Animal Minds; how much can we learn about them? (Animals)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 05, 2015, 15:14 (3275 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Saturday, December 05, 2015, 15:41


> QUOTE: "Consciousness (a mind) perceives and acts on information. But there are at least two -- more basic and probably unconscious qualities -- that distinguish life from non-life, and seem to act by processing information: self-preservation and adaptability.”
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> dhw: I would add the all-important drive for improvement, which I see as the trigger for evolution: self-preservation and adaptability only account for survival.-We agree, since I view the 'drive' to include complexity with the final pinnacle as the human brain. Note the article on six new neurons. -> dhw: A mind without a brain is integral to the concept of cellular intelligence. On the “Human consciousness” thread, you comment: “Let's throw out materialism as the lone explanation is what he is suggesting.” You will have to do the same for other animals whose consciousness you recognize.-Your comment confuses consciousness with intelligence. First animals are conscious but self-consciousness is different, and their degree of self-consciousness appears to be minimal. As for intelligence in cells we are back to the same issue, intelligent instructions for actions or actual intelligence. We cannot tell the difference from the outside of a bacteria. I am not a materialist as you know,anda firm dualist.-> 
> dhw:QUOTE: "We humans have a sense of "self" that goes well beyond a drive to continue to exist. But to what extent do other life forms have this sense? “
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> My evolutionary “drive to improvement” depends on this sense. NB: for those of us who believe in common descent, it is logical that humans would have inherited this drive - as opposed to being its originators.-Of course. Early hominins are today's Homo
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> xxxxxxx
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> dhw: Here are more quotes from Denyse O'Leary's brilliant article:-I thought you'd like it. Her background is as a devout clear-thinking Catholic.
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> QUOTE: “Some current philosophers have reasoned away the problem by positing that rocks have minds too.”
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> dhw: What follows is a defence of panpsychism, though the philosopher Jim Holt does not say so here.
 
> QUOTE: “Life forms communicate with each other to a degree that often surprises researchers. Prey animals, for example, warn predators of the danger of eating them or advise other prey that a hiding place is taken. But evidence suggests that plants can communicate too. The Scientist tells us: Researchers are unearthing evidence that, far from being unresponsive and uncommunicative organisms, plants engage in regular conversation...Plants, it seems, have a social life that scientists are just beginning to understand.”-Again you presume too much. Plants use gases and chemicals to communicate through their roots and through the air. There is much and growing research on this aspect of their lives. Automatic controlling information in their genomes is all we can presume. There is little support for panpsychism, per se, in the theological and philosophic communities today. God's implanted instructions are another issue.-> dhw: Anyway, there you have it: bacteria are just like social insects, and are not mindless automatons but individual beings. And fancy that, here's the next quote:
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> QUOTE:“Hence the matricide," Loope said. "Workers are not mindless automatons working for the queen no matter what. They only altruistically give up reproduction when the context is right, but revolt when it benefits them to do so."
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> You don't have to believe it, but you have to be very stubborn indeed to disbelieve it.-I presented it. I believe it. You and I debate the driving instructional mechanisms. There could be a designated endpoint to a given queen's work, and she is then overthrown.