Parrot consciousness? (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 02, 2016, 18:24 (3216 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: From this article I can easily believe that parrots have a form of consciousness very parallel to ours, similar but different in kind.-dhw: As we have said before, all species (broad sense) are different in kind. A parrot/ant/elephant will think like a parrot/ant/elephant.-DAVID: But I am insisting on a major difference in kind at the mental/consciousness level, so great that we have to be considered very special. Of course ants don't look like elephants. Their differences at the level of mentation are not as great as ours from all others.-Yes, we are special. But we should never lose sight of the similarities between ourselves and other organisms: most of what we humans do with our special intelligence serves exactly the same purpose as what they do with their intelligence: namely, to eat, to find shelter, to educate, to procreate, to survive...Of course, we have gone far, far beyond them with our science, technology, art, philosophy, but we are animals all the same, and the main point of my response was to follow the article in emphasizing the common ground,