Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 00:56 (4030 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by unknown, Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 01:10

Here is a research scientist in animal behaviour, that Torley quotes from in his next article:-"Secondly, it struck me that, from a scientific view, we understand so little about animal consciousness (and indeed our own consciousness) that to make the claim that we do understand it, and that we now know which animals experience emotions, may not be the best way to make the case for animal welfare. Anthropomorphism (seeing animals as just like humans) and anecdote were assuming a place in the study of animal consciousness that, it seemed to me, leaves the whole area very vulnerable to being completely demolished by logical argument. A particular threat is posed by the so-called "kill-joy" explanations that are increasingly appearing in the philosophical and scientific literature. Kill-joy explanations are simple explanations for what have previously been thought to be examples of complex achievements by animals. A classic example is where the exciting claim that a horse or dog can count and do sums is replaced by the kill-joy explanation that all that the animal is doing is taking cues from a human, who is really doing the sums. Kill-joy explanations are now everywhere, "explaining away" many of the clever things animals were supposed to do, such as reading each other's minds, deceiving each other, and insightfully anticipating their futures."-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-stamp-dawkins/animal-welfare_b_1581615.html-It suggests that we have to be careful about how much consciousness we infer into studies of animal cleverness. It infers that we do not know if animals have any degree of phenomenal consciousness, defined ashenomenal consciousness: 
The subjective, feeling part of any conscious sensation-Taken from the same website is access consciousness, the consciousness of observation:-"Access consciousness 
The philosopher Ned Block distinguishes, on conceptual grounds, access consciousness from phenomenal consciousness (Block, 1999, 2005). Phenomenal consciousness corresponds to the subjective feeling of seeing red (as compared to the feeling of seeing green), while access consciousness is what is made accessible to multiple cognitive processes, including memory, language, and other behaviors. Phenomenal consciousness in isolation may correspond to consciousness without top-down attention, while the confluence of access and phenomenal consciousness occurs when the subject is attending to an object or event and is consciousness of it. Access consciousness is usually what is studied in the laboratory, while phenomenal consciousness encompasses experiences difficult to quantify."-http://www.klab.caltech.edu/koch/glossary.html-Torley makes much of the problems in research on animals and these terms they use make it clear to me why he does.