Do cows worry about locusts?

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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Graeme M
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Do cows worry about locusts?

Post by Graeme M »

I am interested in the opinions of others on the question of minds in other animals. In my view, consciousness (experience) is an information processing event. Sensory information is computed to provide directions for behaviour. The aim of consciousness is much as claimed by Solms and Friston - to minimise uncertaintly. Solms argues that affect - the elemental form of consciousness - is evolutionarily very old. This seems right to me and it suggests that animals who can adapt behaviours according to stimuli must be conscious (have experience - there is something it is like to be them).

However, in humans, language and complex memory function extends the simpler forms of experience to include an inner space of thought - mind - that in some ways I think is well captured by Jaynes.

Other animals, however, do not have language. The question is, does consciousnes/experience vary greatly across species? In the absence of language mediated thought there seems to be a relatively simply graded range of experiences. These experiences can be abstracted to pleasurable vs unpleasurable feelings which guide behaviours in order to maximise survival and reproductive success.

If this is true, then can there be very much difference between the everyday experiences of a cow versus a locust? There may be functional differences, for example a cow may have greater memory capacity than a locust and may be able to undertake more complex cognitive tasks, but in terms of what it feels like to be a cow, there seems to me little more than pleasurable/unpleasurable feelings and resulting decisions about behaviour. A locust, I suspect, is experiencing the same thing.

Would there be compelling reasons for believing otherwise? That is, does a cow have a much more meaningful experience than a locust?
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Angelo Cannata
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Re: Do cows worry about locusts?

Post by Angelo Cannata »

If you stay in a materialistic context, the answer is easy: there are infinite degrees and qualities of consciousness, starting from the consciousness of a stone, until that of Einstein. If you instead mix with unclear ideas about "feeling like a cow" everything becomes difficult, impossible, but actually it is just confused and I would even say incorrect.
Graeme M
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Re: Do cows worry about locusts?

Post by Graeme M »

"If you stay in a materialistic context, the answer is easy: there are infinite degrees and qualities of consciousness, starting from the consciousness of a stone, until that of Einstein. If you instead mix with unclear ideas about "feeling like a cow" everything becomes difficult, impossible, but actually it is just confused and I would even say incorrect."
I am disinclined to accept ideas of panpsychism so I disagree that non-living objects are conscious (with the possible exception of some kinds of non-organic AIs, perhaps).

In regard to degrees and qualities of consciousness, that might prove hard to quantify. My opinion on this is that experience might comprise of ever more finely discriminated qualities, but in terms of the being itself, these boil down to some relatively core components.

A cow may feel "happy" when circumstances cause minimal discomfort and material needs are met. It may feel unhappy when conditions are otherwise. At the end of the day, its feelings about the world will direct it to seek to change its circumstances (or maintain them). Does it make a difference if we could, for example, distinguish between sadness and longing if both represent unhappiness (diversion from a satisfactory state)?

A locust may not feel what we humans call unhappiness, but I suspect that is because we add a cognitive component to unhappiness. If a cow is moved by experience to change location or avoid a predator, is this a genuine qualitative difference from the locust doing the same thing? I don't see that it would be.

In terms of perceptual experience, I think there is little to distinguish between felt qualities (even though perceptual euipment might confer varying levels of discrimination). The world is the world; one cannot know there is more or less than the world represented.
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Angelo Cannata
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Re: Do cows worry about locusts?

Post by Angelo Cannata »

When I refer to the consciousness of a stone I don’t do it as panpsychism. Rather, I mean that consciousness, from a materialistic point of view, is just an effect of interacting neurons, which in turn are effects of interacting molecules and physical energies. I am not referring to anything beyond what is measurable in physics. Since there are no jumps, no separations, in this context there not yes or no of consciousness, there are just infinite degrees that can go back until the stone. Obviously, the consciousness of the stone, in this context, is so distant and so different from the human one that it is really hard to call it consciousness; it is the idea of continuity that forces us not to deny consciousness to anything. This way, even a single atom, or a single electron, or a single wave of the light can be considered an aspect of consciousness: this means that, in its most elementary level, consciousness is simply the ability to reflect some change coming from anything external: an atom that gets some change because another atom interfered with it is an atom showing the most elementary level of consciousness, that is, simply, receiving interference.
About your reference to animals of terms like "feeling", "unhappy", in my opinion you are again using very ambiguous words, because they are very human: you should clarify what is for you "feeling", "unhappiness", like I clarified my mechanical idea of consciousness, otherwise it will be just confusion and ambiguity.
Graeme M
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Re: Do cows worry about locusts?

Post by Graeme M »

I agree that considered from a purely physical, materialistic perspective, "consciousness" can only be physical states of some material object and on those grounds clearly there are many gradations of those states (the state of a collection of 100 billion neurons is presumably more complex than that of a collection of 100 thousand neurons).

However, here I am considering the experience of conscious beings. Experience as we humans find it is a particular thing - it is our awareness of objects and events in which we are enmeshed. We see a red ball, we feel a pain, we experience longing. Whatever those things reduce to/correlate with, as humans we understand what we mean by a red ball or a sore toe.

I am observing that for a conscious being, there is something it is like to be that being (or object). Not all physical states of systems will be experienced, only those (at least in animals) which are relevant to behavioural responses.

Cutting to the chase, most if not all of our experiences can be described as perceptual. We appear to inhabit a world of perception. We model the world and our relationship to that world and direct our behaviours from that. But when we boil it down, there is not a lot there. Happiness/unhappiness or pleasure/displeasure is, on Solms interpretation, a construct of the current state of uncertainty. I think this is right - self organizing systems must minimise risk and maximise certainty. Affect ("feelings") are the elemental form of consciousness through which organisms regulate their environmental responses. As Solms puts it, "feeling enables complex organisms to register—and thereby to regulate and prioritize through thinking and voluntary action—deviations from homeostatic settling points in unpredicted contexts".

From the perspective of the organism, all there can be is the modelled world and the organism's relationships with that world. We can as humans differentiate to finer degrees of discrimination what our feelings are and what they signify, but in the end there isn't much else going on. For animals without language, such as cows and locusts, the world they inhabit is a rather simpler affair. Broadly, there isn't going to be much different for either of them as actual self organizing systems. There may be more contexts in which a cow assigns a feeling to its current status but on the whole, the difference is more one of degree than of kind.

As I see it, the everyday experience of a cow isn't that different from that of a locust. Its modelled state is all it knows and can respond to. Should I imagine a cow has a fuller life than a locust? I don't think so. That doesn't seem to be a valid question.

Am I right to think that way? If not why not?
Impenitent
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Re: Do cows worry about locusts?

Post by Impenitent »

no one goes locust tipping...

-Imp
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Angelo Cannata
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Re: Do cows worry about locusts?

Post by Angelo Cannata »

I think that you are still using ambiguous words: "the everyday experience of a cow" is taken from our human everyday experience. We humans think that we "experience" something that we decide to call "the everyday experience". Actually nothing is clear in this expression. Since it is so confused and unclear in the human context, how do you think to discuss it applied to animals? We can discuss the everyday experience of a stone. Why not? How does it feel "being like a stone"? Isn't it a legitimate question? If not, why not? How does it feel being an atom? Or being the sun, or the earth? How does it feel being an emotion, a thought, a brain?
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RCSaunders
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Re: Do cows worry about locusts?

Post by RCSaunders »

Impenitent wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:01 pm no one goes locust tipping...

-Imp
Yeah, but you haven't lived until you've had locust milk.
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