Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sy Borg]

Many humans fail to notice their welfare too.

We had pet chickens when I was young. They were well aware of their welfare.

My chickens were the best kept chickens that is was possible to do. They had free rein over 8 acres of land, and decided when to roost and when to wake. But they did not give a damn.
They did not even seem to notice when I cut their heads off. And the other chickens would have eaten the head had I let them.
Chickens rescued from battery farms, would come featherless, but within a couple of months would be indistinguishable from the rest of the flock, having adpoted innate programs for walking, pecking, scratching and fighting, as if nothing bad had ever happened to them.

So much for sentience.

Plenty of sentience in chickens. I find them to be pleasant and responsive animals that soon remember particular humans.

A slug can be habituated to a food source too. so what?

Apparently slugs communicate effectively with different too. If you listed closely you will hear them chittering away ...

In other words, yourr comparison is a long way off the mark.

[Sculptor1]

My chickens were the best kept chickens that is was possible to do. They had free rein over 8 acres of land, and decided when to roost and when to wake. But they did not give a damn.
They did not even seem to notice when I cut their heads off. And the other chickens would have eaten the head had I let them.
Chickens rescued from battery farms, would come featherless, but within a couple of months would be indistinguishable from the rest of the flock, having adpoted innate programs for walking, pecking, scratching and fighting, as if nothing bad had ever happened to them.

So much for sentience.

Plenty of sentience in chickens. I find them to be pleasant and responsive animals that soon remember particular humans.

A slug can be habituated to a food source too. so what?

Apparently slugs communicate effectively with different too. If you listed closely you will hear them chittering away ...

In other words, yourr comparison is a long way off the mark.

Comparing chickens to humans is pretty silly too.

[Sy Borg]

Which is why I did not do it.

And your comparison between chooks and snails remains poor. Chickens are intelligent, sensitive animals, vastly more so than slugs.

[Consul]

And your comparison between chooks and snails remains poor. Chickens are intelligent, sensitive animals, vastly more so than slugs.

Yea, chickens are not so sluggish.
Seriously, I'm not saying chicken lack subjective sentience—actually, I think they don't—, but you mustn't jump from intelligent behavior to subjective sentience, because the former doesn't generally depend on the latter.

[Consul]

Seriously, I'm not saying chicken lack subjective sentience—actually, I think they don't—, but you mustn't jump from intelligent behavior to subjective sentience, because the former doesn't generally depend on the latter.

There's the danger of spurious analogical inferences to subjective sentience:

1. Human behavior B is known to involve subjective experience E as part of its cause.
2. Animal A exhibits behavior B*, and B* is identical or very similar to B.
3. Therefore, B* involves subjective experience E*, and E* is identical or very similar to E.

The general principle implied is: The same or similar effects have the same or similar causes.
Is this principle true? I don't think so, because different causes can have the same effect or similar effects; so it's possible for the same or a similar effect to have a conscious cause in some cases and a nonconscious cause in other cases.

"Cecilia Heyes…has noted that too often claims are made on the basis of anecdotes and simple analogy with human behavior—that if animals act in ways similar to the ways humans do in similar situations, they must have the same feelings. Unless one can rule out alternative nonconscious interpretations in animals, claims of consciousness should be withheld."

(LeDoux, Joseph. The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. New York: Viking, 2019. p. 200)

[Sy Borg]

Seriously, I'm not saying chicken lack subjective sentience—actually, I think they don't—, but you mustn't jump from intelligent behavior to subjective sentience, because the former doesn't generally depend on the latter.

There's the danger of spurious analogical inferences to subjective sentience:

1. Human behavior B is known to involve subjective experience E as part of its cause.
2. Animal A exhibits behavior B*, and B* is identical or very similar to B.
3. Therefore, B* involves subjective experience E*, and E* is identical or very similar to E.

The general principle implied is: The same or similar effects have the same or similar causes.
Is this principle true? I don't think so, because different causes can have the same effect or similar effects; so it's possible for the same or a similar effect to have a conscious cause in some cases and a nonconscious cause in other cases.

"Cecilia Heyes…has noted that too often claims are made on the basis of anecdotes and simple analogy with human behavior—that if animals act in ways similar to the ways humans do in similar situations, they must have the same feelings. Unless one can rule out alternative nonconscious interpretations in animals, claims of consciousness should be withheld."

(LeDoux, Joseph. The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. New York: Viking, 2019. p. 200)

I agree with this but the reverse is also true. So an assumption that an animal behaving similarly to humans experiences similarly is just as wrong as the assumption that their experiences must be very different. Anthropomorphism is an assumption, and you know my views about assuming knowledge of other organisms' experience.

Not even humans are immune from ruthless assumptions. Not so long ago, doctors claimed that unanaesthetised babies did not feel pain because they fell asleep during circumcision. It was then found that they were passing out from shock.

[UniversalAlien]

“Imagine an alien, Fox said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has s look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.
Not the Edge lecture again, I said.”

-William Gibson


But can an intelligent formation possesses sentience without a biological body If not, why not

Seems to me that sentience requiring a physically alive biological body may be no more than an illusion

Of course some might say that illusion requires sentience to exist