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04-23-2024, 02:26 PM
This post was last modified 04-23-2024, 02:46 PM by Maxmars.
Edit Reason: links fixed
A little over a decade ago, at a meeting at Cambridge, a group of respected scientists and researcher published a statement indicating that creatures of all types have everything neurologically necessary to manifest true consciousness... sentience of a sort [1]. They proposed that we should openly recognize that we have been mistaken by accepting Descartes's statements that indicated animals were a sort of biological automata ... without feelings, without a mind.
A short while ago, another group of academicians and thinkers at a New York conference made a similar 'declaration' [2] ... that animals may very well be conscious.
A flurry of reporting has occurred in the media, with several outlets publishing on this subject...
From Quanta Magazine: Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare
Subtitled: A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.
From Nature: Do insects have an inner life? Animal consciousness needs a rethink
Subtitled: A declaration signed by dozens of scientists says there is “a realistic possibility” for elements of consciousness in reptiles, insects and molluscs.
From The Hill: It’s ‘irresponsible’ to ignore widespread consciousness across animal world, dozens of scientists argue
From NBC News: Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient
Subtitled: Far more animals than previously thought likely have consciousness, top scientists say in a new declaration — including fish, lobsters and octopus.
From Animal Ethics.org: 10th Anniversary of the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
That's a lot of attention for a very simple scientific declaration. Even minimized, the assertion is important... It is not impossible that non-humans lack a sense of experiential existence. They may well be sentient in some analogous way to human consciousness. I offer some excerpted examples from the various articles to give you some ideas of what's in there...
The [NY] declaration, signed by biologists and philosophers, formally embraces that view. It reads, in part: “The empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates (including all reptiles, amphibians and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans and insects).” Inspired by recent research findings that describe complex cognitive behaviors in these and other animals, the document represents a new consensus and suggests that researchers may have overestimated the degree of neural complexity required for consciousness.
On a side note, the first such declaration presented practically the same message. It was a bit wordier, (the New York declaration is impressively brief) but the idea was never stated then, or now, that animals "are" conscious... only that we have inadequate scientific standing to say they can not be.
(I like reiterating the meaning because I have seen people re-brand scientific utterances to serve their own ends...)
I have been an on and off pet owner for many decades... I know each of them had some kind of consciousness, by long observation... but I can't state it scientifically because even the scientists are still hammering out what 'consciousness' is exactly...
There is not a standard definition for animal sentience or consciousness, but generally the terms denote an ability to have subjective experiences: to sense and map the outside world, to have capacity for feelings like joy or pain. In some cases, it can mean that animals possess a level of self-awareness.
Some encouraging observations, from my perspective, is summed up well...
The new declaration expands the scope of its predecessor and is also worded more carefully, Seth wrote. “It doesn’t try to do science by diktat, but rather emphasizes what we should take seriously regarding animal consciousness and the relevant ethics given the evidence and theories that we have.”
[Underlining is mine] I love that it was openly acknowledged, that often these 'declarations' are, in some sense, "Science by diktat" (science by decree... as in the Descartes pronouncement of 'material automata.')
It may seem obvious to us that mammals, birds, and octopuses are conscious because of the way they act and the way they react to pleasant and unpleasant things. When he heard about the Cambridge Declaration, ethologist Marc Bekoff said he thought it was a joke because animal consciousness is something so obvious to anyone who works with or lives with nonhuman animals.
So why did it take so long for scientists to declare this, and why was their wording so careful? Instead of directly claiming that the nonhuman animals they mentioned are conscious, they said that other animals have “the substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.”
Each of these articles has good material in it... well presented and worth reading... for once.
A short while ago, another group of academicians and thinkers at a New York conference made a similar 'declaration' [2] ... that animals may very well be conscious.
A flurry of reporting has occurred in the media, with several outlets publishing on this subject...
From Quanta Magazine: Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare
Subtitled: A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.
From Nature: Do insects have an inner life? Animal consciousness needs a rethink
Subtitled: A declaration signed by dozens of scientists says there is “a realistic possibility” for elements of consciousness in reptiles, insects and molluscs.
From The Hill: It’s ‘irresponsible’ to ignore widespread consciousness across animal world, dozens of scientists argue
From NBC News: Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient
Subtitled: Far more animals than previously thought likely have consciousness, top scientists say in a new declaration — including fish, lobsters and octopus.
From Animal Ethics.org: 10th Anniversary of the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
That's a lot of attention for a very simple scientific declaration. Even minimized, the assertion is important... It is not impossible that non-humans lack a sense of experiential existence. They may well be sentient in some analogous way to human consciousness. I offer some excerpted examples from the various articles to give you some ideas of what's in there...
The [NY] declaration, signed by biologists and philosophers, formally embraces that view. It reads, in part: “The empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates (including all reptiles, amphibians and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans and insects).” Inspired by recent research findings that describe complex cognitive behaviors in these and other animals, the document represents a new consensus and suggests that researchers may have overestimated the degree of neural complexity required for consciousness.
On a side note, the first such declaration presented practically the same message. It was a bit wordier, (the New York declaration is impressively brief) but the idea was never stated then, or now, that animals "are" conscious... only that we have inadequate scientific standing to say they can not be.
(I like reiterating the meaning because I have seen people re-brand scientific utterances to serve their own ends...)
I have been an on and off pet owner for many decades... I know each of them had some kind of consciousness, by long observation... but I can't state it scientifically because even the scientists are still hammering out what 'consciousness' is exactly...
There is not a standard definition for animal sentience or consciousness, but generally the terms denote an ability to have subjective experiences: to sense and map the outside world, to have capacity for feelings like joy or pain. In some cases, it can mean that animals possess a level of self-awareness.
Some encouraging observations, from my perspective, is summed up well...
The new declaration expands the scope of its predecessor and is also worded more carefully, Seth wrote. “It doesn’t try to do science by diktat, but rather emphasizes what we should take seriously regarding animal consciousness and the relevant ethics given the evidence and theories that we have.”
[Underlining is mine] I love that it was openly acknowledged, that often these 'declarations' are, in some sense, "Science by diktat" (science by decree... as in the Descartes pronouncement of 'material automata.')
It may seem obvious to us that mammals, birds, and octopuses are conscious because of the way they act and the way they react to pleasant and unpleasant things. When he heard about the Cambridge Declaration, ethologist Marc Bekoff said he thought it was a joke because animal consciousness is something so obvious to anyone who works with or lives with nonhuman animals.
So why did it take so long for scientists to declare this, and why was their wording so careful? Instead of directly claiming that the nonhuman animals they mentioned are conscious, they said that other animals have “the substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.”
Each of these articles has good material in it... well presented and worth reading... for once.
