
Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness - bra-ket
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky201208251
======
ggreer
If I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet
a lot on our treatment of animals.

Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still
open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn
and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships
and mourn the passing of their kin.

Despite all indications that our treatment of these creatures is
reprehensible, cultural inertia and the tastiness of meat are enough to
prevent us from changing our behavior. To treat even 1% of humans the way we
treat animals would be to perpetuate the greatest war crime in history. But do
the same thing to some funny-looking microencephalitic relatives of humans and
hardly anyone bats an eye.

~~~
sethbannon
Couldn't agree with you more. Upwards of 60 billion animals are slaughtered
for human consumption each year[1]. The scale of it is mind-boggling. We just
recently agreed on vegetarian team lunches at my startup to do our small part.

[1] according to [http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-
Directio...](http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-
Directions/dp/0195305108/)

~~~
diminoten
There is almost nothing that could happen which would make me feel poorly for
eating cows, chickens, pigs, and fish.

The assumption here is that simply because a being is conscious, it is
therefore special. Let's take away that assumption, and then work forwards. Of
what significance is consciousness?

~~~
bornhuetter
I think that there is a difference between entities with consciousness and
those without, in that you can't cause pain and suffering to an entity without
consciousness. In that sense, they are "special". But that doesn't mean we
shouldn't eat them, just that we shouldn't be cruel to them.

------
gnoway
This is great news. Now that we've proven the animals are conscious, we can
put more resources into communicating and reasoning with them, and convince
them to stop maiming, killing and eating each other. Peace on Earth, maybe
within our lifetimes!

Edit: </sarcasm>

~~~
i_cannot_hack
Are you equating consciousness with rationality and intelligence?

~~~
mtowle
Literally nobody has ever done that. Try understanding his comment a different
way. Like, say, that the human protections against violence preclude humans
who chose to act violently, ergo if we extend that protection to animals, many
of them would lose that protection as soon as it was extended to them.

~~~
gnoway
To clarify, mtowle means 'them' as in 'the humans,' i.e. omnis will go to
prison, be killed or endure some other form of violent punishment if caught
eating meat.

Good luck with that. Maybe it happens, but I'm not holding my breath.

~~~
mtowle
No I don't. I mean there's no point in extending a protection if you're just
going to take it right back.

> To clarify...

I recommend not doing this again.

~~~
gnoway
I agree. Don't try to help anyone understand my comments either.

------
RivieraKid
Well, that's interesting, because there's no good scientific definition of
consciousness.

~~~
stiff
There is no _philosophical_ definition of consciousness, but there is none of
gravity either, in the sense of "what gravity really is". Science doesn't
examine what things "really are", but tries to make useful predictions and the
definitions employed are only means to this end. In fact there are operational
definitions of consciousness and I think they certainly deserve to be called
"scientific", see for example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlate...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlates)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Defining_conscio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Defining_consciousness)

~~~
smosher
The problem is without any philosophical backup the neural correlate is
entirely uncompelling—it's merely a clinical definition of a measure of...
nothing meaningful. One that can be just as easily applied to a recording
device, modulo the explicit mention of neurons.

It gets worse. When you look at it closely there's no useful reason to
restrict any of these measures with arbitrary criteria to the things we
consider candidates for consciousness, other than to reaffirm our prejudices.

In other words, there's no such thing as a _good_ scientific definition
without the philosophical context. You can have as accurate an arbitrary
measure as you like, but that doesn't imbue it equally arbitrarily with your
desired meaning.

~~~
stiff
The problem is that multiple times in the history of science the search for
somehow philosophically sound underpinnings led to stagnation and not to
progress, that was in fact what Aristotle did to a large extent and was the
main obstacle to development of science altogether. The recent example of this
is the search of aether. In the end the way that science has progressed is by
dropping too much "whys" and sticking to "hows".

There might never be a philosophically satisfactory definition of
consciousness. Our subjective experience that we call consciousness might be
an amalgamate of very different things happening at the brain level and a
single definition might just not do. Meanwhile the operational definitions
like the ones I mentioned allow us to make useful predictions and draw
conclusions, for example that the brain activity that happens when we
experience states most people would describe as consciousness also happens in
certain animals. It is not perfect philosophically, but again, you could also
have a long philosophical debate about what gravity is and you would never go
anywhere scientifically - that's precisely what people did before the
scientific revolution.

~~~
smosher
I think you're confused. I'm not asking for philosophical proofs end-to-end,
I'm asking for the framing.

If you look at the formulation it starts out as a magical-seeming property,
yet the definitions and processes do nothing to demystify that property. If
you look at that process carefully you'll find the deceit: this is not an
answer to the question of consciousness as asked. With the right philosophical
treatment there _might_ be hope of reconciliation, but without it the concept
is just going to remain magical, without meaningful conclusions.

Aether is a great example, one I had in mind. Consciousness is very much like
aether in some ways. It may well be that the only useful scientific thing to
say about it at the end of the day is: it is not a useful concept to science.
Much better than the contrivances offered up with no compelling connection to
the subject.

The last word in TFA is 'qualia'. This is the problem. Canonical definitions
of _that_ term describe it as impossible to measure, or simply ineffable,
which effectively puts it off the table for a scientific treatment. Regardless
of what you think of what should constitute a scientific concept, the
implication that these measurements alone elucidate an ineffable phenomenon is
exactly the kind of thing that stinks of bullshit.

~~~
stiff
The problem is that the answers you are looking for are of philosophical
nature and not of scientific one (you talk about "demystifying" consciousness,
"elucidating it"). The neural correlates might not clarify what consciousness
is, but they might yield answers to precise scientific questions, such as:
what brain activity is necessary and sufficient for a person to be able
demonstrate self- or world- awareness. We might need to first answer to such
questions _before_ we gain any new insights of more philosophical nature. I am
not saying this method is the silver bullet, but certainly I cannot agree the
results are meaningless or "only reaffirm our prejudices".

My only point is really that the lack of a great definition of consciousness
doesn't diminish the value of research like the one cited here.

~~~
smosher
_The neural correlates might not clarify what consciousness is, but they might
yield answers to precise scientific questions_

I don't deny that at all, in fact it is quite precisely what I endorse. Notice
that the term consciousness lies on the left side, the excluded part. On the
right side, you use the better-defined term, awareness. A definition that
comes with better philosophical understanding. TFA, however, talks of qualia.

 _We might need to first answer to such questions before we gain any new
insights of more philosophical nature._

I would say "different" rather than "more." Philosophy doesn't mean "weird
stuff we don't really understand" and it can often be as boring as the
implications of simple arithmetic or even the logic used in scientific
endeavors. I wouldn't want to throw that out in the name of progress either.

 _I cannot agree the results are meaningless or "only reaffirm our
prejudices"._

The results described by the article and supported here are of the form
"consciousness is X" where no question was asked that is answerable directly
in terms of X, and no reconciliation has been made. That is the sense of
meaninglessness I'm talking about. If you're still in doubt, or think that's
somehow unimportant, grab the bull by the horns and deal with the implication
that this is somehow ultimately a measure of qualia.

 _My only point is really that the lack of a great definition of consciousness
doesn 't diminish the value of research like the one cited here._

In that phrasing I am almost in agreement, if it wasn't for some of the claims
made. Some very interesting things are being measured, but to go from these
measurements to things like qualia is a leap I can't justify. A correlation
between these measures and alertness, intelligence and kinds of awareness are
easy to establish or contradict, and better yet: given those connections who
is going to say "yeah but what are these results over here? it looks like
_manifest experience!_ "—?

------
mseebach
That's nice.

But too many people can't tell the difference between supporting an idea and
publishing a repeatable experiment to test a falsifiable hypothesis in a peer
reviewed journal.

~~~
regal
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test)

~~~
RivieraKid
It should be possible with current technology to create a robot, that would
react positively to mirror test.

~~~
mseebach
The experiment should be blind, which would be quite hard to design. At least,
the robot designers wouldn't know that the mirror test would be the test, but
ideally they would never have heard of the mirror test, indeed, they should
have no good grasp of what a mirror even is.

------
stephengillie
There's nothing sacred about machine learning, machine vision & feedback
loops, assembled into robots. This is what we are.

~~~
michaelgrafl
No, that's a crass abstraction of what we are.

To a philistine the Mona Lisa is nothing but a bunch of pigments applied to a
surface. That's what makes him a philistine, after all.

~~~
kryten
It's an apt description of what we are.

Only we think we are more.

Perhaps we're not and the thought is just part of that feedback loop.

Art, wine, music, maths. It's all just more inputs...

~~~
michaelgrafl
It's a marginal description of what we are.

It takes a true nerd living in a nerd bubble to interpret a human being as a
data processing device.

~~~
kryten
I think you mean your perception is that my description is marginal, which is
my point.

We're just maths if you go far enough down. So are machines.

------
contingencies
_What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any
creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious.

You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question?

I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as
meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life._

\- Einstein (as quoted in _Mein Weltbild_ , Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934)

------
scotty79
I think we are fairly close to achieving consciousness in silicon (graphene or
whatever). We will improve algorithms, increase computing power and achieve
system of consciousness of a mouse, then just by tossing in more computing
power and optimizing speed of algorithms one of consciousness of a dog, then
monkey, then human and then we'll be surprised that when we toss in even more
computing power we'll get even more conscious system because there's no reason
to believe that evolution that gave us consciousness we recognize is capped in
any way by some objective limit. It's more likely that our level of
consciousness is just accidental value nowhere near theoretical upper limits.

~~~
alokm
Consciousness is not solely a matter of computation. Even if we are able to
simulate the brains of lesser beings, doesnt necessarily mean that there will
be self awareness in the simulation. I think this is one area where we still
have a lot of catching up to do.

~~~
brotchie
12 months ago I would have strongly disagreed with your first sentence, but
after a load of reading on Physics, Philosophy, and Neuroscience, my views
have changed.

I am still unable to reconcile my "internal" conscious experience with our
current understanding of Physics. I'm a materialist, however I'm trending
towards the believe that consciousness is an emergent _physical_ property of
massively interconnected systems; that is, our "internal" conscious experience
is part of the "fabric of reality" and simply comes into being once matter is
of a certain level of interconnectedness.

In essence, all matter has some degree of internal conscious experience.
However, only groupings of matter that have massive interconnectedness (i.e.
animal brains) experience what we would typically describe as consciousness.
Perhaps, at a global scale, the internet is weakly "conscious". Perhaps, once
we forge ahead with bio-mimetic arrays of neural networks, we'll start to
induce artificial conscious experience in "dumb" matter.

Christof Koch has an excellent book "Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic
Reductionist" along these lines.

~~~
alokm
I also concur that "consciousness is an emergent physical property of
massively interconnected systems". But "all matter has some degree of internal
conscious experience" is really a philosophical question. Internet can be
considered as a living being with different people acting as different
components and communicating with each other the way neurons do. But is the
internet as a whole, not its participants, conscious as a whole? That is a
tough question.

I will try and read up the book you suggested. And I will point towards a very
interesting theory I happened to have worked on (as a software developer)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory)
which tries to quantify consciousnesses based on this interconnectedness.

~~~
brotchie
I just looked back through parts of Koch's book. He was indeed talking about
IIT. The wiki article on IIT is interesting, I didn't realise IIT had such a
rigorous mathematical definition! I'll read further.

------
Nux
The day we stop hurting other creatures is likely to be the day we stop
hurting each other; wondering whether this day will ever come.

~~~
cristianpascu
It will not. "Hurting" is such a meaningless word nowadays.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
The day we stop kidnapping, murdering and eating animals will be the day we
stop kidnapping and murdering each other?

I honestly don't think the "animals have conscious thought" is the most
effective way to change agriculture, but I will struggle to deny that gorilla
whose eyes I looked into at Aspinalls was not looking back at me with the same
understanding and knowledge.

Yes they are as conscious and thoughtful as humans, but humans are as
unthinking and hard-wired as animals

~~~
EthanHeilman
We are animals certainly but there is strong evidence that complex vertebrates
(humans, big cats, etc) can adapt behavior from prior experience. It's a
pretty big stretch to claim that we are unthinking and hard-wired.

------
IanDrake
When these "scientists" can get lions to stop eating gazelles, I'll stop
eating cows, chickens, and fish.

That being said, I am concerned about how animals are treated during their
lifetime.

~~~
dharmach
When consuming resources and producing pollution, you do not remember this
comparison. Besides, animals kill to eat, not to sell.

~~~
IanDrake
>Besides, animals kill to eat, not to sell.

I don't understand. Ultimately it ends up in someone's stomach and provides
sustenance. How is it any different?

------
nickmain
This recent HN comment about Julian Jaynes's _The Origin of Consciousness in
the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ is worth following up on:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404)

As I understand it the theory posits that consciousness is only a very recent
development in humans.

How can we ascribe consciousness to any other form of life when we do not even
understand what it means for ourselves ?

~~~
blueprint
Well put.

However, please note that there have been a few individuals in human history
who did have complete understanding of consciousness. The story of this world
is that nobody wanted to learn from those people when they were alive.

The reasons that modern scientists do not understand consciousness is that

1\. they do not apply a specific principle to their research (In math, when we
want to solve a question, we apply the equality to operate the question.) and
because

2\. their research only investigates half of the set of existent relevant
phenomena - that which can be seen with the naked eye.

Once a human recognizes the simple law that governs natural phenomena it is
simple to recognize what consciousness is.

------
cdooh
Does this mean they know right from wrong? The article isn't very clear on
what conscious awareness means.

~~~
cpa
How does consciousness imply morality?

~~~
mseebach
That is of course a big philosophical question. But in lieu of diving into
that, because Wikipedia says so:

 _Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect
that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgment may derive from values or
norms (principles and rules). In psychological terms conscience is often
described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits actions that
go against his /her moral values and to feelings of rectitude or integrity
when actions conform to such norms.[1] The extent to which conscience informs
moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are or should
be based in reason has occasioned debate through much of the history of
Western philosophy.[2]_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience)

~~~
gregsq
Wrong word. Consciousness, not conscience.

~~~
mseebach
D'oh. Of course.

~~~
gregsq
Yeah. Simple single sentence from me which doesn't do your comment justice.

The connection between consciousness as an idea expressed by this declaration,
and general extant environment is an interesting philosophical pursuit. I
didn't think conscience so much, as an anterior attribute. But apologies if I
appeared curt. I need practice.

~~~
mseebach
No offence taken. Sometimes someone (me) is just wrong, and it shouldn't be
unacceptable to point that out in so many words. Conscience and consciousness,
despite the common root, just doesn't mean the same thing.

------
ekianjo
Old. July 2012...

EDIT: to clarify, the title is very confusing because it makes you think they
just signed it. It should be completed by a "2012" in the end. That's why I
was disappointed when following the link. Nothing new.

~~~
gwgarry
I guess it is no longer relevant.

~~~
ekianjo
No, it is, but I am just wondering why it pops up here in a sudden while
there's no specific news attached to it.

~~~
gwgarry
Fuck the news, acquire knowledge. :D The reason it pops up is someone noticed
it, posted it online, and it grew viral because it's something people like to
hear.

~~~
ekianjo
AGain, why not mention its from 2012 in the title then? That's what people do
on HN for older contents. and if you f __* the news then why do you come on a
website that has NEWS in its title?

~~~
nitrogen
Hacker News is called Hacker _News_ because it used to be called Startup
_News_. The only mention of the word "news" in the Hacker News guidelines is
in the line stating that "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic."

------
blueprint
> Consequently, say the signatories, the scientific evidence is increasingly
> indicating that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological
> substrates that generate consciousness.

That's because neurological substrates don't generate consciousness. There is
no evidence to the effect that they do. However, when we understand the
structure of the system of consciousness it's very easy to see how
consciousness is generated and maintained.

The role of all neural systems is

1\. to transmit to the consciousness what the body sees, hears, learns, etc.,
and

2\. to express what is in consciousness through the body.

~~~
jessedhillon
<citation needed>

~~~
blueprint
Factual authority does not derive from socially validated papers. The law of
nature and all the facts exist in nature itself. The problem is that if you
don't try to confirm my words through 'what is' you can not recognize the
evidence in front of you.

------
bencollier49
That is actually the best summary of the current state of consciousness
research that I've ever read.

That said, they don't talk much about whether they can prove degrees of
conscious awareness. There may be homologous structures, but are they as large
as in humans? If they're not, then perhaps you'd expect the animal to have a
comparable and yet less-detailed experience.

~~~
frobbin
Agree with them that it is very likely that animals have conscious experience,
I believe it to most likely be the case as well.

But it seems irresponsible, and possibly self-serving for the NCC research
crowd, to escalate this evidence to the level of proof on consciousness in
animals. There is just no way to know what it is like to be any creature other
than yourself. It seems reasonable to assume other humans with the same
anatomy and physiology, with whom we can communicate extensively, are also
likely conscious. But we just can't ever tell what the experience is like to
be any other creature.

Signing a such a statement smacks of an attempt at bullying policy with
scientific credentials. This is bad because then in other areas, such as
global warming, it gives opponents with ulterior motives fodder for claiming
scientists shouldn't be trusted since they are prone to the same irrational
belief systems as other people.

It would be better to present their story for mainstream consumption with an
attitude of Isn't this a compelling story? Maybe even educate people and
attract people to the field of neuroscience in the process. But claiming
they've figured it out and we all need to get on board will only have negative
repercussions.

------
scotty79
How could you have dreams without consciousness? Every cat or dog owner knows
that animals obviously dream.

------
weavie
So no turning cockroaches into cybernetic devices you can control with your
iPhone then?

~~~
agravier
No, but spraying them with neurotoxins is fair game.

------
fatjokes
Do they recommend a sauce for conscious awareness?

------
sneak
Prominent Humans Sign Declaration that They're Still Tasty

