lol. we don't know what it is but they don't have it![b said:Quote[/b] ]Not sure what consciousness is... people are still trying to figure it out
ok... so basically you think only mammals and birds know they exist? the others are just a bunch of reactions to a bunch of stimuli without doing anything? they're just an object that happens to be made out of cells? as self aware as your liver is that it is a liver?[b said:Quote[/b] ]You may even vaguely remember that something was going on in your brain before, but you just weren't there at the time
many times you don't have to teach them. They just watch you and learn by themselves.[b said:Quote[/b] ]You can teach the non-human apes to do amazing things (like laundry, making stone tools, making tea, cooking a meal, starting fires(a fav. of orangutans) and many other things people do)
Try looking at it from the bottom up... if someone designed a machine that had programming sophisticated enough to give it the same behaviors of a fish/amphibian/whatever... if it looked for food and potential mates... if it went to great lengths to avoid harm to itself... etc etc, would you consider it conscious? Even if you could look at the schematic and know for sure it wasn't equipped with the hardware needed to facilitate it? And knowing its behaviors were dictated entirely by a transparent set of rules?[b said:Quote[/b] (TheAlphaWolf @ Mar. 08 2005,7:52)]I think that for something to think ahead, it has to have a sense of self. It has to be concious. You have to think what YOU are going to do and where you're going to be at that time... and the spider thinks ahead so I don't see how it can NOT be concious.
people who want to justify keeping them in tiny little fish bowls.[b said:Quote[/b] ]Who said goldfish have only a 5 second memory?
[b said:Quote[/b] ]Psychologist Dr Phil Gee claims his research on goldfish explodes the myth
that they have a three second memory span - he reckons they remember for at
least three months.
Dr Gee, of Plymouth University, trained goldfish to collect food at certain
times of day.
He said: "We taught them to press a lever in their bowl to get food.
"Any time they hit the lever they got some food dispensed into the bowl.
"Once they got the hang of it we narrowed it down so it dispensed food for
just one hour a day.
"The fish worked out that if they hit the lever around that time they would
get some food."
Cephalopods are amazing, I'm very interested in them too. I was thinking about them when I was posting but I wasn't sure what to say about them. I don't know where they stand... does anyone know of any serious studies on their brains? Like whales and dolphins, they live in an alien environment (compared to ours) that puts them on paths of development that are hard for us to understand.[b said:Quote[/b] (Zongyi_Yang @ Mar. 08 2005,9:06)]Only mammals and birds? What about my favorite Cephalopods like the Octopus, Squid and Cuttlefish?
I don't know... it depends.[b said:Quote[/b] ]if someone designed a machine that had programming sophisticated enough to give it the same behaviors of a fish/amphibian/whatever... if it looked for food and potential mates... if it went to great lengths to avoid harm to itself... etc etc, would you consider it conscious?
yeah, spinning a web is instinct, but they have to learn where the most flies are cought, remember it, and then build a new web to fit the situation.[b said:Quote[/b] ]I dont know, but isn't all of the spiders web spinning skills instinct? They know how to do it the second they are born.
I remember reading somewhere that their arms have their own "brains" somehow... kind of like a king. a king controls the land, but it has people lower than them to control other things.[b said:Quote[/b] ]I dont know of any studies on cephalopod brains, but I do know that an octopus has more lobes in one area than a human to contral all of its eight arms .
Good question. A lot of people are hoping to find the answer to it someday. I have a feeling this issue is going to be this century's hit to the human ego (evolution being last century's hit). Expect at least as much controversy and resistance.[b said:Quote[/b] ]I bet you could make a super-complex computer that could interact just like a human does. would it be concious?
Does the spider have to be aware of itself in order to have a goal? If instinct is providing the goal (survival), and the spider is drawing from an arsenal of behaviors in order to accomplish that goal, and using a selection process to determine which behavior is most useful at any given point... then isn't the chess program kind of doing the same thing? Even though it is much less advanced.[b said:Quote[/b] ]a chess playing computer isn't concious. it has no sense of self, because ... it's hard to put this into words... it doesn't plan ahead for IT. the spider knows IT is going to be above the spiderweb and be able to pounce on the spider.
I think it's the thing behind your eyes looking out... that's the best way I can think of to describe how I see it. It's not just existing, but being. Why or how consciousness exists is in the top 5 of my list of the most interesting questions in life.[b said:Quote[/b] ]another question... what IS a sense of self? is it knowing you exist? is it thinking about yourself as separate from your body (like humans do... this is me, that's my brain, that's my body. You don't think you are your brain.)? is it realizing that those hands you see are yours?
Somewhere in the evolution thread I was rambling (I ramble a lot) about why I think this is. Learning progresses exponentially. New information is assimilated based on old information. So the more you already know, the faster you can learn new things. I think the main reason human society is so much more advanced than animal societies is the fact that we're so much better at retaining and transferring information. Each of us has a library of information in our heads that took thousands of lifetimes to acquire, so in a way we're living as if we've lived thousands of lives, whereas even the smartest animals are living as if they've lived two, three, five lives maybe.[b said:Quote[/b] ]The thing I would like to know is that if most animals have a conciousness, wouldn't they develop speach by now, and for the whales, monkies, cuttlefish, etc that do communicate, why havn't they built up something artificial (other than monkies, but it doesn't help them survive much). If hands and thumbs are an excuse, couln't they have at least learned war, nest building, etc.?
isn't that what WE'RE doing? (except not everything is for survival... it's also for happiness/pleasure/other good feelings... which could be a kind of mental survival )[b said:Quote[/b] ]Does the spider have to be aware of itself in order to have a goal? If instinct is providing the goal (survival), and the spider is drawing from an arsenal of behaviors in order to accomplish that goal, and using a selection process to determine which behavior is most useful at any given point... then isn't the chess program kind of doing the same thing?
lol.... ok, fine. I'll stop asking. we'll just go in circles. lol[b said:Quote[/b] ]It's not just existing, but being.
my US. history teacher said something today about our knowledge about the world doubling every year? I know exactly what you mean.[b said:Quote[/b] ]When things grow exponentially, the curve at first is almost flat, then very gradually slopes upward more and more, and accelerates until it's almost vertical.
heck, there are different ways of thinking with humans too. and we are all the same species! although sometimes you can't understand how those idiots out there are the same species as you! LOL[b said:Quote[/b] ]Maybe dolphins and whales think this whole tool-building thing is silly... why try to manipulate your environment when it will provide everything you need it you know how to take advantage of it?
Possibly.[b said:Quote[/b] ]isn't that what WE'RE doing?
I just doesn't lend itself to words, or I'm just not eloquent enough to attempt it, or I don't understand it enough in the first place.[b said:Quote[/b] ]lol.... ok, fine. I'll stop asking. we'll just go in circles. lol
hey, animals have that too[b said:Quote[/b] ]Well, consiousness (i can never spell that) in my opinion will involve some greed, jelosy or a sence of unfairness.
they do have conciousness.[b said:Quote[/b] ]Dolphins can live perfictly well without a consiousness or tools, so why get it.
I hope it's cephalopods.[b said:Quote[/b] ]Perhaps if we left earth, something will emerge from the shadows over time to fill in the nitch.
Evolution doesn't produce what's best, it produces what's good enough.[b said:Quote[/b] ]But if a high level of inteligence almost garentees imortality for a species, why hasn't all of the creatures on earth developed the way we did? Even without the need for tools, isn't evolution's goal to perserve a gene? Our race is practically undestructable now, but no other animal has taken our path.