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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsScientists sign declaration that animals share the same awareness with humans
Recently an international group of prominent scientists have signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. This declaration proclaims their support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are. The list of animals includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus.
The group consisted of cognitive scientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists, and computational neuroscientists. They were all attending the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and Non-Human Animals. The declaration was signed in the presence of Stephen Hawking, and included such signatories as Christof Koch, David Edelman, Edward Boyden, Philip Low, Irene Pepperberg, and many others.
What is important here is the acknowledgement by the scientific community that many nonhuman animals possess conscious states. Because the body of scientific evidence is increasingly showing that most animals are conscious in the same way that we are, we can no longer ignore this fact when it comes to how we treat the animals in our world.
What has also been found is very interesting. It has been shown consciousness can emerge in those animals that are very much unlike humans, including those that evolved along different evolutionary tracks, namely birds and some encephalopods. The group of scientists have stated, The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.
http://www.whitewolfpack.com/2012/08/scientists-sign-declaration-that.html
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)But if this means there is some path to the understanding that animals must be treated humanely (oh the irony) by all the others then I'm all for it. I have no idea who decided they were all instinct and no thought, just "dumb animals." There are some people I know who would fit that description, but I have yet to meet an animal that does.
newfie11
(8,159 posts)Anyone that has lived with animals is aware of this. Except of course the type with the dog chained outside 24/7. Lucky if it gets food and water.
christx30
(6,241 posts)that just had a baby 2 1/2 weeks ago. She is protective of her pup, but it's not just instinct. There is love there. She hugs him. She lets me babysit while she eats. When I'm petting him, she's smiling with pride. "I made this." And when I move him to the bed to clean their nest (two folded comforters surrounded with pillows on the floor of the closet with water and 2 kinds food nearby), she is angry at me for like 45 minutes.
But I understand why they made the pronouncement. There has to be an official acknowledgement of the issue.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)I love dogs. They are so sentient. I see my sweet girl as a full being as much as any being on the planet. We are fortunate to have them in our lives.
Springslips
(533 posts)The family had a cat and a dog. The cat had a kitten. We let her nest it in the garage, keeping the door open by a crack. When stray dogs would try to sniff in, Snowflake--she was white-- would attack and scare the stray. One day I witness our schnauzer trying to get into the garage. I screamed out for it ,worried it would be attacked, but snowflake just popped herself out and let the dog in, and didn't even bother to watch over the dog as she hung in there alone with the kitten.
Not only did this show awareness, but also trust, and friendship.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)gopiscrap
(23,674 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)factory farming should be closed down
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)on raising animals for food. We should have minimum standards with huge fines and plenty of well paid "government" inspectors to do regular surveillance. It could be like a jobs program.
sibelian
(7,804 posts)Their emotions are as clear as day. They communicate, choose people they like and don't like, choose places to be that they like and don't like. They get frightened, they get angry, they get affectionate, they get chipper, they get bored, they get silly... How can this not be consciousness?
I think it's weird that they even need to sign a declaration.
flamingdem
(39,304 posts)when you think about it.
Daemonaquila
(1,712 posts)Lots of obligate predators and omnivores out there, all eating each other. There's nothing "moral" or "immoral" about it - it's how nature worked it all out. I have no problem eating an animal, knowing full well that it is as conscious as I, and I have no problem with a hawk killing a rabbit, a lion taking out an antelope, or a frog snapping up a fly.
Vegetarian and vegan ethics are mostly pretty weird. The ethics of not causing unnecessary suffering as we do our thing, which includes eating other conscious entities? Now, that's very reasonable. Not wasting and murdering, but taking no more than what we need and honoring the life we took to feed ourselves? That's good too. But going to extremes and deciding we can't ever cause any death or discomfort to other conscious beings, even though that's what we evolved to do and so many types of other conscious beings evolved to do, that's just silly.
People who have never dealt with animals, farming, animal rehabilitation, hunting, death, etc. are too far removed from the realities of the situation. It's not about running away from some imagined horror, but about learning biology and taking responsibility for how we carry out our natural behaviors.
cpwm17
(3,829 posts)There is no higher power that created nature as it is. That is obvious when you see how much unnecessary suffering is designed into nature.
Humans have evolved consciousness which has morality. Our conscious selves can determine what is right and wrong. Many people have determined that some actions that we take which cause harm and suffering to other conscious creatures are not justified.
The fact that nature is cruel doesn't make many human actions any less cruel. Nature couldn't care less, but humans do care.
antigone382
(3,682 posts)Given the impact that humans currently have on all ecological systems, I loath killing any living being but for the most critical reasons. I certainly believe that we have a duty to mitigate harm and suffering within the natural world, and I believe a very large part of that is seriously reducing our consumption of meat and other foods derived from animals. However, I do not think it is ethically necessary or ecologically possible to eliminate some reliance on animals from our lives, and by extension the taking of some animal life.
Existing nutritional evidence show that we cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin B12 from naturally occurring vegetarian sources--it must be generated synthetically, and at what ultimate cost to the environment and the living beings within it? Globally, it is possible, but enormously difficult for children and women who are pregnant or lactating to meet their needs for protein on an exclusively vegan diet, notwithstanding the ease with which adequate vegetarian sources can be procured in the first world. There are indigenous cultures that have a long history of meat-eating..does a privileged first-world dweller, who can have their every dietary whim catered to with a trip to the grocery store, have the right to tell an Inuit that his or her ancient, sustainable consumption of seafood and caribou, done with an emphasis on the respect for and conservation of these creatures, is somehow evil?
I often read the assertion that the land area and resources required to feed humans on a vegetarian diet is far smaller than that required for a diet which includes meat. This is true in a world with constant access to the energy-intensive, synthetic fertilizers which ultimately deplete the health of our soils and our waterways. However, if we want to maintain the fertility of our soils in a less ecologically destructive way, we're going to need some manure, and the only feasible, safe source of that manure is animals.
I spent my summer working on a very small scale organic farm that rejected all but the most traditional and natural forms of pest control. This was a subsistence farm, not some hobby garden and the owner--who was a vegetarian--relied on these crops for most of her family's diet. She could not afford to lose large portions of her crop to bug damage. A good part of my job was going through each and every leaf of cabbage or kale and killing the cabbage worms, harlequin bugs, and stinkbugs I found, as well as their eggs. I learned to recognize the "good" from the "bad," leaving the spiders and cottony eggs of predatory wasps, and crushing those that I knew would eat and destroy the plants. I did not like killing these little beings, and I did the best I could to be quick and humane about it. But what I learned was that no matter what method was used--whether synthetic pesticides, "natural" alternatives, the deliberate attraction of predatory insects, or my own fingers--I was a human being, manipulating my environment in a way that was going to destroy animal life. If I did not do this, I would not eat.
I'll say right away that I reject the assertion that a bug's suffering is less of a plight than the suffering of a larger and more complex being. All living beings intrinsically seek to continue living, and they all seek to avoid death. Whatever their capacity to experience the impulse to remain alive, who am I to say that their expression of that impulse is less valid than expressions that more closely match my own? By that matter, what right do I have to say that a tree's impulse to live is less valid than a bug's? Isn't that the very definition of speciesism?
No being wants to die; but life itself demands death in one way or another; evolution would not be the force that it is if death was not a constant and inescapable factor. To think that we can buck that ecological reality is a delusion of human grandeur, a refraction even of our desire to disbelieve our own mortality, that I have no interest in pursuing. The technological dependence required to sustain that delusion is one that I think ultimately will be far more destructive to our biosphere than acknowledging that true balance, true respectful interaction, is a far messier affair--and one that will occasionally, unavoidably, draw some blood.
agent46
(1,262 posts)This is an excellent post. Thanks.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)You said it far better than I. I hope people take the time to read and think about it.
DeschutesRiver
(2,354 posts)LeftOfWest
(482 posts)"Vegetarian and vegan ethics are mostly pretty weird."
Bullshit.
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)Reread your post. I agree with you, the above post is utter bullshit.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)As a vegetarian for a decade, I chose that because I thought it alleviated the suffering of animals. Being a true animal lover, it seemed only logical. But then I learned from small organic farmers that growing for the vegetarian lifestyle puts the entire cycle out of whack, creating long-term suffering throughout the environment. Farming is not natural, period, but animal husbandry is a very necessary part of farming. Animals create fertilizer, they keep down pests, they feed off a field of clover planted to reinvigorate the soil. Vegetarian diets tend to lean of a few main mono crops such as soy and wheat which are very hard on the soil and require loads of chemicals to fertilize and maintain.
After much research and soul-searching I realized it was the height of arrogance to think that I--a human--who uses vast resources and eats more calories than most beings on this planet, could make the claim that I was not contributing to suffering. Just living on this earth makes it so. As a vegetarian I was contributing to it no less, just pretending to be holier. And that's something that I have to learn to accept. Anyway, that's just me.
But I do believe we can insist that our food be raised as ethically as possible. I find often that it doesn't require more money, but it does require a great deal more effort to find it. Trying to live as close to evolutionary intention has become a good rubric because modern living is so damned unhealthy.
DeschutesRiver
(2,354 posts)DeschutesRiver
(2,354 posts)lame54
(35,141 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)cpwm17
(3,829 posts)Last edited Tue Nov 5, 2013, 07:03 PM - Edit history (1)
Of course non human animals also have conscious selves very similar to ours. Evolution couldn't evolve consciousness in humans so quickly.
Even with instincts, non human animals need consciousness to act on their instincts. Humans also need consciousness act on our instincts. Without consciousness there'd be no drive to act on instincts or on anything else. We'd all be just lumps of organic matter without consciousness.
JimboBillyBubbaBob
(1,389 posts)...have signed it.
DLevine
(1,788 posts)One_Life_To_Give
(6,036 posts)Is Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness applicable to all living animals? Is it moral to let Rats go to sleep hungry? Is there any level of reciprocity required?
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)valerief
(53,235 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)And they have no use in commerce, or any other function except to screw up the world for the rest of us...
CitizenLeft
(2,791 posts)He wouldn't budge an inch, no matter how many personal anecdotes we piled on at him. Animals had zero thought processes - no learning ability, merely Pavlov's response to any human stimulus. Infuriating.
Tell me that again when my Dalmatian Snoopy figured out that she could get me to the front door by barking at it, as if someone were on the porch, while she doubled-back and ate my breakfast off the dining room table. She did it again for dinner, with my spaghetti, but she moved too fast, didn't wait for me to get all the way to the door. I told her, "I'm smarter than you, dammit!" She never got away with that again, but it was pretty smart of her to try it on her own.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)She acts like she needs to go out back to potty then when I get up to open the door she jumps up on the end of the couch where I was sitting. All planned!
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)And on one very sad occasion, during a summer heat wave, a small bird (chickadee maybe?) kept zooming around the window of our van, on the passenger side. My spouse said the bird was simply trying to see her reflection.
But two days later, we realized her mate had been inside the van, and when we didn't respond to the chickadee's warning, he was killed by the heat in the van.
I felt terrible that I hadn't checked the inside of the van to see whether something was wrong in there. The little bird had been so adamant that something wasn't right.
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)LeftOfWest
(482 posts)The article and the link.
Important to me.
Have a good day.
valerief
(53,235 posts)Oh, wait. They don't believe in science. Never mind.
arthritisR_US
(7,269 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,112 posts)Thanks for the thread, agent.
Ron Obvious
(6,261 posts)I remember once, when I was a kid, feeling blue and sitting gloomily by myself when our dog came over to me. He pawed me a few times and gave me a questioning look: "hey you, are you ok?". I couldn't help but laugh and gave him a hug. He seemed so relieved.
Ever since, I wondered: Is there genuinely someone inside there who notices and cares about me, or was he an automaton exhibiting the exact behaviour that would be rewarded with food and protection?
I know what I want to believe but I can't be certain.
mike_c
(36,214 posts)..."encephalopod."
TampaAnimusVortex
(785 posts)Being aware, and being self-aware are two different things. A bacteria is aware of its environment, but certainly not self aware.
On a philosophical note, a bacteria is a very simplistic, deterministic (almost mechanistic) thing, relative to a human... so given this - what does this say to the origin of awareness? What is the most simple possible structure/entity that can be "aware"?
Can it be said the rod/cone cell of your eye is "aware" of the outside world? Is reception of data by an entity all that's required? If so, then pretty much everything around you is receiving data...
MindPilot
(12,693 posts)Animals that have spent a lot of time around humans, especially animals whose evolutionary path--like dogs--has been completely dependent on a symbiotic relationship with humans, may have learned it over the epochs and now it is there and developing.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)They are not aware of anything. The processes are automatic: stimulation -> reaction and are not centralized in any sort of sensory center.
TampaAnimusVortex
(785 posts)There are 3 levels of awareness and we need to be very clear what level were discussing.
sensation - reception of raw data
perception - compilation of raw data into an "entity" (that smear of light over there is a tiger coming to eat me)
conception - the "labelling" of that entity with a "concept" that can be applied to other similar entities (Now I know to call it a "tiger" and that there are other similar entities that can be linked together with this one coming at me).
I am discussing the very base of awareness... sensation itself.
The requirement for a sensory center - that's something you made up as a criteria... there is no requirement for it anywhere in nature. Now, there may well be a need for some type of processing center for "Self-awareness", but certainly not for simple awareness of the external world by some entity (person, dog, worm, bacteria, rod/cone cell, etc...)
Are for being automatic, your processes are very automatic as well. The chemical reactions from the photon striking the rod/cone cells in your eyes, to the reactions along the nerve pathways, even the reactions among the brain synapses themselves... no magic there.
My point was that what we call awareness at the "cellular" level, is very cause and effect itself. The rod cell is aware of the photon striking it simply because of cause and effect. The bacteria is aware of changes in its environment due to very mechanistic receptors and atoms and molecules attaching to those receptors... cause... effect...
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Humans are not sentient at the cellular level.
TampaAnimusVortex
(785 posts)Sentient refers to self-awareness, which obviously cells do not possess and I don't think I insinuated they did.
I stated there was 3 levels of awareness.
Sensory, perceptual, and conceptual.
Cells are most definitely aware at the sensory levels as they are capable of responding to their environment. I think your confused about the different levels of awareness.
Rex
(65,616 posts)MindPilot
(12,693 posts)We call it "twoball"
It began when he was a little pup and he found himself behind the chair with 2 tennis balls and and the older dog just waiting for the chance to take one of them. This little dog was able to figure out that he could hold one ball with his foot and control the other with his mouth and he could alternate, moving one ball in front of the other. He could control both balls, move them to a safe location and never give the other dog the opportunity to take one.
Now--he's 7--it's almost like soccer; he propels the balls all around the house and uses the method to move the balls up and down stairs, on and off furniture and in and out of the house. And you can tell he's having loads of fun doing it.
I see them watch TV and sometimes they seem to become really involved with what is happening on-screen especially if it involves another animal. They have figured out that images on TV are not real animals. The first time they went hunting for the animals on the TV, the spatially aware one, took a quick look behind the TV, saw nothing and ran into the next room to look on the other side of the wall! He came out a couple minutes later with a really quizzical look; I think he had just figured out the difference between 2 & 3 dimensions.
Yeah, they are not as dumb as we think they are.
cali
(114,904 posts)I've had a couple of those myself (and a couple who weren't so swift). My dog that I lost is Sept used to fake a limp when she was jealous or if she knew she'd done something bad like get into the garbage.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Anyone who began life playing with animals or around animal husbandry, learns this at an early stage. What has changed is more people live in isolation from animals and the natural world, in an anthropogenic habitat. This may be a plus of having pets even if a slave-like bummer for the pet.
Vashta Nerada
(3,922 posts)penultimate
(1,110 posts)Skittles
(152,967 posts)they display happiness, excitement, anger, disappointment, jealousy, you name it; yes INDEED
and I know the blue jay who screeches loudly outside my window is angry at not finding his usual handful of peanuts
IDemo
(16,926 posts)used to be able to sense when my blood sugar levels were dipping too low in the middle of the night and often would nudge my face with her nose and wait there with a concerned look until I got up to address the problem.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)SDjack
(1,448 posts)GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)In every country in the world cats have alredy enslaved large portions of the population.
I was captured by a little black kitten three years ago. Somebody abandoned him at a truck stop. Now I make sure that his food bowl is full, his water bowl is full, move over when at 2AM he wants to get in bed with us. And the strange part is that his mind control methods work, as I enjoy living with him.
reddread
(6,896 posts)we do not hold a candle next to these brilliant, amazing animals.
Grateful for Hope
(39,320 posts)K&R
Silent3
(15,020 posts)I certainly do think that many animals are self-aware and conscious in a way that's got to be similar to human awareness and consciousness, but there are definitely some cognitive skills humans have that animals don't, and a few than animals have that humans don't. This has got to have a profound impact on what the experience of consciousness is like.
Since we're talking about what scientists say about this issue, there should be some clear metrics of awareness and consciousness that can be objectively compared, otherwise the OP seems more of a non-scientific philosophical statement -- based on scientific research to some degree, no doubt, but not a fully developed scientific conclusion.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)4. I lived on a beach in Mexico for 5 years, and a pod of dolphins would
usually visit with me, leaping in the shallows along the shoreline as they kept pace with me, as I took my daily walks on the beach.
Because I did not walk at the same time every day, I did not see this as a coincidence. I still have my place on the beach, but don't get down there very often these days, and they have not come to see me the last for the past three years, and I hope nothing bad happened to them.
Where I am currently living in Arizona, two mated pairs of ravens frequently fly low over me when I am hanging out on my back deck, croaking to to say hello and get my attention, and then often giving me a thoroughly stunning aerial display. Ravens are really smart and aware.
I believe it probable that Chief Forsman perceived the orca pod visit accurately.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3962886
10. How smart are killer whales? Orcas have 2nd-biggest brains of all marine mammals
Neuroscientist Lori Marino and a team of researchers explored the brain of a dead killer whale with an MRI and found an astounding potential for intelligence.
Killer whales, or orcas, have the second-biggest brains among all ocean mammals, weighing as much as 15 pounds. It's not clear whether they are as well-endowed with memory cells as humans, but scientists have found they are amazingly well-wired for sensing and analyzing their watery, three-dimensional environment.
Scientists are trying to better understand how killer whales are able to learn local dialects, teach one another specialized methods of hunting and pass on behaviors that can persist for generations -- longer possibly than seen with any other species except humans.
snip--
Many cetaceans -- whales, dolphins and porpoises included -- have these abilities to some degree. But orcas learn local and complex languages that are retained for many generations. And their bio-sonar, or echolocation, abilities also amaze researchers.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news187298115.html#jCp
Orcas and dolphins swim and and hang out with their families all day, and manage to survive very well without killing their spirits serving Scrooge in order to live. Ravens fly around and play and find their food and water wherever, and hang out with their mates, babies and friends.
Many humans believe themselves to be superior to, and have dominion over, all the other beings in the world, while we're killing ourselves and taking all the other beings down with us, and the planet as well.
Maybe it's time to consider the possibility that we're really not nearly as smart, perceptive, wise, and all knowing as we think we are.
Everything is connected.
Mitakuye Oyasin...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3964781
I've lived in nature almost all my life. What these scientists are saying here is as obvious to me as the nose on my face, and a basis of my personal conscious reality.