Animals, a conscience being?

[inside the sun]

My thought, theory, idea & Opinion:

Animals have personality, maybe their emotion spectrum is much smaller than ours or more simple (this is probably due to the fact that they act on instinct, compared to us, we have a lot of emotions that are created by our thoughts-before actions (imagination, over analyzing are just some examples), the point is, animals may have a smaller or more simple spectrum, but they do have one, they do have emotions and there for have a conscience.:hyper:

[ughaibu]

Do you class euglena as an animal?

[rockytriton]

all animals, or just cute ones? well, if you say all animals, then you might as well go as far as saying bugs too, and when your at that level, you just as well just say bacteria too, hell, I guess that the CEO of clorox is like hitler.

[Racoon]

Animals and Plants have Chi

like Humans.

 

:hyper:

[inside the sun]

well you could say that the CEO of clorox is like hitler, becuase clorox kills bacteria...the word in their is KILL, ELIMINATE etc... and seeing how hitler didn't just murder but went for genocide, which is the elmination of a certain type of organism or race? then yeah, if we are targeting a MASS such as bacteria, then in a way we are like hitler...i gues..metaphor is the keyword here, if you take things literally, i dunno, at least these words which sprout from my mouth, shouldn't be..a lot of harm comes from those that take things literally..such as people taking certain religions literally..but thats a whole new topic.

Respect Life, no matter what form it is. If you don't feel a thing when frying bugs or killing them, thats fine, i do admit though, if bugs are bothering me, and there's no other way to get rid of them then to kill them i do this. This is part of the food chain, and what not, if something is interferring with our way of life, such as bugs invading our shelter, then yeah we are going to kill them, but still is killing, it still is murder and it still is taking life...it's just more justified then taking human life because there are so many bugs? hmm why is it

[inside the sun]

i think some people have trouble accepting that anything else is a concious being due to their own insecurities, we want to believe we are the only ones. I guess if that makes you sleep better knowing the lion that killed your friend on a safari didn't know better, after all we do consider those serial killers insane and dub them Animals which is a way of us feeling more comfortable about their actions. I think its a hard thing to swallow that some things/people/animals, just enjoy to kill and the hunt.

[inside the sun]

After observing these two definitions:

 

Conscious

Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts

 

Conscience

The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong

 

I think animals are most likely Conscious over conscience, even if they are conscience their right/wrong is most likely waaaaaay differnt then ours. Therefore i doubt we would even thinkof them as having morals, just like we don't see terrorist as having morals when they believe what they are doing is right becuase we think it is wrong

[capnrefsmmat]

The problem is, it's impossible to prove that they are concious. We can't just walk up and ask any rabbit and expect it to tell us.

 

Until science's knowledge of conciousness' place in the (chemically) expands, we won't be able to tell if any other animal is concious or not.

[Queso]

their "right and wrong" is soley based upon survival instincs.

 

I'm sure they learn things along the way,

in impulses though.

Us language speakers can barely fathom this notion.

Us psychedelic children of the night know exactly how these thought impulses work, though.

We are animals :hyper:

[inside the sun]

animals we are

[CraigD]

A great and famous problem with defining consciousness is that such definitions are inevitably circular, eg:

Consciousness: An awareness of one’s existence, etc.

Awareness: Being conscious of one of more objects or phenomena.

 

This can lead to a counterintuitive conclusion: that no animal, human or other, is conscious, because the term is semantically null and void. Or, more generally (and less counterintuitively), that assigning to an entity an attribute for which there exists no definition is equivalent to assigning to it no attribute at all.

 

I believe that the term consciousness, as commonly used, describes in large part the assumption that we human beings are special in some, perhaps indefinable, way. The only objectively meaningful definition of the common meaning of consciousness I’ve been able to find is: having a modeling capability similar to a human being's. Under this definition, I believe that many animals are conscious. Practically, any animal that exhibits psycho-physiology similar to a human being – fear, contentment, aggression, affection, etc – should be considered conscious.

[Queso]

and what i think is funny is that we're all sharing the same conciousness, the same experience.

we are antenni. (antenna's? sp?)

[ughaibu]

Nobody thinks the euglena question is relevant? As an organism that bridges protista, plants and animals, I think euglena is important for definitions. If euglena is included as an animal for this thead's purposes, the questions of consciousness/conscience will extend also to plants. If euglena is excluded, the limits of animalness need to be defined.

[inside the sun]

what is an animal?

[CraigD]

Nobody thinks the euglena question is relevant?

By virtue of their small size and simple structure, I don’t believe euglena contain sufficient physical structure to implement a model of their encironment and their self, so I don’t think euglena can be considered conscious, regardless of their taxonomic classification. By the “objective” definition of consciousness I give in post #11, euglena are less conscious than some existing computer programs.

[ughaibu]

CraigD: Thanks. For example, if we consider them to be animals but insufficiently sophisticated to experience consciousness, a similar extrapolation could be made from their plant nature to hypothesise consciousness in sophisticated plants. How about slime-moulds? I guess they're social protistans and wouldn't be surprised if they display some symptoms of consciousness.

[Drip Curl Magic]

Animals and Plants have Chi

like Humans.

 

:phones:

 

 

Very much so.:Glasses: