Cats and consciousness
Oct. 24th, 2005 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Someone suggested I upfront this comment as a post so here we go:
Oddly, consciousness is the other thing I was noodling about at the weekend. My cats are so obviously conscious, and in really quite subtle ways I never imagined before I lived with animals. They are disappointed, happy, enticing, vain, frustrated, envious and irritated. Yet they have brains like peas no? How stupid do you have to get before consciousness vanishes? Do bees have consciousness? Do goldfish? Do rats? Do all human beings who are not in comas? Do babies, and if so from what age? Is having consciousness the same as thinking? (DO babies think? They dream don't they - is that the same either? My cats dream.)
And where consciousness exists continues to mystify me. Anyone who's studied the Turing test realises that intelligence as an externally observed factor is not the same as intentionality. WE can simulate intelligence but we can't simulate consciousness. Does this indicate there is some kind of mind/brain dualism actually going on?
Oddly, consciousness is the other thing I was noodling about at the weekend. My cats are so obviously conscious, and in really quite subtle ways I never imagined before I lived with animals. They are disappointed, happy, enticing, vain, frustrated, envious and irritated. Yet they have brains like peas no? How stupid do you have to get before consciousness vanishes? Do bees have consciousness? Do goldfish? Do rats? Do all human beings who are not in comas? Do babies, and if so from what age? Is having consciousness the same as thinking? (DO babies think? They dream don't they - is that the same either? My cats dream.)
And where consciousness exists continues to mystify me. Anyone who's studied the Turing test realises that intelligence as an externally observed factor is not the same as intentionality. WE can simulate intelligence but we can't simulate consciousness. Does this indicate there is some kind of mind/brain dualism actually going on?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 12:12 pm (UTC)From my point of view, no, we don't "simulate" intelligence. If a system acts "intelligently" (define? - it's such a woolly term) in a particular set of circumstances, it is intelligent. If something displays the same responses to (say) the Turing Test as a "conscious" being does, then there's no reason not to say that to all practical intents and purposes it's "conscious" (again - define? - it has no meaningful definition that I can use to measure against). To me, it doesn't matter how a system achieves those results. We only have the observable properties to judge it on; there is no point losing sleep over invisible mechanisms.
(Or, in short, life's too short for pointless introspection).
no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 12:22 pm (UTC)Ultimately, like all such philosophical inquiry, it spirals into intellectual masturbation.
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Date: 2005-10-24 12:37 pm (UTC)With further study, the questions became easily resolvable.
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Date: 2005-10-24 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 12:47 pm (UTC)That makes it sound a bit like we'd be looking for a simple feature, rather than studying the system's state and interactions.
And also, of course, it's not necessarily the case that you'd get a yes/no answer, rather than (in this hypothetical case) an estimate of how much consciousness something was exhibiting.
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Date: 2005-10-24 02:14 pm (UTC)Really? I thought it was ever more difficult to pin down at the margins the more we find out.
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Date: 2005-10-24 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 12:26 pm (UTC)Shudder. This is the 21st century, it'll be astrology next ;P
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Date: 2005-10-24 12:51 pm (UTC)Self-awareness occurrs when we become aware that we are part of the world around us and are 'built into' the world.
It's only once creatures are capable of making these abstractions and 'building a world' out of them that they become conscious, and the level of abstraction involved and the 'reality' of the world created is part of what produces the level of consciousness they reach.
Your cats clearly have an understanding of chunks of the world - they can tell the difference between the way different people act, and have learnt how to manipulate bits of it (including you) into doing certain things. They have things they want, and carry out actions in order to get them.
Do flies understand the world? Do slugs? Can they learn? And if so, can they learn more than a very tiny amount that has much relation to the way the world is actually working around them? I suspect that they are slightly conscious, but only in a very minimal way - they don't plan, they don't have long-term goals, they act almost entirely instinctually (there's a nerve that goes directly from the eye of the fly to its legs, kicking it into the air if a movement happens directly overhead - you can't argue for any kind of intentionalism there).
Most people don't realise how little of their actions are conscious either. We largely rationalise after the fact :->
no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:13 pm (UTC)So all animals are conscious, the real, or rather the usual, debate in this subject is whether they are self conscious, conscious of themselves. As to the babies, the answer is probably yes, in a rudimentary but crucial fashion they are. I just reviewed Shaun Gallaghers new book on Embodied Cognition (Gallagher, S. 2005. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, i would cut and paste the relevant section of the review, but its on my home computer) which is pretty up to the minute neuroscience and behavioural experiment wise and from the data available it looks like babies have a fairly coherent cosnciousness from the off and a rudimentary but real differentiation between self and other is there too, its a "proprioceptive" self, ie its largely a pre-noetic, bodily based one, but neverttheless provides the bedrock for the more sophisticated, symbolically mediated self we all walk about with. This is all rather new, until recently they thought this stuff didnt happen for months, that the world of the infant was, in the words of William james, a "blooming buzzing confusion". Piaget thought the same. not so. babies are performing intentional actions from the off (facial imitation etc). Again you can argue how conscious they are of their intentions, prob not much, but like Andy says, consciousness is massively over-rated anyway. 99.9% of our actions are automatic, pre-noetic is the new buzz word, and consciousness, rather like a senile monarch in a democracy, just smiles and waves whilst thinking shes doing it all.
so for sure your cats are conscious.
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Date: 2005-10-24 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:27 pm (UTC)You might like to have a go at telling us what you're meaning by 'consciousness' if you're hoping for meaningful answers...!
'Brains like peas'? Not really. They've got brains quite a lot like humans, only less wrinkly and not as big. Occasional cases of people with only a small portion of a normal human-sized brain have shown that brain size isn't as big a deal as it's made out to be... And it's plainly clear that a lot of animals do a lot more thinking - and feeling - than people mostly give them credit for; hence the scale of the whole meat industry thing, animal testing for cosmetics, etc. etc.
I don't think we can actually simulate intelligence all that well yet; and it's not obvious that it will ever be possible to do so without building in (or causing to emerge) something a lot like consciousness.
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Date: 2005-10-24 01:29 pm (UTC)On the other hand, Rocky has none of that. That could just be Rocky being a self-centred little bastard, however.
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Date: 2005-10-24 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:52 pm (UTC)Manipulation is often characterised as a conscious and thought-out act of intelligence. I guess it depends what is happening. But young children and animals are manipulative - you'll know what I mean! - suggesting that it's not about intelligence, it's a survival tool.
It's often said that humans don't use that much of our brains - I wonder if we do, and we just haven't worked out how?
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Date: 2005-10-24 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 02:01 pm (UTC)any AI capable of passing a Turing Test would be (intelligent enough to deliberately fail) to conceal its nature.
not
any AI capable of passing a Turing Test would be intelligent enough to (deliberately fail to conceal its nature).
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Date: 2005-10-24 02:52 pm (UTC)Any AI capable of passing a Turing Test would be intelligent enough to deliberately fail the test to conceal its nature.
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Date: 2005-10-24 02:57 pm (UTC)I'd go for replacing "to" with "in order to".
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Date: 2005-10-24 02:02 pm (UTC)To deliberately fail in order to conceal its nature.