Animal consciousness

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

What does it mean, if it is established that animals have human like consciousness?

Impact on farming and food? Impact on ethics and religion both with humans and with other animals? Impact of philosophy - the idea of what it means to be human?

Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that
humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

And if this is established science, how low does consciousness go?

This continuity has been acknowledged in some religious traditions since ancient times. The consequence of that acknowledgement of continuity is that one does not kill - anything.

The only "evidence of human levels of consciousness" I'll take is when a non-human animal writes a declaration on the consciousness of humans. Until then I'll dismiss this as another prime example of Neuromania .

> 1 how low does consciousness go?

And how high? If chimpanzee intelligence is thought to approximate that of a 5YO human, how smart is a chimp genius relative to us?

There's a chimpanzee (in Nigeria?) that scientists think may be a genius in chimp terms. They are working on a standardized IQ test for her.

The only "evidence of human levels of consciousness" I'll take is when a non-human animal writes a declaration on the consciousness of humans. Until then I'll dismiss this as another prime example of Neuromania .

Yes, my cat snuggling against me or wake me up to fed in the morning indicates no consciousness whatsoever.

margd,

I think your question may even be the better one to contemplate. How high does consciousness go?

By its very nature nobody can ever know who's conscious and who isn't. That said, I'm inclined to believe some animals are conscious. (FWIW, however, as with much "neuromania," this isn't a new notion, and the evidence for it is weaker than often claimed and cannot get to the core of the problem.)

I don't think that solves much, however. I don't eat chimpanzees or octopi. Further, I'm not absolutely against killing human beings either. I'm only against killing them for no reason or a bad reason. Killing an animals for food—with as little suffering as possible—seems to me a good reason. If it's not—if killing animals is wrong—I don't see how to avoid seeing nature itself as a giant mechanism for doing wrong. There are, I gather, some Buddhists who believe that the end-point of morality will be reached when we forcibly prevent animals from eating each other. I find that absurd. In other words, I can't believe any wrong has occurred when a tiger eats a deer—though both may be conscious. "We're just animals" cuts both ways there. If tigers killing deer is okay, why is it wrong for me to do it?(1)

---

1. I hold open the possibility that hunting a deer might be wrong, insofar as hunting can involve unnecessary suffering.

The question though is more than animal rights. Nature is a blood bath, certainly. Life lives off of death.

Where does this leave mankind and our understanding of ourselves and perhaps more significantly our actual place in the order of things - apart from our self understanding and our wishful thinking?

Unique by degree not by kind?

If so then everything is similarly unique by degree.

And to acknowledge margd's question, we are likely not the end of the scale of degrees.

Does the ability to communicate and to recognize responsive communication suggest recognition of another's consciousness?

While fun to say, I see no evidence whatsoever that, aliens excluded, we're not the "end of the scale of degrees" and much evidence that we are. Does anyone?

I actually see no evidence to think that we are the end of evolution. If that is correct then my guess is that we are likely not the end of the scale of degrees of consciousness.

That said, I am not sure I can define exactly what I mean by consciousness - smarts? thinking power? perception? senses?

I don't know for sure whether animals have "human" consciousness , but I strongly suspect they feel pain and pleasure.

It is possible to be cruel to animals because they are capable of some degree of suffering. If they were not, then you couldn't be cruel to animals any more than you could be cruel to a rock.

I can't prove, and I don't think "science" can show for sure, that animals (mammals at least, who knows how "low" it goes) really do suffer (by which I mean that when they say "ouch", they mean it. They are not "faking" it along the lines of the Mark II Beast from "The Soul of Anna Klane" ).

I think what is known about how brains work and where "pain" comes from makes it plausible that animals really are capable of suffering and makes it increasingly implausible to hold that animals are all
"Mark II Beasts". I think they call that "being a philosophical zombie".

Of course, I can't prove that I or anyone else, another human, I mean, is not a philosophical zombie, and they couldn't prove it to a skeptical observer.

Nonetheless, we tend to believe (well, put me down for a believer at least) that other people are as conscious as we know we ourselves are.

I suppose the further "down" the evolutionary tree we go the less firm ground we have for believing that the creatures involved have some sort of awareness, but other people, primates, and mammals
generally seem to me to be good bets.

Heck! How do we know the pan-psychists aren't on to something and that every bit of matter doesn't come with its own tiny bit of consciousness? (Seems unlikely to me, but I can't disprove it, except to point out some difficulties around the question of how little bits of consciousness "merge" into one
larger consciousness. Are all my cells individually conscious in addition to the "bigger" consciousness that I have? )

We left our cat at the home by itself for a week.

It took a month before that cat would speak to us again.

This declaration strikes me a sort of "well, duh" kind of thing. Anyone with a reasonable amount of experience with animals knows that many are fully if differently conscious. It's nice to see a statement summarizing the neurophysical support for it, I suppose, and perhaps it will lead us away from wasting time asserting that humans are the only conscious beings on the planet and toward learning how to communicate with the other consciousness that surround us.

I agree with Tim that it's still okay to eat animals that are raised and killed in a manner that causes least suffering. Humans are, after all, omnivores and it's no more wrong for us than for bears.

This declaration does at least put another stake through the heart of the mechanistic minority who claim that animals are just organic machines with no "real" ability to experience pain or emotion. Such types always limit there mechanical world view to the non-human, or sometimes the non-adult (there are a few who will argue that babies don't experience pain), so it's an inconsistent stance regardless.

The question of how "high" or "low" consciousness goes is interesting, but I think miss-stated. Evolution isn't a progressive thing - it's not working toward some ideal perfect being. Evolution has a constantly changing "goal" of selecting the "most good enough" organism for a particular set of circumstances at a particular time. I would pose the question as "What varieties of consciousness exist?"

There's a wonderful video of wild octopuses carrying around coconut shells that they then hide in (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DoWdHOtlrk). It demonstrates all sorts of things that are similar to and also different from things humans do. It strikes me that the most fascinating thing to investigate is how consciousness varies in different environmental conditions. Octopuses are clearly conscious, but in a way that is adapted to their environment. Wouldn't it be wonderful and fascinating to be able to communicate with an octopus and ask it how it learned to hide in coconuts or why it stole a video camera (http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=x5DyBkYKqnM)?

I actually see no evidence to think that we are the end of evolution. If that is correct then my guess is that we are likely not the end of the scale of degrees of consciousness.

Ah. It depends whether we're talking about what exists now or not. We are having different conversations then.

>15 timspalding:

Would you say that humans are the pinnacle of evolution at present, then, Tim? I know that there are arguments within the Abrahamic texts both for the idea that humans are more important to god than animals and for the idea that humans are equal to all of creation in the eyes of god.

Where do you stand, and why?

>16 Helcura:

I don't think evolution (or consciousness) relate directly to ones worth in the eyes of God, or moral worth generally. For instance, I don't think an infant or severely retarded adult is morally less important than other humans, pace Peter Singer. Indeed, I suspect the opposite—that God cares first for those of us who are least. If animals are conscious, I do not pretend to know how God values them. I suppose I do think there's something special about us in God's eyes—that we are capable of moral choice. But perhaps God sees cephalopods as his unfallen children—angels of the deep. Perhaps we shall all discover that heaven involves years of spiritual apprenticeship to saintly architeuthises.

I do think, however, that's it's clear that humanity is more intellectually advanced than any other species on our planet. It's entertaining to imagine that, if aliens arrived, they'd skip us and talk to the octopi, but I don't think it's likely. Rather, I think they'd classify octopi as smart animals and humans as the planet's sole example of advanced, sentient life—the species that built cities and spaceships, mastered physics, devoted itself to saving other species (albeit after killing a lot of them), created a thousand different artforms and devoted itself to questions of philosophy like this. We are as a species, in other words, far beyond other animals on our planet now.

>17 timspalding:

I think we are trapped by our own experiences. How do we know that whales are not singing deep philosophical thoughts or mathematical expressions?

Humans alter their environment to an extent that no other animal does, and we value those qualities that enable us to do so. We like stuff - we collect useless things for the pleasure of having them (stamps, seashells, pretty rocks - not a child in the world doesn't sometimes come home from a walk with a handful of something to store away for the pleasure of having it). We judge other creatures by how similar they are to us; we have no choice, having only our own experience to judge by, but we risk assuming that our way is the better or best way, that our type of intelligence is the most valuable (advanced, highest, etc.).

I like the idea of a great architeuthis in the sky - shades of anti-Cthullu!

One of the things that bothers me in many religions is the idea that god prefers humans to the rest of creation. It opens the door to so many destructive tendencies, not the least of which is to declare some portion of the human race to be "animals" and thus less beloved by god and therefore available to be made slaves or experimented on or murdered.

It's an error that can occur in science as well - the idea that humans are better or more advanced than other forms of life - although developments in science tend to chip away at it as demonstrated by the Cambridge declaration.

Do these discoveries in neurophysiology pose threats to religious tenants that are similar to those posed by evolution and natural selection?

I think we are trapped by our own experiences. How do we know that whales are not singing deep philosophical thoughts or mathematical expressions?

We are pretty sure they are not communicating them—their calls are simply not data-dense enough for it—and they're certainly not recording them, developing them over time and so forth. They do not appear to have any "meme" level on top of their genes. They'd have to be thinking big things in their heads alone—dreaming up space ships but never putting them together—like some locked-in patient, and based entirely on genetic programming. They'd have to be thinking big thoughts without ever going through the recording and arguing that we did—designing spaceships without a Pythagorus to tell the about triangles.

All this is quite opposite what's going on with us. I freely concede an alien intelligence might record its memories and arguments on seaweed, and might communicate them by waving tentacles, but they'd have to be doing something. Whales basically do what they do, and it doesn't show the least signs of being anything other than what other animals do—things that are just not like all the diverse, complex and changing things we do.

Anyone care to explain what it's like to be a bat?

>18 Helcura: One of the things that bothers me in many religions is the idea that god prefers humans to the rest of creation

Indeed. And yet many religions contain in their tradition concern about the whole of creation. St Francis of Assisi stands out within Christianity, but modern Christian writers include Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, John Nolt, Sallie McFague, Matthew Fox, Laurel Kearns and Elizabeth Roberts. Unfortunately it is a strand which is often ignored by the mainstream.

It opens the door to so many destructive tendencies

True.

not the least of which is to declare some portion of the human race to be "animals" and thus less beloved by god and therefore available to be made slaves or experimented on or murdered.

Is it really the impetus for religions to behave in this way? I suspect there are other reasons for this particular aberration far more central than preferring humans to the rest of creation.

Oh, certainly there are other reasons for declaring certain humans to be "animals" but I think many religions abet the excuse by de-emphasizing those threads of respect for all of creation.

And you're right - you give good examples of people who are articulating those ideas.

How would Christianity change if the mainstream focus was that all of creation was of vital importance to god and that humans were no more nor less special than any other species?

Anyone care to explain what it's like to be a bat?

You whistles through the evening air,
And never land in ladies' hair—
A fact that men spend their lives
Attempting to convince their wives. (Nash)

That's just batty.

Did you see that Thomas Nagel, author of that well known critique of reductionist accounts of the mind "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", has a new book just published called "Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False." Looking forward to it.

ETA. I found an online copy of "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

>1 richardbsmith: What does it mean, if it is established that animals have human like consciousness? Impact on farming and food?

I think we should avoid inflicting unnecessary pain and distress pretty much regardless of the smarts of the animal, e.g., I don't seem to buy pork or lobster anymore as I can't face prospect of a conscious animal in a scalding bath. Pigs are stunned first, but I understand that a number come to in scalding water used to loosen their skin. I'm teetering, but still preparing clams and mussels, which means my low estimation of their smarts or consciousness is probably part of the equation.

Funny, too, how pet status can change the equation. As a biologist, I've killed many fish, but still couldn't bring myself to dispatch a Blind Cave Characin who outlasted my desire to keep an aquarium by decades, it seemed.

IF a hunter is careful to take only clear shots to minimize chance of wounding his prey, I'm comfortable with hunting, i.e., the animal has a great life and one bad day. And there is no avoiding reality, as there is with factory-farmed meat.

margd,

I did not know that you are a biologist. Not sure how I missed that.

My guess is that Jesse was referring to that paper on bats in his comment 20. I had never heard of it until rrp's comment, but that is the kind of obscure reference Jesse loves to float just over my head.

That online link is 9 pages. I may be able to read it.

I do not doubt that animals have some degree of consciousness but the scale between a small brained animal like a bat and a human is huge. I doubt that the bat knows that it exists. It does not know that it will die. It does not think, make plans for the future, empathize, have any emotions. It is likely that humans are the only animals who know that they have a limited lifespan and plan accordingly.

Elephants seem to know when they (or other elephants) are about to die and respond accordingly but I doubt that they know they will one day die until they get sick or weak.

the only animals who know that they have a limited lifespan and plan accordingly.

A fly doesn't need to "plan"; it acts as if it were perfectly aware of the transiency of its existence. Genes and circumstances push it where it needs to be to create more flies.

Not THAT different from humans in final summing-up.

Are you saying that consciousness is not an advantage to humans after all? We would breed and evolve just as effectively as flies if we did not have an advanced consciousness? You may be right. I'm not sure.

>22 Helcura: (Helcura): "How would Christianity change if the mainstream focus was that all of creation was of vital importance to god and that humans were no more nor less special than any other species?"

I think that's a very different question from the one posed by the types of theologians that Tim was referencing. Ecological theologies don't dismiss humanity's superior place on the chain of being; rather, they emphasize the responsibility that comes with that superior place. Our vast technological, intellectual, and cultural achievements--and it takes a particularly odd strain of skepticism to ignore the evidence that those achievements far outstrip those of any other species--bring with them a special responsibility to care for and respect the ecosystems that have made those achievements possible. In this sense, I would point you to the neoplatonic traditions within Christianity (see especially Eriugena and Hildegard of Bingen for the strains I am looking at here) that understand humans to be microcosms of the macrocosm of creation: we contain within ourselves, as it were, the entirety of creation, and thus are connected to and responsible for the entirety of creation, both within ourselves at the micro level and outside of ourselves at the macro level.

(You can read more about {specifically Roman Catholic} ecological theologies from Bill Patenaude here and at his blog: http://catholicecology.blogspot.com/ )

>19 timspalding: (Tim): "They'd have to be thinking big thoughts without ever going through the recording and arguing that we did—designing spaceships without a Pythagorus to tell the about triangles."

I think Tim is spot on here in identifying a major human accomplishment that does definitively set us apart from other species: the development of systems of communication that can endure beyond our own lifetimes, i.e. art and writing. Hundreds and thousands of generations have passed since the time of Plato and Lao Tzu and Hammurabi and cave-painters and prehistoric sculptors of Venus figurines. Yet I can still look at and read what they produced and wrote and understand what they were thinking, ponder their ideas and their insights into the world around them, and think together with them about the perennial questions that humans ask: Why are we here? What does it mean to be human? What is the relationship between humans and the rest of creation? What is the relationship between humans individually and collectively? What is the place of each individual within family, society, and the world?

#31

Well, "we" are what we are with our human consciousness, so asking whether "we" would breed etc. as effectively without it is like asking whether "we" wouldn't fare better if "we" were lizards. It's a category changer. Take away our consciousness, we become a different species.

Also, "advantage" is only relative. You can't estimate the advantage of any trait in a vacuum.

ref 29
Here are some bats, suitably restrained. There are some crude but effective methods of inflicting pain; a pliers, a blowtorch, maybe a little boiling oil, some pins, oh look! a cattle prod...just the usual detritus lying around the dungeon.

Now lets think about torturing the bats:

Can it be done? We can hold a blowtorch to a rock, but I don't think the rock would care one way or the other. The bat does a pretty good imitation of not liking it one little bit; but then again, maybe its a Mark II beast pretending to be discomfited but in reality no more so than a rock would be. What do you think?

Is it "evil", "cruel", or morally "wrong" in some way or is it morally neutral or even morally good?
Let's posit that there's no greater good and no particular benefit to mankind or batkind that we're seeking here, we're just thinking about torturing a bat or two or ten to pass the time of day.

What would we think of someone who likes to torture bats? Live and let live, to each his own? Anybody for "Eeeuw! What a creep!" , or "Sick puppy! Needs a shrink!"

I'm guessing that there's an overwhelming vote for "Yes the bats feel pain hence can be tortured, doing so simply to pass the time of day and for no other allegedly compelling reason is simply nasty. "

There is no point in torturing a bat because it is never going to give you the information that you want.

ref 35
We don't torture to get information, that's just a story to tell the rubes. We torture to get confessions and for the joy of it.

ref 33
You're avoiding the question. Would homo sapiens zombicus necessarily be less successful that h sap sap ?

The fact that consciousness is (arguably) so wide spread, at least "down" the order (is that the right word?) of mammals could mean that it has great evolutionary value; but then again, maybe not.

I don't think we can say one way or another by just tossing the "answer" off lightly.

What argues for the one vs the other?

#17 "I do think, however, that's it's clear that humanity is more intellectually advanced than any other species on our planet. It's entertaining to imagine that, if aliens arrived, they'd skip us and talk to the octopi, but I don't think it's likely. Rather, I think they'd classify octopi as smart animals and humans as the planet's sole example of advanced, sentient life—the species that built cities and spaceships, mastered physics, devoted itself to saving other species (albeit after killing a lot of them), created a thousand different artforms and devoted itself to questions of philosophy like this. We are as a species, in other words, far beyond other animals on our planet now."

Reminds of a long runnign argument that was had in Talk a few years back. My statement along the lines of 'There is nothing that humans are uniquely excellant that sets them apart from any other animal. ' was challenged. Eventually I conceded that humans were unique in passing on information over long time periods greater than a generation or two. Which was pretty damm archaic (but I agree very useful skill).

To rebut Tim's specific points: Cities - cf ants and many insects; spaceships - bacteria on metorites and almost certainly rodents on ours; predator/prey levels balance out preventing species loss barring other intervention; art - birds; philosophy we just don't know what others are thinking. We are as a species in other words just like any other animals on our planet now.

All currently living animals are the "pinnacle" of evolution being alive when all those that arne't the pinnacle, aren't. Some species may continue to change while others have found their perfect niche already. Which is more advanced????

Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog.

#38 - Rays and or insects/fish again. Depending on whether it was electricity or light you meant.

>37 reading_fox:

I think your rebuttals are sophistry. Ant colonies have nothing like the complexity of cities, and to say that bacteria clinging to a meteorite is like building spaceships is to so utterly abandon meaningful conversation that fish turd pillow-gate spackle-munchkin underwear umbrella.

#40 - it's degrees of effort rather than clear demarkations. No ant colonies arne't as complex as cities. But they're in that order of magnitude, cities are not unique to humanity. Ditto getting into space. yes we've focused efforts to achieve a specific goal, but we weren't the first species in space and we're not unique in doing so. Even our best efforts at keeping our spacecraft unique to us have failed. Humanity is not special in any particular way.

>41 reading_fox:: "Ditto getting into space. yes we've focused efforts to achieve a specific goal, but we weren't the first species in space and we're not unique in doing so."

Except you are eliding a crucial difference: bacteria did nothing of their own action, their own volition, their own power, to get into space. It took outside action, outside agency (a meteor impact throwing the rock on which they were living into space) to get them into space. They did not look up and say, "We want to go into space", and then do something on their own to make that happen. They were just passengers along the ride.

Humans, on the other hand, were their own agents for going into space. Humans decided they wanted to go into space, and then humans of their own accord figured out how to do it.

That's a HUGE difference, not just of magnitude but of kind (the difference between acting and being acted upon).

But you're starting with the notion that being special is about being unique, and unique in the most reductive, anti-common-sense way possible. If plants can communicate a very small number of crude signals under specific conditions, if a meteor can hit earth and throw some viruses into the atmosphere, the difference between a plant and Goethe, between influenza and Neil Armstrong is only one of degree. That's just bonkers. It's coming up with a standard that makes your assertion true, not trying to answer the question. Well, fine. We're all made of atoms. We're not special.

From a biological point of view the only thing that matters is who's the last man standing, and that, as things are going, will be a bacterium.

But I'm sure Jesus will always think you guys are "special".

>44 LolaWalser:: "But I'm sure Jesus will always think you guys are "special"."

Nevermind that pretty much every society in the world, Christian or not, (including all those pre-Christians), has founded its cultural center, the fertility of its intellectual life, on the idea that humans can do more, can think more, can love more, than bacteria.

Or are you claiming that Plato and Lao Tzu and Pharaoh Akhentaten were all Christians?

(And it's the Christians who are regularly accused of being "anti-intellectual". Hmm....)

>4 margd:

There is no "biological point of view." And if there were, and it were as reductive as you think it is, surely the fact that humankind has a good chance of escaping the planet and spreading out across the universe ought to be figured in.

But I'm sure Jesus will always think you guys are "special".

And here we have what strikes me as the real motive behind all this—the denial of human specialness as an anti-religious and ideological fuck-you. I submit that if a monkey from Mars were to look at the earth they would quickly notice that there was something very, very different going on with humanity on the planet in the last few thousand years—that we had transcended what other species do along many, many fronts. It takes a parochial partisan to see it otherwise.

"And if there were, and it were as reductive as you think it is, surely the fact that humankind has a good chance of escaping the planet and spreading out across the universe ought to be figured in.
"

But bacteria are (probably) there ahead of us. Already. While we're not actually in space, although we have managed to be so briefly.

" I submit that if a monkey from Mars were to look at the earth they would quickly notice that there was something very, very different going on with humanity on the planet "
A vaguely humanoid monkey probably would; and an intelligent insect would note the rise of the cockroach; a bacterial swarm would greet the triamphant e coli with open arms.

Yes humans are different. Different is not special.

#46

There is no "biological point of view."

Sure there is. The world exists outside, past and beyond human subjectivity. We are currently here, able to investigate and make predictions in our human language for our human purposes, but whether bacteria remain hanging around as the last remnants of life on Earth (i.e. as the fittest of all species), absolutely doesn't depend on whether anyone is around to make note of it.

we had transcended what other species do along many, many fronts.

We are the best humans around, but we are no dolphins, sequoias or pandas. It's just your parochial Homo-Nazi religion talking; otherwise you'd get how naff it is to think whales "transcend" grass or vice versa, or any vice thing versa.

>47 reading_fox:: "But bacteria are (probably) there ahead of us. Already. While we're not actually in space, although we have managed to be so briefly. "

You still don't get it, do you? Setting aside the fact that there are humans in space, right now (Sunita Williams this week set a new American record for most time spent spacewalking while doing repairs on the International Space Station), there's the fact that bacteria cannot choose whether to go into space or not. If a bacterium ends up in space, it's entirely by accident.

Humans not only actively chose to go into space but actively figured out how to do it. We can go into space whenever we want to, of our own agency.

How is it that you don't see the difference there?

>48 LolaWalser:: "It's just your parochial Homo-Nazi religion talking; "

If it weren't the fact that I think it's a ridiculous meme, I would declare you the winner of Godwin's Law on this thread.

For someone who's MARRIED TO AN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST, you really fail at understanding the import of evolution.

>51 LolaWalser:: You mean to tell me that evolution indicates that the bacteria who flew through space on meteors did so intentionally and voluntarily? Evolution indicates that bacteria can conceive of the idea of "going into space", decide that such an idea is a desirable action, and orchestrate their movement to guarantee that when the next meteor came crashing down onto their plot of land, it jettisoned them into space rather than incinerating them?

Wow, evolutionary biology really has done a lot of work in studying the agency, consciousness, and forethought of bacteria. I'm looking forward to the next papers in Science and Nature about the complex engineering that bacteria figured out in order to fly in space, and all the years of planning (many thousands of generations of bacteria, that must have been) that must have been involved.

But since I obviously don't understand these things, perhaps you can explain this to me: how are bacteria able to observe the movement of celestial bodies in order to predict where the next meteor that will blow them into space will fall? Since surely, if bacteria were the first astronauts, they must have needed to plan for their space vehicles.

choice is irrelvant. Either a species is in space, and hence has a universally larger ecosphere, or it isn't. Bacteria are "winning" this one. We may yet get around to joining them.

#52

Your assumption is that human consciousness is better, or "special" in relation to bacteria's lack of that consciousness. It's a point of view, nothing more. From the point of view of swimming, fish are better at it than cabbage. But fish are not better than cabbage, period.

Reading fox is pointing out that bacteria have or are likely to populate the universe before we do (one may wonder whether somewhere they haven't already "seeded" other life forms). Even on Earth, bacteria are the uncontested champions in terms of variety of niches they occupy. (And in terms of sheer mass.)

It's just your parochial Homo-Nazi religion talking

There are many different ways of seeing the world worthy of respect, obviously including many atheist ways. But I cannot but pity that which puts obscenity and hate where reason and love ought to reside.

Attacking someone by bringing their wife into it is, IMHO, flagable as a personal attack. I have done so. Attacking Christianity as a "Homo-Nazi" religion is probably merely offensive. But I'm afraid that crosses even my line. I don't have the heart to continue an honest debate under such circumstances. Good luck to you.

>55 timspalding:: For what it's worth, I've opened myself up to the "your wife's an evolutionary biologist" attack because I have relied on her expertise and authority more than once -- it is a crutch, but one I openly admit to.

>54 LolaWalser:: "Your assumption is that human consciousness is better, or "special" in relation to bacteria's lack of that consciousness."

When it comes to both the curiosity to consciously want to explore the universe and the cognitive abilities to figure how to do it, human consciousness is better than a bacteria's lack of consciousness. You all are the ones who brought up the idea of bacteria as astronauts. I'm just responding to the example by pointing out the vast and fundamental differences between bacterial space travel and human space travel. There is a key factor--agency--that makes the two categorically different.

As I've said before, it takes a particularly odd sort of skepticism to ignore the evidence that human achievements far outstrip those of any other species.

"When it comes to both the curiosity to consciously want to explore the universe and the cognitive abilities to figure how to do it, human consciousness is better than a bacteria's lack of consciousness"

I do agree that it seems at best highly unlikely that bacteria want to explore the universe in anything other than a broad genomic imperative to spread as widely as possible. However I can't possibly accept that we are doing it "better" than them.

In what way is the vastly inefficient dangerous and resource intensive spaceship "better" than arriving in space ready and waiting to colonise the next available niche. They don't even need spacesuits. Spaceships look pretty. but from any kind abstract view they're hardly better.

My understanding is that consciousness can be spoken of in two ways - "ordinary consciousness" (i.e. common to all life forms) and "self consciousness" (i.e. self aware with all that follows on from that, that human beings display).

If this distinction is made, then the question is 'Which animals have self consciousness?' I would want to include dolphins and probably whales at the very least. Based on what? I saw a David Attenborough documentary showing the level of intelligence that dolphins displayed. They were able to understand such abstract instructions as 'Place the yellow frisbee in the left hand basket'. They are also the only other creatures (so far identified) who were able to recognise instructions given by Attenborough via a 2D black and white medium e.g. an underwater TV set. There was more - much more - but that was stunning enough in its own way!

What implications does this have for humanity? I'm not sure - dolphins don't have opposable thumbs, and cannot therefore manipulate their environment the way we can, but that doesn't necessarily diminish their intelligence and consciousness in any way. It ought to make us pause before causing any further species extinction however.

What an odd conversation. I am trying hard to imagine how a concept invented by humans, biology, can have a point of view but keep being distracted by the thought of all these atheists who apparently think that they themselves are no better than a bacterium. Oh well.

As with the US belief that it is exceptional, the belief that humans are better or special isn't the problem--it's how we exercise those beliefs.

At least part of my point, back up the thread and I'll admit not well articulated, is that humans assume that to be more human-like is a good thing. But from the perspective, say, of a planet with maximum species diversity, being human-like and building space ships and such is a bad thing. Humans are well on our way to creating one of the great mass extinctions on this planet. An alien might well look at our cities and roads and factories and think that this cannot possibly be an intelligent species because no intelligent species would destroy its own environment. In that case, they might very much prefer to talk to an octopus (especially if they were a water-dwelling species themselves).

From the perspective of pure ability to adapt and survive, bacteria are absolutely "better" than humans, and perhaps god made bacteria in its own image.

Do humans alter their environment to an amazing extent? Yes. Do humans make a lot of interesting (to us anyway) stuff? Yes. Does that make us superior to, or better than, or more valuable than other species? Not necessarily.

>58 reading_fox:: "In what way is the vastly inefficient dangerous and resource intensive spaceship "better" than arriving in space ready and waiting to colonise the next available niche. They don't even need spacesuits. Spaceships look pretty. but from any kind abstract view they're hardly better."

>62 Helcura:: "But from the perspective, say, of a planet with maximum species diversity, being human-like and building space ships and such is a bad thing."

And it's conservatives and Christians who are regularly accused of being anti-intellectual! It's from the "scientific" atheists here that we get a great big raspberry to the exploration of the cosmos: it's too dangerous and resource-intensive! Scientific progress? Such a terrible thing! Humans should stop "altering their environment" -- never mind that the very scientific discoveries that have lead the materialists on LT to embrace these "evolutionary" and "biological" perspectives were made because humans altered their environment.

Without human technological innovation, without the impetus to explore space, we wouldn't have the scientific knowledge that forms the basis for your dismissal of technological innovation and space exploration.

Incredible!

Dear Jane,

I wonder if you could give me some advice. Some atheists I know believe that they are no better than a malarial mosquito. It there any moral reason why I should not squish them all with my fly swat?

>58 reading_fox:: "In what way is the vastly inefficient dangerous and resource intensive spaceship "better" than arriving in space ready and waiting to colonise the next available niche. They don't even need spacesuits. Spaceships look pretty. but from any kind abstract view they're hardly better."

As I understand it, for a rock with bacteria clinging to it to end up in space, it has to be blown out there from the planet below by some type of large meteor/asteroid/comet impact -- an impact so large, in fact, that it does incredible damage both the local ecosystem where it hits and quite possibly to the global ecosystem.

So wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the impact it takes to produce an accidental space-traveling bacterium is in fact far more destructive to the environment than the rockets needed for human space travel?

Isn't human space travel in fact far more efficient than bacterial space travel?

Attacking someone by bringing their wife into it is, IMHO, flagable as a personal attack.

Oh, fuck you. It wasn't an attack, as any sane person can tell, it was a chortle. Yes, I think it's funny Nathaniel has posted about his wife the evolutionary biologist--oh, how many times?

Anyway, see first sentence, and good luck with your moods and knickers.

>65 nathanielcampbell:

Depending on the size of the rock, yes it could be more destructive. But, and I think I'll move this question to the pro and con thread, why is space travel the metric? I think it was originally used simply as an example that bacteria are amazing survivors - they can even handle the vacuum of space.

It's extremely difficult to step away from the idea that we are the most important thing in the world - both as a species and as individuals. We are biologically programmed to self-centeredness as it is beneficial to survival and reproduction. We have reached a point, though, where we can alter our environment to an extent that self-centeredness is no longer fully beneficial to our species. Continuing on that path could very well cause our own extinction.

It seems to me that an important first step in ensuring the continuation of the human species is to recognize that we are not a culmination or pinnacle of evolution or existance. We are an exceptionally creative/destructive organism, but we are not able to exist without a biosphere filled with other organisms.

>67 Helcura: Which is very much the sentiment found in many religious writers such as those mentioned in >21 John5918:.

>67 Helcura:: "why is space travel the metric"

Again, I would point out that you were the ones who introduced the space-travelling bacteria as comparanda. If you didn't want it to be an issue for discussion, why did you raise it?

"It's extremely difficult to step away from the idea that we are the most important thing in the world - both as a species and as individuals. We are biologically programmed to self-centeredness as it is beneficial to survival and reproduction. We have reached a point, though, where we can alter our environment to an extent that self-centeredness is no longer fully beneficial to our species."

As John points out in 68, the realization that human nature is dangerously perverted towards its own self-centeredness is a key component of many religions. In Christianity, for example, self-centeredness is one way to understand the concept of sin: when we take our desires and turn them in ourselves rather than focusing on loving and serving others, we replace humble love with selfish pride and thus condemn ourselves to perversion, ugliness, and evil.

So if consciously turning away from a destructive human self-centeredness is your goal, then many religious traditions have been there with you for thousands of years.

The point of mentioning that bacteria are "space travellers" (as humans yet are not, and aren't likely to be ever) is to remind ourselves of the ecological dominance of microorganisms, not to extoll their engineering abilities, as some have so drolly supposed. Anyone arguing in good faith ought to understand that without these clarifications...