or that they
> would have died a nasty "natural" death. So, I'm not saving them from some
> terrible fate by not eating them._

That works out for small-scale farming, but most of our meat is factory-
farmed. While the death itself may be quick, their lives are _living hell_.
Nature doesn't get _that_ cruel, on that scale. So we need to separate out
death from life and suffering here.

> _If we stop eating meat, there are entire species of farm animals that will
> likely go extinct because they only exist because we breed them._

The question is, why do we care about that? Evolutionary speaking, individuals
rarely care about species; it's hard enough to get _humans_ to recognize the
concept of their species, and I sincerely doubt a cow or a pig is aware or
interested in the fate of their own kind in general. Survival of animal
species is something _we_ value, for reasons ranging from emotional (nature is
prettier with more stuff in it) to practical (genetic diversity). But I can't
imagine a chicken being _grateful_ for living in a cage on farm, because it
lets chickens exist at all.

Not judging any positions here; I just wish this topic was debated in a more
structured way, with all the important aspects stated in isolation, and then
related to each other.

~~~
jillesvangurp
Agreed, not a big fan of industrial meat production. And not just because the
quality is less.

I don't have a strong opinion on whether it is good or bad for farm animal
species to exist at all but I do find the contradiction interesting.

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joe_the_user
Are all the things being called "consciousness" in this article really even
the same?

Whatever problems of Julian Jaynes' theory, we know that there are
schizophrenics who often hear voices and be commanded by voices. Are they "not
self-conscious" by the various other measures involved - ie, the mirror test
and such.

A lot of this article revolves around how much self-awareness is required by
moral impulses to keep someone from eating an animal. The thing is, if basic
self-awareness exists in nearly all creatures, then it means predators have
eating these animals anyway and human evolved omnivore, I don't see the
problem hear. Tell me this one is so special I shouldn't eat it and I might
agree, tell all animals and I'll say you're calling for humans to outside the
order that all other animals are in.

~~~
moosey
If you are looking for a moral/ethical imperative to stop eating animals, then
the IPCC report covers enough of the carbon and ecological costs of animal
agriculture that it is something that you should quit.

If you are looking for an expansion of "The Subject" of ethics, if you will,
then that's something you have to do for yourself. To consider non-human
animals for consumption regardless of the ecological externalities is an
ethical choice, not an ethical demand. I have expanded my personal
considerations ethically to include other life on this planet, as their
success is required for my continued survival.

~~~
joe_the_user
_If you are looking for a moral /ethical imperative to stop eating animals,
then the IPCC report covers enough of the carbon and ecological costs of
animal agriculture that it is something that you should quit._

I wasn't looking but thanks. I mean, I'd say global warming can only be
overcome by society-wide political action, not by individual choices.
Collective action forcing different consumption patterns are the only way
sorts of problems like this have ever been solved in the past.

~~~
moosey
And that's going to require a cultural change - a cultural change that will be
far easier without tons of people supporting the current state of the
agricultural industries.

Society-wide political action is definitely what is needed, and being
generally supportive of vegetarianism/veganism, and pressuring politicians to
do the same, is an important part of that process.

------
ggm
I think the underlying point remains _how do we feel about this_. What I like,
is the evidence-based models which point to higher cognition aren't now
observational by anthropomorphism, but are founded on an experiment: _I
construct a situation which demands a higher order thinking function, and I
put an animal into a test, and I observe sequences of actions, which demand
indirect cognition, operating on future state, or about the self, and image of
self, or cognition of the projection of "what it would look like if I could
see it, from the other side" type models_

So the ethics has been there forever, but what is newer (I do not say new,
because people did experiment before. They are just really well formed
experiments now), is a constructed model based on better than belief: its
based on experiment.

The other side of the coin, is that some purely observational behaviour in
higher primates now has to got back into the ethical pot: If we know chimps
can do higher abstract reasoning, and we also observe chimps kill and eat the
young from 'other' tribes, what do we now think about that killing and eating?

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bayesian_horse
Some things like that certain animals like dogs don't learn/plan by
imagination never made sense to me.

When I want to teach a dog something, I treat him like a problem-solving
agent. I pose the task as a solveable problem to him, like "touch stick to get
food", and he will "compute" the necessary actions to touch the stick.

Also they always said dogs/animals don't do impulse control, while dogs
clearly display a range of that trait.

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jxramos
I heard something retold recently in this space that was very interesting
about a distinctive feature for humans. And that is the ability to make a vow.
That would be a pretty interesting topic to see how animals can communicate
understanding of the far future and what not.

~~~
double0jimb0
Sounds like a good thing for someone who wants you to take a vow to say.

~~~
jxramos
Maybe, but the interesting thing is that I think it identifies not just a
difference of degree but of kind. For instance animals can use tools and build
things and communicate and recognize self and so forth, where in each case
humans dominate in the vast separation of degree we have taken each. I can’t
think of any analogue where a vow would be a difference in degree to
something. Maybe it’s along the ideas of abstract thought. I don’t know.

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byteface
Jainisms logo makes it a barrier to entry for many in the West. I'm surprised
they don't rebrand. For me consciousness means more about actually making a
choice. You can be aware but unconscious. I guess this is where 'woke' comes
from. Choice is a byproduct of your moral framework and if this is dictated to
you then maybe you are not conscious? There are stages of awareness. You can
pluck a string at it will vibrate. Arrange several in accordance with each
other and you have an instrument. We ourselves are like instruments in that
respect. You press our keys (senses) and things start to vibrate and
reverberate. (yup i'm ripping Diderot). But I do feel strongly that all
thought is just a diff between world states. I don't find anything particular
profound about it. Western religions deprive animals of consciousness to feel
better about eating them.

~~~
7402
> Jainisms logo makes it a barrier to entry for many in the West.

Are people confused about this statement? See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika)
-

"The swastika is a geometrical figure and an ancient religious icon in the
cultures of Eurasia, used as a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indian
religions. In the Western world, it was a symbol of auspiciousness and good
luck until the 1930s, when it became a feature of Nazi symbolism as an emblem
of Aryan race identity and, as a result, was stigmatized by association with
ideas of racism and antisemitism."

~~~
siedes
2020 Neo-nazi Goals: Turn Google logo(or anything they don't like) into a
symbol of hate speech and everyone just goes with it since they can't think
further than "bad man do x, x bad"

