Searching for GOD...

[floo]

Learning requires consciousness, or at least, the learning of complex behaviours normally requires consciousness. Who will learn more effectively, the student paying full attention to lectures, or the one who sleeps through them ? Similarly in the animal kingdom, a hedgehog might roll into a ball without having to learn that, it is an instinctive behaviour.  But an Alaskan brown bear does not instinctively know how to catch salmon in the river,  it has to learn that and learning complex behaviours requires focused conscious attention.  This is largely the point of consciousness, it is the ability to direct varying levels of attention.  No bear would ever learn to catch fish using only subconscious levels of attention.

That makes sense.

[Gordon]

What I am saying is that if animals react to information in accordance with instinct and learnt experience, there is no need for conscious awareness of the information.

So you say: do naturalists agree?

Conscious awareness is only needed when there are conscious choices to be made, rather than just predicated reactions.

So you say: do naturalists agree?

[Alan Burns]

Learning requires consciousness, or at least, the learning of complex behaviours normally requires consciousness. Who will learn more effectively, the student paying full attention to lectures, or the one who sleeps through them ? Similarly in the animal kingdom, a hedgehog might roll into a ball without having to learn that, it is an instinctive behaviour.  But an Alaskan brown bear does not instinctively know how to catch salmon in the river,  it has to learn that and learning complex behaviours requires focused conscious attention.  This is largely the point of consciousness, it is the ability to direct varying levels of attention.  No bear would ever learn to catch fish using only subconscious levels of attention.

Learning does not necessarily require conscious awareness.  A chess playing computer program can learn from experience without the need for conscious perception.

[BeRational]

Learning does not necessarily require conscious awareness.  A chess playing computer program can learn from experience without the need for conscious perception.

But other animals just like us are aware.

Is this clarified for you now?

[floo]

But other animals just like us are aware.

Is this clarified for you now?

Alan doesn't seem to get it!

[BeRational]

Alan doesn't seem to get it!

I know, and I cannot understand why, as I have clarified it for him a couple of times now.

[floo]

I know, and I cannot understand why, as I have clarified it for him a couple of times now.

You can clarify it until the cows come home but it will make no difference to AB's POV!

[Alan Burns]

So you say: do naturalists agree?

Naturalists have no way of knowing if an animal experiences the same form of conscious awareness as humans.  They cannot enter the mind of an animal. 

I am using my knowledge of computer programming to deduce that animal behaviour can easily be replicated by programming logic without the need for conscious awareness.  Animals may appear to have conscious awareness, but their behaviour is much more predictable than humans, and they do not seem to have the ability to contemplate things such as the beauty of nature.

[torridon]

Learning does not necessarily require conscious awareness.  A chess playing computer program can learn from experience without the need for conscious perception.

Well yes, I already noted that conscious awareness enhances learning ability, and machine learning is an example of learning without consciousness.  However the brain of a brown bear for example is way more complex than anything we have achieved through artificial intelligence as yet and I would have counted it pretty obvious that the bear's ability to learn is at a minimum when it is asleep and is at peak when it is fully conscious and paying close attention to watching mum.  If you were a driving instructor, would you be satisfied with your students being asleep at the wheel ?  I think not. 

[BeRational]

Naturalists have no way of knowing if an animal experiences the same form of conscious awareness as humans.  They cannot enter the mind of an animal. 

I am using my knowledge of computer programming to deduce that animal behaviour can easily be replicated by programming logic without the need for conscious awareness.  Animals may appear to have conscious awareness, but their behaviour is much more predictable than humans, and they do not seem to have the ability to contemplate things such as the beauty of nature.

You cannot enter the mind of another animal either, and computers are pathetic when compared to a brain.

So you have no way of knowing that they do not perceive, you are just guessing.

Forget current computers. Imagine a computer 1000 billion billion billion billion billion times more powerful and then claim something about it, then we can see that you lie.

[torridon]

Naturalists have no way of knowing if an animal experiences the same form of conscious awareness as humans. 

No one claims that.  I for one would be amazed to discover that inner experience for a shark or a bat would be the same as mine. Utterly improbable. In fact, I would expect the opposite, that experience varies enormously from species to species as well as individual to individual.  Have look at Sane's comments on synaesthesia here :http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=13903.0.

I am using my knowledge of computer programming to deduce that animal behaviour can easily be replicated by programming logic without the need for conscious awareness.  Animals may appear to have conscious awareness, but their behaviour is much more predictable than humans, and they do not seem to have the ability to contemplate things such as the beauty of nature.

I doubt your programming ability extends to modelling complex behaviours such that you could make that claim.  But anyway, human behaviour may be less predictable than most other mammals.  Likewise the behaviours of all mammals is less predictable than that of an artificial intelligence machine.  Any mahout will tell you his elephant has moods.  Have you ever noticed Google Translate having mood swings ?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Naturalists have no way of knowing if an animal experiences…[

And you have no way of knowing what they don’t experience.

…the same form of conscious awareness as humans.

A claim no-one makes. What “naturalists” can do though is to identify in other species very similar neural architecture to our own, behaviours that are congruent with our conscious self-awareness, adaptive learning phenomena that require reasoning about stimuli different from those experienced hitherto etc.

That’s how people who actually work in the field from various disciplines can model a wide range of species as being consciously aware albeit in their own different ways.   

They cannot enter the mind of an animal.

They don’t need to, and nor can you. 

I am using my knowledge of computer programming to deduce that animal behaviour can easily be replicated by programming logic without the need for conscious awareness.

You may have knowledge of artificial intelligence systems vastly simpler than brains, but that tells you nothing about the emergent complexity necessary for animals to behave as they do.

Animals may appear to have conscious awareness, but their behaviour is much more predictable than humans, and they do not seem to have the ability to contemplate things such as the beauty of nature.

Again something you cannot know to be true, and in any case that’s a very narrow and unwarranted (and frankly bizarre) description of what conscious awareness entails. Many species can accomplish tasks vastly more sophisticated than those any computer we have just now could achieve. Again you’re essentially saying here just something like: “An abacus is an adding machine. A PC is an adding machine. An abacus can’t send an e-mail. Therefore a laptop can’t send an e-mail”.

Doesn’t work does it.

[Nearly Sane]

Just to add to the many excellent rebuttals of Alan's position, the idea that we cannot know what an animal experiences extends to all animals, including our fellow humans.

[Gordon]

Naturalists have no way of knowing if an animal experiences the same form of conscious awareness as humans.  They cannot enter the mind of an animal. 

I am using my knowledge of computer programming to deduce that animal behaviour can easily be replicated by programming logic without the need for conscious awareness.  Animals may appear to have conscious awareness, but their behaviour is much more predictable than humans, and they do not seem to have the ability to contemplate things such as the beauty of nature.

I suspect Alan, given your mantras on consciousness, awareness, perception and souls, that your position is one based on theology and not biology.
 

[Alan Burns]

You cannot enter the mind of another animal either, and computers are pathetic when compared to a brain.

So you have no way of knowing that they do not perceive, you are just guessing.

Forget current computers. Imagine a computer 1000 billion billion billion billion billion times more powerful and then claim something about it, then we can see that you lie.

Increased size and material complexity does not define conscious awareness.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Increased size and material complexity does not define conscious awareness.

And shoes with bells on do not define Morris dancing either.

"Define" is just your misuse of language. We we do know is that "increased size and material complexity" leads to increases in the complexity of the emergent properties that can emerge, and that there's no mystical barrier between consciousness and everything else that would exclude it from itself being an emergent property of a fantastically complex system.

Like a brain.

[Alan Burns]

Just to add to the many excellent rebuttals of Alan's position, the idea that we cannot know what an animal experiences extends to all animals, including our fellow humans.

The posts on this forum are ample evidence that other humans experience conscious awareness, and the ability to make conscious choices.

[Nearly Sane]

The posts on this forum are ample evidence that other humans experience conscious awareness, and the ability to make conscious choices.

No, they really aren't. You ignore the problem of hard solipsism and argue by analogy which you then inconsistently reject for animals.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

And shoes with bells on do not define Morris dancing either.

"Define" is just your misuse of language. We we do know is that "increased size and material complexity" leads to increases in the complexity of the emergent properties that can emerge, and that there's no mystical barrier between consciousness and everything else that would exclude it from itself being an emergent property of a fantastically complex system.

Like a brain.

But the barrier is that there is no material definition of how conscious awareness works.  It is not possible to define an entity of awareness by a series of physical reactions.  Externally perceived material complexity does not define awareness. There is a lot of complexity in the computer generating these words on your screen.  There is much more complexity in the way the visual image on the screen gets transmitted through your eyes and into your physical brain cells, and then decoding the data into some recognisable format, but what defines the end recipient of all this information?

[Alan Burns]

No, they really aren't. You ignore the problem of hard solipsism and argue by analogy which you then inconsistently reject for animals.

If you can produce an animal capable of contemplating the case for the existence or non existence of God I will concede that there is evidence for their conscious awareness.

[Nearly Sane]

If you can produce an animal capable of contemplating the case for the existence or non existence of God I will concede that there is evidence for their conscious awareness.

In what way does making up definitions help your case? You have a habit of this, such as previously defining it as the ability to read a book. It also ignored my post and reads as if you selected the answer in a non conscious fashion. It's ironic that your post above puts me in mind of a bot.

[BeRational]

Increased size and material complexity does not define conscious awareness.

Yes it can. Our brain does it

[floo]

Yes it can. Our brain does it

Exactly.

[Alan Burns]

Yes it can. Our brain does it

With the help of your human soul.

[BeRational]

With the help of your human soul.

No, it does it all by itself.

Souls do not exist.

Just like Pixies and Loch Ness monsters. The default position for all these things is that they do not exist, until they are demonstrated to exist.

By the way, you just saying something exists, does not count as a demonstration of their existence.

That only demonstrates you lack of clear reasoning and use of logic.