Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Which Animals Have Minds?
Some of us (OK, I) have an intuition that dogs, say, are accurately described as having beliefs and desires, but crickets, say, are not. What about carp? There seems to be a threshold problem. How do we fix the set of beings that come under intentional psychological explanation? On a Wittgensteinian view this is not a problem, because psychological descriptions are necessarily descriptions of publicly observable phenomena. Like life, consciousness is either there or it is not. There is the well-worn objection that it is at least conceivable that there could be a being that behaved as if it were conscious, but that was not. David Chalmers, for one, has built an entire philosophical position on this claim, so debunking it would be significant. Wittgenstein's response is interesting if perhaps not knock-down: he suggests that in fact such a being is not conceivable, that we are confuting reference and use when we say that it is (we can name a round square, but we can't conceive one). As with many of Wittgenstein's arguments, this one seems awfully fast. Still, I feel its pull: for example, I suspect that a disembodied mind is actually inconceivable, even though people claim to be conceiving of them all the time. Reading the Investigations, it may be that Wittgenstein is more interested in the property of "being alive," as a property that he might take seriously, while he may be more skeptical about the claim that "having a mind" is a property at all.
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Greetings!!! this is like having a lecture in the classroom... great! I miss that of the university life... thanks for doing this... keeps the mind out of dust!
ReplyDeleteYour fellow student,
Oscar Granados sfm
A.B.: "There is the well-worn objection that it is at least conceivable that there could be a being that behaved as if it were conscious, but that was not. David Chalmers, for one, had built an entire philosophical position on this claim, so debunking it would be significant."
ReplyDeleteIt would depend what you call "conscious". For instance, Spinoza presents an explanation of consciousness which makes something of consciousness a illusion, that is, a major component of consciousness, the experience of "freewill" is illusionary. He described us rather, as "spiritual automata", and from the perspective of Eternity and Substance, we act like we are free, and conscious, but are not (except as expressions of the whole).
If interested, I present the comparison, here:
http://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/does-spinoza-present-a-zombie-world/
Now, Spinoza's view certainly seems imaginable. In fact he constructed whole world vision with such. The question is, do we, as humans, actually have consciousness as we usually take it to be.
For my part, I think Dennett's Intentional Stance goes a long way in providing which animals have consciousness or not, with each ascription bearing out is pragmatic consequences. Once one lets go of the idea that consciousness is something that one "has", then gradations of it, along an axis of power to act (and excitability) is much easier to maintain.
kvond
This reminds me of the investigation about consciousness in bees. I have read a little about the subject but remain uncertain of how it is defined. Does someone has consciousness when it knows it exists, that is, is something else from the rest of the world (and as a result have the other properties of having beliefs and desires as an independent being) or what is it then?
ReplyDeleteLike you said in the classroom, dogs can lie, and if that is true then, can it be said that they can also hope and fear? But not a fear of being hit when done something wrong, classical conditioning doesn't take into account the intentions. If so, then, can I say that a dog is conscious?
If every human being, just by existing has a mind, then each animal alive has a mind has well. But, when it comes to consciousness, do animals have it? , do all animals have it? It may be confusing for most of us (including myself), but when we talk about a specific animal like dogs, we may argue in favor of saying that they can’t be conscious, even knowing all the amazing things they can do in front of us. It is true that us humans can be aware or be conscious of some things going on around us, but on the other hand we may say, that most of the things going on around us are not register by our mind. Well, with that said, I think that this is the border line between us and animals, or specifically dogs. They are always very conscious of what goes on around them and so they feel, desire, and dream, etc. Dogs, for me, are very different from most animals; they definitely are beings that can even feel that things will happened even before they become a reality. Because of our lack of attention, we human beings may identify or even name things incorrectly, but dogs don’t even miss the smell of their owner. They can exactly identify where things are, for example, the places where they hide their food, and we something don’t even remember were we but the cars keys a minute ago. We should focus on one main goal at a time, but we want to do too many things at the same moment and space. Which animals have minds? Based on what I have just said, we human beings and dogs do have a mind. The difference for me is in how we use that mind of ours. Are we paying enough attention?
ReplyDeleteIf every human being, just by existing has a mind, then each animal alive has a mind has well. But, when it comes to consciousness, do animals have it? , do all animals have it? It may be confusing for most of us (including myself), but when we talk about a specific animal like dogs, we may argue in favor of saying that they can’t be conscious, even knowing all the amazing things they can do in front of us. It is true that us humans can be aware or be conscious of some things going on around us, but on the other hand we may say, that most of the things going on around us are not register by our mind. Well, with that said, I think that this is the border line between us and animals, or specifically dogs. They are always very conscious of what goes on around them and so they feel, desire, and dream, etc. Dogs, for me, are very different from most animals; they definitely are beings that can even feel that things will happened even before they become a reality. Because of our lack of attention, we human beings may identify or even name things incorrectly, but dogs don’t even miss the smell of their owner. They can exactly identify where things are, for example, the places where they hide their food, and we something don’t even remember were we but the cars keys a minute ago. We should focus on one main goal at a time, but we want to do too many things at the same moment and space. Which animals have minds? Based on what I have just said, we human beings and dogs do have a mind. The difference for me is in how we use that mind of ours. Are we paying enough attention?
ReplyDelete