While hot-tubbing tonight with two of my sisters and one of my sister's boyfriend, a discussion about consciousness took place. One of my sisters was arguing that animals (non-human) were never behaving, but reacting. I instantly pointed out the flaw in her logic, but she still did not agree with me.
How is an animal acting scared different from a human acting scared? We were discussing one of her old dogs and how it would make a mess and act scared upon our arrival. I argued this was a learned behavior because the dog knew we would not be happy, most likely from some sort of punishment. She argued this was not a behavior because the dog would have no control over doing the initial "bad" action. I think my sister is failing to make a connection that her dog's reaction (behavior) changed. It was not always a scared dog when we returned, even if it did the bad action. The dog's pattern changed, which is evidence for it learning or, in other words, being able to predict a future scenario. What I must make clear is that any reaction to a stimulus is a behavior. Also, any organism that shows a change in behavior to repeated patterns of stimuli would, to me, be evidence of learning and consciousness.
Another interesting comment from my sister was that my obsessiveness with science hinders my ability to view and understand the world. She then started to argue about morality and how being moral is incomprehensible if one only believes in a life explained strictly by evolution. I have plans to cover this in depth; I have thought about writing a book on the subject. I will say that if you cannot see the benefits of caring for one's species in nature, then you are blind to evidence. All you need to do is spend the time and learn about almost ANY species.
No comments:
Post a Comment