Like, do we feel more pain than a fish would? More euphoria than mice could feel?
Why do you assume we have a higher state of awareness? I would start by defining what you mean there because it’s relative. Elephants are very aware, dolphins have fucking sonar, birds can feel the magnetic fields of the earth. Humans tend to think how they experience the world and reality is a “higher state” but that is a false assumption, imo.
By asking “why”, you have proven the basis of my assumption.
This is a long one, I apologize for any unnecessary verbosity, but I find this conversation to be important and a short comment just doesn’t do it justice.
Anyway, it seems that you are taking a somewhat antiquated, but still prevalent view on consciousness - the more “old-school” behaviorist approach that is. It also seems like there’s a few discussions happening on this comment thread. Your original post has an assumption in that humans have an objectively “higher” state of awareness followed up with a question on whether or not this preconceived idea would impact the intensity of emotions. I’ll try to keep this information in mind with what I say.
To better communicate what I want to say first, I’ll take your first statement to be true, regardless of further discussion. I more thoroughly explained the existing evidence in response to another person here. But to summarize, our ability to analyze stored information, to the extent we can, seems to help us cope with intense feelings. This gives the answer to your question: probably not - other animals may feel equal or more intense emotions by measurable standards.
But, hey, we’re onto a slightly different topic, so why not talk about that. You’ve posited that the human capability to ask “why” gives us an objectively higher state of awareness. This statement is a tough one to put forward, even for the most renowned philosophers, who have thought this through far more than I have. It runs into road blocks with questions like:
- “How do you define consciousness (e.g., self reflection, verbal capabilities, etc)”
- “How can I know you experience the same consciousness abilities as me?”
- “How can I be sure other beings, besides you and I, do not feel those same abilities”
- E.g., “If I say consciousness is self-awareness, how can I prove other beings do not possess it? Plenty of animals pass old ideas like mirror-test, so is there some objective standard we can use?”
- “How can we confirm our tests for consciousness are not just biased towards our feelings? Are we really thinking objectively from a global stance, or are we thinking objectively from our biased narrow minds.”
Until we answer these questions, among many others, I see no reason to confirm that our ability to ask “why” (self-reflection), is the go-to for determining consciousness. Nor can I find a reason to let this impact my actions. I see it more as an interesting distinction that might exist between species. I do not know how much that distinction is, but it’s something to think about. But again, I feel that matters just about as much as other capabilities like speech, hearing, reading, thermal control, movement, empathy, etc. They seem to be helpful evolutionary adaptations, but I hold none of them higher than the other. After all, their importance is impacted by my personal bias. I imagine bats would hate to lose echolocation, yet I, a being who holds no importance in echolocation, am much more scared of losing my ocular vision.
This is off-topic, but the above thought process has led me to consider consciousness more carefully in my actions. My current approach is that I ought to value another being for their individual abilities and desires. Meaning, I value any other human’s want to have subjective societal values like the right to vote. However, I can reasonably assume a pig, chicken, dog, cat, or any other non-human animal does not care about voting. Rather, many of them seem to do things like avoid pain, comfort others (empathy - some family, some others in a herd, some just anyone they are near), and seek hedonistic joys like having their skin scratched/muscles massaged, eating nutritional foods, and playing with one another (again, to some extent). So, I will consider their subjective wants to the best of my abilities.
That’s my current take at least. It seems the more I learn from others, the less confident I feel about any particular meta-ethical approach to understanding. –
How?
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yep, I dont know that i’ve ever been as excited about anything as my dog did when it was time to go on walkies - or as excited about dinner time.
I can’t help but smile while reading these, we don’t deserve dogs
We say that we as humans have “higher reasoning” but most of, if not all of, our reasoning is predicated on animal instincts. People are capable of thinking through their actions and emotions and such, sure. Those same people also don’t always do so. How many times have you or someone you know let their emotions get the better of them, even if they are “aware” of them? That’s not really any different from a spooked horse running off or a hurt dog trying to bite the person trying to help.
“Higher awareness” is much the same. In fact many animals have senses far greater than ours (like a dog’s sense of smell) or which we lack entirely (like sonar.)
All mammals at least have similar brain structures with the same general set of glands and functions. Even the way humans think and feel and reason is different from one another, but we can still identify core emotions in one another. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that just because animals don’t experience the world exactly like us, doesn’t mean they don’t have similar feelings and reasons for feeling those things.
I think we are more capable of analyzing the emotions we feel, which probably makes them more intense.
If I’m dying, and I know I’m going too die, I will be thinking about my family and what my death might do to them. If I’m a deer, I doubt I’m thinking about all that while I’m doing. I think that adds a level of intensity to it.
I mentioned it in a different comment, but it has been put forward before that we may feel less intense emotions exactly because of our extra reasoning capabilities.
One example put forward is that we understand an ending to our pain. For some animals, they may not know all possible ends to their feelings, and thus might feel intense sensations of fear, pain, helplessness, etc. There have been some horrific experiments done in the past to illustrate that many animal species learn that they have no way out of painful situations and just give up when options are exhausted. A human might endure knowing that it is just an experiment, but a dog knows no reason that something like an electric shock experiment would eventually stop. Our ability to self sooth, whether it is irrational or not, seems to help us in these situations.
Emotions evolved a long time ago and pain and pleasure are even older. They are essencial for survival of organisms and the intensity is apropriate for their function. It is therefore reasonable to think other organisms feel them with similar intensity. If anything, they need to rely on them more, so the experience could be more intense for them. There’s surely going to be quite a bit of diversity though.
Edit: Let me add that this is an awsome question. Thanks for making me think about the way other people, animals and different organisms experience the world. I love it!
My guess is that awareness plays into it through humans’ perceptions of time. We can both anticipate and recollect pleasurable/painful experiences in ways fish probably can’t. We can use our imaginations to torture ourselves, or mentally escape painful circumstances.
How this balances out in terms of intensity? Idk lmao
I think we are immensely biased being human, and not being able to communicate that well with animals.
Other animals don’t cease to surprise us, and there are so many species that have heightened or entirely different senses than we do.
I feel like there’s so much we don’t yet know about these things and that there are many things that are accepted with hand wavey reasoningDepends on several factors and your definition, specially physical vs. psycological.
For example raw fear and happiness is usually quite a bit lower in adult humans than animals. Animals will do things like pass out from excitement, soil themselves out of fear, etc. and although this does happen a bit with human children it is much more rare in adults.
Maybe pain and pleasure resulting from emotions/psychological sources? Pain and pleasure are pretty essential for creatures to not do the bad things and to do the good things for the survival of their species. Otherwise, they die of hunger or get permanently maimed without even realizing it.
Not more intense, but deeper and more complex. There’s still the pain stimulus, but it comes with the burden of knowledge. “Will I survive this? What will happen to my family? Why is this happening?” I’m sure pain is quite intense in lesser animals, but the intellectual response is simpler or altogether absent.
I’m not sure tbh. I think our level of consciousness is probly more intense empathetically. It’s a web and we can all be connected on the same frequency.
But I’m not a fish. I think they are more steady going, while we trip over ourselves. So I would say yes to your question. I’m not a scientist (:
Ive heard ppl say stuff like “oh that animal doesnt feel pain it’s not intelligent” but idk i always just assume the animal has feeling and could be hurt… so thats why i havent been able to kill bugs. (Bc you can see their eyes and stuff! Theyre alive and everything.)
But they have less nerves and brains so shouldn’t they be a lot LESS aware? Aren’t there more nerves in my finger than most bugs?
