When I wrote about Consciousness a couple of months back, I used the terms ‘consciousness’ and ‘self-awareness’ fairly interchangeably. What’s the difference?
It provoked the following specific responses from me:
1. Re the lever on the junction to save the life of a human or other animals. I agree that pretty well everyone would save the human. I suspect that this is the result of several cognitive biases, working through Kahneman's System 1 (intuitive/heuristic) thinking, including: the cumulative evolutionary pressure of 'my tribe versus others' inherent in humans (& other species); the anthropocentric values in which our culture has been historically immersed; ignorance of the objective anatomical and physiological facts, and emotions, to name but four.
That said, it would depend critically on the details: for example, if it were your healthy young beloved pet dog vs a viciously sadistic convicted criminal in a persistent vegetative state, I suspect the tendency would be much more to choose the other way.
2. Consciousness is the ability to experience awareness of one's surroundings. By definition, a general anaesthetic renders a conscious and aware person both unconscious and unaware. It is not a binary; there are degrees of consciousness, as exemplified in the Glasgow coma scale (in the 'Response to painful stimulus' component). Indeed, the Stanford reference re 'generic consciousness' explicitly mentions 'there are many forms of consciousness' which the authors did not discuss, confining themselves to visual, auditory, and tactile perception and their relation to neuronal function. In summary, it seems highly reductionist to try to define a complex emergent system from a few specific samples—rather like trying to model global weather from analysis of one's home weather station data, however detailed those data are.
3. Re intelligence being 'the ability to take stimuli and then modify one’s own behaviour to optimise the result', some responses to external stimuli are indeed 'hard-wired' (e.g. pupillary reflexes, spinal reflexes or withdrawal from painful stimuli). These happen before we're even aware that they are happening.
The ability voluntarily to modify behaviour is one definition of learning. That said, there are many domains of 'intelligence', and much debate about defining it.
Over time, it has been variously defined as the ability to use tools, or language, or self-awareness, but the threshold has gradually shifted as examples of animals exhibiting each of the cited abilities has been found.
There are many domains of intelligence. IQ, the commonly quoted currency, is, arguably, simply the ability to solve IQ tests. It tells one nothing about the person's ability to play a musical instrument, evade an stalker, play pool, or counsel a disturbed adolescent. Each of these skills will be a mixture of innate skill, practice, exposure to experience of the relevant activity, and motivation to develop the given skill/ability. Some animals are far better at learning some skills than most (all?) humans—for example, some birds reproducing sounds; collies rounding up sheep; bonobos at settling disputes; bears catching leaping salmon; &c. In short, the many domains of intelligence are more or less useful, depending on the circumstances. Having a variety of intelligences in a group of organisms allows adaptability to changing circumstances over time, thus the survival of that group. In a post-apocalyptic world, the ability to model complex data computationally would be inferior to the ability to survive in the wild!
4. Cognition is the technical term for the multifarious thinking functions that an organism is able to undertake. These include: memory; language; decision-making; risk assessment; personality; calculation; visuo-spatial skills; emotion; and many more.
There is then the issue of neurodiversity, which suggests that there are systematic differences in neuronal function, and thus cognitive skills, *within* the (in this case) human species. Furthermore, we can experience cognitive decline, both slow & natural with ageing, and faster over a variety of time frames with various pathological processes (i.e. the dementias).
5. Roger Fouts' book 'Next of Kin' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_of_Kin_%28Fouts_book%29] describes, from his direct close observation over decades, a number of qualities in chimpanzees which we have tended to think of as essentially human. These include: conceptual thinking (e.g., making up the compound word 'GOOD DIRTY' for the potty; being aware of a birthday coming up; a female chimp showing empathy for a woman who had a miscarriage; a chimp showing altruism in putting himself at risk to save another from drowning; rudimentary self-awareness; &c). The examples of elephants' behaviour (both immediate, and latersearch on 'elephants' responses to deaths of members of their herd, especially young' for examples) in relation to deaths of their herd, especially the young, is thought-provoking.
In summary, I find it difficult to escape the following conclusions:
a) The variability of cognitive function *within* human species (including those with learning disabilities, acquired brain injury, persistent vegetative state, &c) significantly overlaps the difference *between* it and other species. Our antropocentricity has historically so often taken it for granted that humans are qualitatively completely different from other animals, partly enshrined in the Old Testament assertion of humans having been given 'dominion over the animals', though there is a linguistic and semantic discussion to be had there, apart from any theological one!
b) Consciousness is a variable global phenomenon in sentient animals. Within that consciousness, there are many, many cognitive functions and skills. Some of these are innate (e.g. control of respiration, a subconscious reflex function that can however be over-ridden, volitionally) and many (most?) are learned, if the neurological substrate is present.
c) As you point out, the ability to anticipate the future and think completely abstractly are hugely more developed in humans than in other primates, never mind non-primates. As you will have seen above, I see intelligence overall (the ability to think, learn/change behaviour, analyse conceptually, &c) as a continuum with overlap between notional categories, rather than a set of absolutely mutually exclusive separate categories.
d) I see echoes of 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' here, in two ways.
Firstly, self-referential systems and emergent complexity rapidly becoming apparently opaque to conventional reductive analysis—i.e., the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
Secondly, a conceptual generalisation of Gödel's theorem, namely the inability completely to characterize a system from within that system itself.
e) As ever, there are no black and white answers to philosophical questions, just different views based on one's values, biases knowledge and experiences. It's fascinating to chew the conceptual cud, though!
Well, hello, Kit, fancy meeting you here! Thank you for all that. I enjoyed reading it.
Bob Fischer emailed me to say that he is researching into animals' ability for 'mental time travel' and he contributed to a paper which seems to show that rats have visual memories. [ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17456916221120425 ]
I'm not surprised by that, I have certainly witnessed dogs having vivid dreams. It's not the same as having a pig understand that you're going to slaughter it tomorrow though.
Thanks for a thought-provoking essay, Nick!
It provoked the following specific responses from me:
1. Re the lever on the junction to save the life of a human or other animals. I agree that pretty well everyone would save the human. I suspect that this is the result of several cognitive biases, working through Kahneman's System 1 (intuitive/heuristic) thinking, including: the cumulative evolutionary pressure of 'my tribe versus others' inherent in humans (& other species); the anthropocentric values in which our culture has been historically immersed; ignorance of the objective anatomical and physiological facts, and emotions, to name but four.
That said, it would depend critically on the details: for example, if it were your healthy young beloved pet dog vs a viciously sadistic convicted criminal in a persistent vegetative state, I suspect the tendency would be much more to choose the other way.
2. Consciousness is the ability to experience awareness of one's surroundings. By definition, a general anaesthetic renders a conscious and aware person both unconscious and unaware. It is not a binary; there are degrees of consciousness, as exemplified in the Glasgow coma scale (in the 'Response to painful stimulus' component). Indeed, the Stanford reference re 'generic consciousness' explicitly mentions 'there are many forms of consciousness' which the authors did not discuss, confining themselves to visual, auditory, and tactile perception and their relation to neuronal function. In summary, it seems highly reductionist to try to define a complex emergent system from a few specific samples—rather like trying to model global weather from analysis of one's home weather station data, however detailed those data are.
3. Re intelligence being 'the ability to take stimuli and then modify one’s own behaviour to optimise the result', some responses to external stimuli are indeed 'hard-wired' (e.g. pupillary reflexes, spinal reflexes or withdrawal from painful stimuli). These happen before we're even aware that they are happening.
The ability voluntarily to modify behaviour is one definition of learning. That said, there are many domains of 'intelligence', and much debate about defining it.
Over time, it has been variously defined as the ability to use tools, or language, or self-awareness, but the threshold has gradually shifted as examples of animals exhibiting each of the cited abilities has been found.
There are many domains of intelligence. IQ, the commonly quoted currency, is, arguably, simply the ability to solve IQ tests. It tells one nothing about the person's ability to play a musical instrument, evade an stalker, play pool, or counsel a disturbed adolescent. Each of these skills will be a mixture of innate skill, practice, exposure to experience of the relevant activity, and motivation to develop the given skill/ability. Some animals are far better at learning some skills than most (all?) humans—for example, some birds reproducing sounds; collies rounding up sheep; bonobos at settling disputes; bears catching leaping salmon; &c. In short, the many domains of intelligence are more or less useful, depending on the circumstances. Having a variety of intelligences in a group of organisms allows adaptability to changing circumstances over time, thus the survival of that group. In a post-apocalyptic world, the ability to model complex data computationally would be inferior to the ability to survive in the wild!
4. Cognition is the technical term for the multifarious thinking functions that an organism is able to undertake. These include: memory; language; decision-making; risk assessment; personality; calculation; visuo-spatial skills; emotion; and many more.
There is then the issue of neurodiversity, which suggests that there are systematic differences in neuronal function, and thus cognitive skills, *within* the (in this case) human species. Furthermore, we can experience cognitive decline, both slow & natural with ageing, and faster over a variety of time frames with various pathological processes (i.e. the dementias).
5. Roger Fouts' book 'Next of Kin' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_of_Kin_%28Fouts_book%29] describes, from his direct close observation over decades, a number of qualities in chimpanzees which we have tended to think of as essentially human. These include: conceptual thinking (e.g., making up the compound word 'GOOD DIRTY' for the potty; being aware of a birthday coming up; a female chimp showing empathy for a woman who had a miscarriage; a chimp showing altruism in putting himself at risk to save another from drowning; rudimentary self-awareness; &c). The examples of elephants' behaviour (both immediate, and latersearch on 'elephants' responses to deaths of members of their herd, especially young' for examples) in relation to deaths of their herd, especially the young, is thought-provoking.
In summary, I find it difficult to escape the following conclusions:
a) The variability of cognitive function *within* human species (including those with learning disabilities, acquired brain injury, persistent vegetative state, &c) significantly overlaps the difference *between* it and other species. Our antropocentricity has historically so often taken it for granted that humans are qualitatively completely different from other animals, partly enshrined in the Old Testament assertion of humans having been given 'dominion over the animals', though there is a linguistic and semantic discussion to be had there, apart from any theological one!
b) Consciousness is a variable global phenomenon in sentient animals. Within that consciousness, there are many, many cognitive functions and skills. Some of these are innate (e.g. control of respiration, a subconscious reflex function that can however be over-ridden, volitionally) and many (most?) are learned, if the neurological substrate is present.
c) As you point out, the ability to anticipate the future and think completely abstractly are hugely more developed in humans than in other primates, never mind non-primates. As you will have seen above, I see intelligence overall (the ability to think, learn/change behaviour, analyse conceptually, &c) as a continuum with overlap between notional categories, rather than a set of absolutely mutually exclusive separate categories.
d) I see echoes of 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' here, in two ways.
Firstly, self-referential systems and emergent complexity rapidly becoming apparently opaque to conventional reductive analysis—i.e., the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
Secondly, a conceptual generalisation of Gödel's theorem, namely the inability completely to characterize a system from within that system itself.
e) As ever, there are no black and white answers to philosophical questions, just different views based on one's values, biases knowledge and experiences. It's fascinating to chew the conceptual cud, though!
Well, hello, Kit, fancy meeting you here! Thank you for all that. I enjoyed reading it.
Bob Fischer emailed me to say that he is researching into animals' ability for 'mental time travel' and he contributed to a paper which seems to show that rats have visual memories. [ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17456916221120425 ]
I'm not surprised by that, I have certainly witnessed dogs having vivid dreams. It's not the same as having a pig understand that you're going to slaughter it tomorrow though.