About animals

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Originally Posted by Danik 2016

This video is a very interesting lecture about animal morality including experiments.
It´s a bit long (about 16 minutes)

https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_w...ls_have_morals

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That was a great talk. I couldn't get to it from your link. Here it is again. https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_w...ls_have_morals

The last experiment with the grapes and cucumbers was especially enjoyable.

Both of these links show that animals have empathy. That moves animals away from being machines and suggests that neither are we machines. Underlying these experiments, however, there is still an old belief that empathy is deterministically caused by the brain rather than the brain making it possible for us (and animals) to choose empathy in specific ways peculiar to each species.

Although the word "choice" is used, I wonder to what extent researchers believe that animals make choices. The next cultural breakthrough would be to recognize that these animals are making real choices, that is, their expressions of empathy are not completely explained by nature or by some assumed reduction of their behavior to either genes or neurons. Now that they have empathy, they need minimal free will to exercise the empathetic possibility their bodies permit.

Thanks for correcting the link, I took it out as it doesn´t work.
The experiments are a curious combination of the standard behaviorist method (positive reinforcement of certain types of behavior by offering rewards) while testing empathy, cooperation, fairness, etc
"Underlying these experiments, however, there is still an old belief that empathy is deterministically caused by the brain rather than the brain making it possible for us (and animals) to choose empathy in specific ways peculiar to each species." I quite agree there, I think this is a result of the materialistic orientation which generated the behaviorist theory.
Later in the evening I´ll have a look in I can find experiments which follow other orientations.
One can´t forget also the dark side of these experiments become more evident with the advent of internet ans social media, which is to promote the cientists, whether they are real or fake, and their books.

A TED talk with a different aproach:

https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_safin...ng_and_feeling

The Carl Safina talk was very good. It is a different approach. The part where the whales knew that someone had died in the research boat made me think of the dog who knew his master was coming home.

Although we can use the similarity of neurons (coming from jellyfish) in all of these species to show that the individuals must experience something similar to what we do, focusing on neurons focuses on individuals with an assumption that that is all that exists. Neurons provide evidence that can be measured, but there is something that doesn't isolate us into individuals allowing the whales to know about that human death on the research boat.

Safina talked about consciousness and awareness as if they were the same thing. Many people do. This makes consciousness something an individual has (whether individual human or an individual in another species). It might be better to talk about awareness as something an individual has and consciousness something more global. As individuals we are aware of consciousness. What we are not aware of is not "unconscious", but just something we are not currently aware of. This would put our minds outside our bodies and our bodies being means to be aware of our minds.

It is hard to say what is real or fake science without being willing to question the speculations that one hears. Errors arise even in that questioning. One of the reasons I like to question whether we put human beings on the Moon is just to be willing to question what "scientists" tell me. I don't personally care if we put a human on the Moon. I also question medical doctors especially if they offer a prescribed drug which I could become addicted to or cause side-effects. After finding out recently that there exists relativistic gravitational theories (for example, Moffatt's) that don't need black holes or dark stuff, I stopped believing in that dark stuff. Am I following real or fake speculations? I don't know.

The avoidance of the boats by the whales may have had a natural cause-or not (the skeptic again). Maybe they could smell the dead or another of their senses was more developed than our.

On the matter of the neurons and even the form of the brains I agree with you. Although there are similarities you can´t reduce an animal or a human to brain format or circunvolutions I think. But materialistic scientists need very concrete references. I suppose I am somewhere between behaviorism which doesn´t allow any soul at all and paranormality, which tends to look for paranormal explanations for everything that can´t easily explained. Which doesn´t mean that paranormal experiments don´t exist. You yourself have an open chanel there.

Some more about Carl Safina:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Safina I looked him up to see if he was a native. In Portuguese "consciência" can mean both consciousness and awareness. For me awareness would be more related to perception while conscious would be the contrary of unconscious in a Freudian and also in a moral sense.

It has really become more difficult to distinguish real science from rumours, but I believe real science will somehow be integrated in the existent scientific corpus while the rumours will disappear sooner or later.

Unless we are experts in a particular field, we get science through secondary sources which I assume are reliable descriptions of the actual science plus speculations about what it means. I don't know if that is good or bad. There is only so much any of us can be experts in.

I don't think there is a Freudian "unconscious". There might be a Jungian "collective unconscious", but the only benefit with that term is the additional collective adjective. Of course, I am no expert in psychology. I am just trying to philosophically make it possible for psi to be grounded in some theory. This would involve a global consciousness. Awareness is consciousness restricted to an individual member of a species. If consciousness is larger than the individual, then psi can be grounded in this global consciousness. It would also allow animals to participate in it as well. Empirical evidence from the senses would then be expanded.

The Freudian ¨unconscious¨ or the Jungian notion of "collective unconscious" are concepts which one might adopt or not IMO. I prefer them largely to the behaviorist or the cognitive models.
If you are interesting in reading more about them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbana...d-lectures.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung

There is a simple experiment that ilustrates the idea of the Freudian unconscious:many people have the habit of absentmindedly summing or whistling a song. If one becomes aware of this, one notices that the text of the song or part of it is closely related to some emotion like fear, expectation or conflict one is experiencing at that moment.

One of the good things about behaviorist approaches is that they limit some experiments to what can be measured. The bad thing about it is that limitation is then assumed to be part of the reality being measured rather than part of the measurement technique.

While looking at the Jung link, I saw this link to "collective unconscious": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious While Jung correctly goes beyond Freud's focus on the individual, he stays within the human species. The two anecdotes that we have discussed (1) the dog who knew when his master would return and (2) the whales who knew there was a dead human on board the research ship suggest this might not be adequate.

If we assume those two anecdotes are real, what sort of theory of consciousness would that require? According to the Wikipedia article "religious critics including Martin Buber accused Jung of wrongly placing psychology above transcendental factors in explaining human experience". I assume the "collective unconscious" would not be adequate to deal with those anecdotes nor with the religious objections. Of course, we don't have to make that assumption of reality about those anecdotes, but then we have to assume they can be explained away, which is nothing more than making another assumption about them. From a behaviorist standpoint, something occurred; data was collected.

Neither Freud nor Jung included animals in their theories(Freud also has a collective focus in later works like Totem and Taboo, Civilization and Its Discontents,etc).Those authors merely turned up in the discussion because of the word "consciousness'.
As for both anedoctes, they would fit inthe same cathegory I think only if it was proved that the two behaviours have a paranormal reason. I am not sure that we have enough evidence in either of the cases. I am in favor for examining first the possibility of natural causes.In the case of the dog I already mentioned my doubts. In the one of the wales there is only a supposition. I think we still have to learn a lot about animals and ourselves.

Posting another interesting little fellow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG6qfUdL1e8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_flycatcher

The royal flycatcher is a nice looking bird with the colorful crest.

I was reading John Groppe's "The Raid of the Grackles and Other Poems" and wondered what a "grackle" was. Here's a video showing grackles and blue jays up close. It is amazing what one can do with a hidden camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3gpU9dA_Gw

Lol. These grackles remaind me very much of our politicians, raiding all the time, while the blue jays humbly und fearfully take a tiny bit in between.:bawling:

And here comes family:

http://www.wikiaves.com/irauna-do-norte

The iraúna do norte is from the Quiscalus lugubris branch of the family. They live in the state of Amapá (far north of Brazil). When living near humans, they are very fond of the restaurant areas.

Here is the poem, almost ilustrative of the scene above:

http://indianahumanities.org/april-1...-john-d-groppe

The Music-Lesson

A thrush alit on a young-leaved spray,
And, lightly clinging,
It rocked in its singing
As the rapturous notes rose loud and gay;
And with liquid shakes,
And trills and breaks,
Rippled though blossoming bough of May.

Like a ball of fluff, with a warm brown throat
And throbbing bosom,
'Mid the apple-blossom,
The new-fledged nestling sat learning by rote
To echo the song
So tender and strong,
As it feebly put in its frail little note.

O blissfullest lesson amid the green grove!
The low wind crispeth
The leaves, where lispeth
The shy little bird with its parent above;
Two voices that mingle
And make but a single
Hymn of rejoicing in praise of their love.
Mathilde Blind
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-music-lesson/
at:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...=1#post1336345

The birds might need to train their young to sing. That would be a kind of cultural influence for them.

I just found out that there is a Kitten Academy near where I live in Illinois with a 24/7 YouTube feed similar to what is in Iceland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPv9yKC76hE

Thanks, Yes/No it´s very cute, but I didn´t like some cages I saw in the background. When I got in, it was feeding time so there was a lot of activity. An older cat was complaining energetically about something but no one took particular heed ot it.
I hope putting naturally cute animals into cute environments stimulates adoption.

I noticed something what looked like cages as well. Maybe the cat's complaining will encourage someone to adopt it?

The library got a new book by Deepak Chopra and Menos Kafatos, "You are the universe". One thing bothered me in the conclusion that had to do with animals, page 218:

To discover where the evolutionary tidal wave is headed, we need only explore one of the most amazing human traits, shared so far as we know by no other living creature. We are aware of being aware.

How do we know that we are the only creatures who are aware that we are aware? How is it possible for one of those kittens to see something without the kittens being aware that they are seeing something?

I just had a look again. The bigger cat is the mother of the smaller ones, or she thinks she is. She was licking some of the little ones but she doesn´t want them to suck her tits. On the same time she gets nervous wheen the humans in charge do the feeding. I remember my cat when she had her kittens mewewing me away, so I wouldn´t disturb them.
Lol. Only a feline Descartes would be able to answer your question.

Now, two of the kittens are sucking at the bigger one, while the others are playing. Everybody seems ok

In general I like the Chopra/Kafatos book. Sometimes the way they say things doesn't make any sense or seems wrong to me. The cat might suspect the humans can't do as good of a job as she can. Or maybe there is some jealousy involved?

I must have come across one of Chopras books before. I had a look at Google to remind me and found this Wikipedia article about him:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra
and also his page with several articles:https://www.deepakchopra.com/

The kitten nursery is very lively. The mewing mother has a suit on probably because of surgery. She may be nervous because she is not able to feed her children. The other mother decided that two is company, three is one to many and four is a crowd. She seems to have feeding difficulties.
Difference between Kattarshian´s and kitten´s nursery:

http://nutiminn.is/kattarshians/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPv9yKC76hE

Having academies look like ways to get pets homes, not just kittens. I wonder how effective they are?

I finished the Chopra book. He isn't as human-centric as I thought he was. Each species approaches the universe in their own way and participates in the same "cosmic consciousness" that we do. I agree with that. So my initial objection is no longer valid. He has a few things that still puzzle me: (1) He likes an interpretation of the "anthropic principle" that I don't understand. Generally I reject the anthropic principle since it implies that we are here because there were infinitely many universes that failed to create life like ours. I assume any multiverse that might exist has life like ours. (2) He seems to confuse random (uniformly distributed) chance from indeterminism which is also a sort of randomness. The indeterminism model can be interpreted as reality making "choices" which implies mind. (3) He goes beyond "wave" and "particle", and I would agree with that, but then continues talking in terms of them. He does point out a continual creation from the quantum vacuum which I agree with. (4) He claims general relativity predicts everything perfectly and then notes that no one has found dark matter and dark energy yet which implies general relativity doesn't predict everything very well.

I think they are more effective anyway than some of the dungeons where the animals are put. Apropos, the cages are the bedroom and it seems that the cats can get in and out at free will.
That he isn´t so human-centric is undestandable as he is from India, where the animals are seen as gods. I like this idea of a cosmic conscience.I think that as yet all theories about life in other universes still exist on a very hypothetical basis. But maybe we are on the brink of new discoveries in this area. There would be also the question: if there are more advanced forms of life than there are on earth, will they want to be discovered by us? I skip the part of Physics which I don´t understand do well, but I take it that Chopra borrowed several concepts from it to build his theory.

One of the reasons I hope life is found on other planets is that it would void the anthropic principle, or at least make it irrelevant when it comes to life. If life is found elsewhere, then our existence is not an extremely lucky event needing an entire universe of planets failing to have life to explain it. We would have to look deeper for an explanation than chance which basically says there is no explanation.

Anyway, I found this yesterday about crows killing another crow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7liZdySa-IU

There were also crow funerals but this looked odder to me.

"House Of Seven Cats", by Patrick Lee Hadley/Album: "Egypticat"; (just heard (again) on my favorite DTV music station)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9VMTMHo2lw

Thanks, Tailor, I´ll have to look for it, this video is not available here.

I didn´t find it but I found this curiosity. You both can try it on your furry family members if you didn´t do it already.

http://time.com/4538773/man-makes-music-for-cats/

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Originally Posted by YesNo

One of the reasons I hope life is found on other planets is that it would void the anthropic principle, or at least make it irrelevant when it comes to life. If life is found elsewhere, then our existence is not an extremely lucky event needing an entire universe of planets failing to have life to explain it. We would have to look deeper for an explanation than chance which basically says there is no explanation.


Anyway, I found this yesterday about crows killing another crow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7liZdySa-IU

There were also crow funerals but this looked odder to me.

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I managed to watch only the beginning of the video, and that not because of my conjuntivitis, Yes/ No. I got a feeling of horror, it is too similar to human cruelty and covardice. Anyway one doesn´t know what happened before. Animals usually have a reason for acting the way they do.

"One of the reasons I hope life is found on other planets is that it would void the anthropic principle, or at least make it irrelevant when it comes to life. If life is found elsewhere, then our existence is not an extremely lucky event needing an entire universe of planets failing to have life to explain it. We would have to look deeper for an explanation than chance which basically says there is no explanation."

I think humans are very creative in antropocentric explanations.They change according to scientific evidence.Some of them:
1-The medieval belief that the earth was the centre of the solar system-Because humans inhabited it of course.
2-The idea that the whole earth, with everything that is on it, was created for the sole benefit of man.
3-And now the anthropic principle-Other planets are just failed experiments in getting us a
snug and confortable planet.
Just wondering who will be the next Galileo.

I hope you can cure the conjunctivitis, Danik. There is no need to finish the video. The first few seconds make the point clear.

The anthropic principle tries to argue that our presence here is an accident. For that accident to happen there must be a lot of failures. The first two views take a privileged view toward humans (even at the expense of other species). The anthropic principle denies that privilege position by claiming we are here only through chance. I think there must be a better explanation for our being here than chance that would include a better explanation for other species being here as well.

Thanks, Yes/No. I think I got the anthropic principle wrong, then. I didn´t get the part of being here by chance. I shall have to look better into it. I hope there is a better explanation for life on earth.

Going in the opposite direction of the crow video here is a video DW posted on:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...=1#post1337348

Wayne Potts says birds are "anticipating" moves rather than "following others" because that would allow for better reaction time. That's an interesting idea. It seems like a more communal or group approach.

Animal behaviour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KS1Y9t5w2Q

Cat in the background observing open faucet concurrent

I liked that snake yawn and the way those lizards ate things.

http://digg.com/video/cat-ring-bells...m_medium=email

I thought it was much more difficult to condition cats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
Interesting how the dark cat changes the bell during the experiment to the one meant for the other cat.

It looks like I could teach my cat to do tricks.

Of course it depends on the cat. Most cats I think would do a lot to get their favorite treat. But I don´t like these animal conditioning games. When I studied Psychologi much time ago we had to condition mice. I refused to give them shocks.

It´s not beautiful to look at, but it´s resistent and long lived. Meet the Naked mole-rat:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...ancer-research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5DcOEzW1wA

I have never heard of naked mole rats before. Their communal behavior is interesting.

I am glad to hear you did not give those mice electric shocks.

I have no intention of trying to condition our cat to do anything. She might be trying to condition me, but we probably both have better things to do.

Neither did I.

I didn´t think seriously you would. As for the cat, she might eventually consult her manual on humans to see how she could make you improve her confort (if that is at all possible!).:wink5:

double post

Ants´ rescue of injured member:
http://www.livescience.com/58658-ant...ers-video.html