Yesterday, there was a broadcast on laboratory rats and their emotions.

I was shocked when a man, who had worked for a long time on animals emotions, said roughly :

"if there isn't any emotions, there isn't any consciouness"


I don't think so... and I prove it by an instance : maybe you have heard something about the man who had an accident and hadn't any more emotions?
Even so, he still has a consciouness.

So... what do you think about it?

Feelings are the conscious part of emotions. Pain is also a type of feeling. Every animal I have ever seen, including worms, flinch from a painful stimulus. Therefore, animals feel pain. Therefore, animals are conscious.

From my own experience, I find that everyone has emotive feelings but they vary in strength from one individual to another, from non-existent to firy (and from day to day)!
I suspect that my feelings of emotions are quite dull, ie., I never get really excited or really saddened by my lifes events.
It is not, however, in the least bit boring!

I would like to know how you are able experience the feelings of everyone.

I dont agree with the no emotions so no consciousness.

The man obviously has never heard of neuroscience. Their have been plenty of cases where people have been unable to neurologically feel pain, or any emotions for that matter. In rare instances the left and right hemispheres can temporarily or permenantly be seperated from one another.

If this occurs, the logical and emotional sides of the brain become seperated. There are cases like where a man who was previously quite poor at art - became extremely gifted at sculpture after he lost communication with the left side of his brain.

We are capable of being conscious even if we loose communication with either side of the brain, as past results have shown.

Furthermore, if you look at this logically, why would absense of emotion be a derivative of unconsciousness. To be conscious, is to be aware of the world around you, therefore, anything which is capable of recieving external stimuli while understanding and interpreting that stimuli is conscious.

If you are sleeping and your foot is kicked, you are not aware of that physical stimuli acting on your nervous system, therefore you could be determined to not be conscious.

So how does human consciousness differ from computer consciousness? I mean computers can recieve stimuli as electrical impulses just as we do. However, the major diffrence between a computer and a human, is the interpretation of that stimuli and the actual personality of a human.

Humans minds are changed and adapted according to the environment. This is the basis of all psychology. Computers however can have duplicate thoughts and personalities across multiple systems.

In other words, computers are not unique. They do not posess an individual identity which seperates them from other computers.

This is only one deciding factor in the diffrence between human consciousness and computer consciousness. Their is a level, deep in your mind where personality is no longer relevant and you can go beyond individual beliefs.

So what is it that really seperates people from computers?

It all comes back to the conscious mind. An individual identity which has unique experiences seperate from all other individuals. It is with this in mind that we are able to think.

It is the act of cognition in itself which defines consciousness.

Cogito Ergo Sum

So by thinking and interpreting the world around us in a unique way based off of our unique personality which in turn is decided by our unique experiences - we have an individual consciousness. Computers do not think, no matter how complex they may appear - they are still just a big calculator.

Computers have a path of pre-set instructions, if this - then do this. Even computational neuroscience often has preset equations as to how the network will be formed and the stimuli is often pre-concieved. Humans have no preset path, their mind is built off of the environment which surrounds them.

This is not only a evolutionary advantage but it causes a unique mind with individual thoughts. Because of this, humans think and computers calculate.

When thinking of consciousness - think of cognition, which is thoughts - by thinking about thinking we arrive at the true heart of consciouness.

Now, I know someone is going to start touting computational neuroscience. But, we have not achieved consciousness with it - therefore, further research is needed before definite claims can be made in regards to computers ability to mimic consciousness.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/542501:

These results suggest that patients, whatever their levels of consciousness, may demonstrate pain behaviors in response to a nociceptive procedure. Whether a behavioral response to a noxious procedure is accompanied by perception of pain in an unconscious patient is unknown. Until there is evidence to the contrary, experts recommend that healthcare providers assume that unconscious patients may have pain, especially if behavioral responses to a known noxious stimulus occur. The experts recommend that these patients be treated the same way as conscious patients when the patients are exposed to sources of pain.

Indeed, in a study by Lawrence, formerly unconscious patients revealed that they could hear, understand, and respond emotionally to what was being said while they were unconscious.

When I was a child I was put under ether for an operation. When they were ready to start the procedure, I was still somewhat conscious, but could not move. I could hear everhthing they were saying. I tried to say something, but couldn't. After a struggle (with myself) I was able to make a sound. The anesthesiologist noticed I wasn't fully under and told the surgeon. Then he gave me more ether and I was out.

Some people have the view that the robot/computer stimulus-response activity constitutes consciousness. These people call themselves functionalists in the philosophy of consciousness. I disagree strongly with them. Earthworms are conscious, but collections of transistors are not. I think the difference is in the chemical (wet) nature of consciousness. It may still be functional, but most human (and animal) brain activity is not conscious.

Rick, this article describes some interesting neurophysiological support for your suggestion that lower orders of animals might be conscious:

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jan/cockr...uron-similarity

It is important, however, to bound the type/extent of consciousness referred to (includes the need for a definition of consciousness especially for THIS discussion). For example, are you suggesting that, amongst other aspects, the consciousness of worms includes self-awareness? Also it is important to avoid anthropomorphism, here in terms of the behavioural responses of animals, as for one thing, all animals are NOT born equal.

Of course not. Only primates and a few other mammals have been shown to have self-awareness. Elephants and cats, for example.

That's a very interesting article. Here's a simple experiment one can perform to convince himself that earthworms are conscious. It's well known that live earthworms make excellent bait for freshwater fishing. A worm must be secured to the hook by piercing the worm's body multiple times.

Take a fresh living earthworm in your right (or primary) hand, and hold a sharp fish hook in your left. Push the hook through the body of the worm about two thirds from one end. Pierce again further down the worm and repeat several more times until the worm is well bunched on the hook.

Did you get the definite impression that the worm doesn't like being pierced and that it was fighting you? When the hook point actually penetrated the worm's skin, did you feel the worm's body give in a way that seemed like anthropomorophic resignation? If so, then it would be hard to reconcile the observations with unconsciousness in the worm.

A sort of "faith" type sensation? A sort of "not scientifically evidenced" type feeling? Actually, I go along with the worm consciousness hypothesis but I'd like substantial evidence before I really accept it. It really does depend on the definition of consciousness used. It might be easier to draw some borderlines and find evidence to enable a spectrum of consciousness for types of animals, rather than bunch them all together. Bunching will only continue an insolvable argument. The evidence should be wide-ranging, and include physiological, chemical and behavioural material and not just anatomical (such as the number of neurons). But then what of the more general issue of consciousness as an artefact; something that is an elusion (if this is possible without consciousness!). Even quantum consciousness relies on a human simplification to provide just a working tool using quantum physics rather than a description of any actual reality. Perhaps it might be better to spend time on the chemistry/biology of brain to abstract its greatest potential and to understand/treat it when it goes wrong rather than waste effort on a possibly delusional free-will.

By the way, what are the advantages served by such characteristics as free-will and self-awareness? It's not good to assume that because a particular feature has arisen through evolution, that it has an advantage that makes it worth keeping. It might be gone in a million years! Many characteristics pop up, are tried and then discarded. No animals are more highly evolved than any others. It is just that some are more complex and that does not necessarily mean better.

Sounds like you've been reading Stephen Jay Gould. He said that humans have this chauvinism about complexity.

It also sounds like you might have absorbed some ideas from Timothy Leary. He said that consciousness may not be a permanent feature of evolution, that we may be in danger of evolving away from it. By what I see in American politics right now, he may be right.

I suggest you actually perform the proposed experiment. When I did it, it seemed to me that my observation (or inference) of the worm's will was quite definite. It was enough to make me stop using worms as bait.

I've been teaching animal behaviour recently, something I haven't done since my first degree many years ago. My refreshers have given me a different perspective on animals, simple and complex. I now find myself marvelling at flies. How the hell do they do that with so few neurons?! Yes Rick, maybe we should give worms more respect. No, seriously. Buddhists out there will be applauding ...

>>By the way, what are the advantages served by such characteristics as free-will and self-awareness?

Ambivalence, stopping some people from doing some stupid things every once in awhile.

I look at it this way... life might be a game, but misery can feel pretty real, so there is no point in intentionally causing it if it can be avoided.

On this specific issue,
I am reminded of what happens when an owl breaks its leg. It gets a streak in its eye, a sort of damage read out. This streak makes the owl aware of the damage to its leg. Would this be "conscious" awareness?

Clearly animals have some sort of feedback to pain, and it is obviously undesirable to them. However, thinking on a micro level, the same could be said of smacking a rock against a wall... just not at as high a level of complexity and self awareness since walls don't have those things. However, none the less, a micro level reaction occurs.

So what separates them from us? We have more complexity? (thinking on a meat sack level, not involving theology)

you think 100,000 neurons is a few? I'm surprised they aren't composing Shakespeare with that many neurons.

in itself, this is a ridiculous claim to make. But it helps to have comments in the context they were given.

So why did Shakespeare have 100 billion?

Very true thats what we have learned from Wiliam James.

On the other hand I believe that emotions are the connection and the expressions of the needs to the conscious mind, cutting the connection between both sides makes one with no motives (self and sex) and this excludes him from the term "living organism". Antonio Damasio says: "Consciousness is in the direct line of succession from emotions and feeling"

What I have learned from Damadio's work in this issue and from reading the "Holy Quraan" is that "Emotions is not merely the happiness or sadness issues, it is deeper and broader than that, it is a real importnant contributor to the acquisition of SELF, and our fascination by the "mind" blurs some of these these facts.

I think that this maybe what the man in Shao's post meant, or so I can interpret his words..Actually it is a shocking word he said, but for sure he had thought very well before he postulates such thing.


Wafa

On a similar topic, a friend of mine said a while ago that the only thing driving and motivating humans are emotions.

I disagreed with him, but couldn't present a good case for a rebuttal.

Which one of us was correct and why?

Thought and consciousness shouldn't be confused with emotions. They're closely linked but not the same thing.
I consider emotions more like an instinctive reaction to thought processes.

It's common to witness emotions, gaining the experience that we are not our emotions.In fact if we can witness ourselves we become aware that our consciousness is connected to the physical by the depth of our attachment to it.