When Life Became Sentient

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Well done to @davis for bringing some sense to the wonderful world of nonsense.

[_Robert_Participant]

I feed the fish in my quarter-acre pond. There are largemouth bass, bluegill sunfish, catfish, tilapia and a turtle. They have distinct “personalities” by species and even within species. They know I am very different than the 5-foot tall great blue heron who visits often. They swarm the shoreline when I arrive with my container of food. The bass come nearest and I favor them. I often notice tilapia are actually studying me, their eyes sticking up out of the water. The catfish stay low and sniff the bottom for sunken pellets, but will come to the top to take a look at me as well. The bass shadow my every move. When I am a good 30 feet away I see the wakes as they head towards me. It’s amazing…fish brains learning, trying to survive. Are they sentient. I really wonder and I now think maybe they are.

I intended to take some as food once in a while. They are literally off the table now that I know what they are really like. Dammit. Have you ever noticed that the people who are the most confident in their convictions have the least reason to be?

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by  _Robert_.

[StregaModerator]

No I don’t think I’d be happy to eat anything that I’d endowed with a personality.

[DavisModerator]

I think humans have the right to assume they are special. They are the only species which suffer internalized pain and who are self aware AND able to express it to one another, who self realise and who can ponder their own existence (human existence) even if it’s often pointless. Because if it’s true, then they are also the only species in which a huge percentage spend their whole existence in difficulty, austerity, hard emotional dramas, suffering and having to hang around with packs and packs of absolute banana-nutjobs. We deserve the right to put ourselves on high as special.

[tom sarbeckParticipant]

PB, I’m okay with moving the off-topic comments to their own, separate topic.

Earle is not an atheist and appears to be proselytizing, and plagiarizing.

–Edit by PopeBeanie–

Thanks Tom! I’m moving the off-topic posts to “A little something…” as we read and write…

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by  tom sarbeck.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by  PopeBeanie.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

@toms – surely AZ is open to all comers, as long as they’re polite, which Earl is.

@davis – are you saying that humans are the only animals that are social, and feel distress?

@robert – that’s a beautiful looking pond.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

As far as I’m concerned, human emotions aren’t much different from animal emotions, especially birds and mammals, but even fish and turtles like playing.

[DavisModerator]

Simon, I clearly claimed several times here that mammals for example are emotional like us to some extent and they feel distress and have unpleasant experiences.

Mammals do feel emotion, we are mammals ourselves and our emotions come from the same development of other mammals. However, humans are unique in that we internalise our emotions. Mammals cannot do that. They do not empathise with one another as we do, nor envision fuure emotions, prepare for emotional experiences, nor do emotional experienced restrict them or block them unless they are very traumatic. Animals do not avoid doing things that is part of their nature nor do things against their nature because of specific bad or good emotional experiences unless they are extreme, at least not remotely to try extent we do. They do not dwell or think over emotional experiences as we do. They do not communicate or extensively discuss their emotions. They do not relive painful or joyful experiences in their mind unless it was an extreme one and they don’t to so to the extent we do with our cognitive abilities. And even then…its very unlikely they ask “why me”? “The world is cruel”. “I don’t think I could handle another family member dying”. “I wonder if my married son is happy!” Nor do animals manipulate others trough their emotions to the extent that we do. You cannot compare a rabbit losing its mate with a mother losing her husband. You cannot compare the first sexual experience with a new partner between porcupines and humans. It takes so much more to fulfil us (in an extremely complex way) and humans spend a lot of time doing things to fulfil emotional needs which lead to extremely toxic and disruptive behaviour.

Yes…other mammals suffer. No…they don’t experience pain in the different ways we do and no, they do not have a larger cognitive picture of painful experiences. Humans suffer on an enormous emotional scale and suffer in a wider rage of experiences and it can destroy us in a way it cannot with animals.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

All off-topic posts have been moved to a new topic “A little something regarding the decline of Darwinism and Neo-Darwinists“, which you can now post to.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

I would say that animals have memories, otherwise, how could they learn to recognise things?

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Unseen wrote:

Okay, can you give us a syllogism?

I’ll try.

• All mammals respond to pain.
• Cats and Unseen are mammals.
• Therefore, cats and Unseen will respond to pain.

Or instead of pain, say pleasure, play, fear, or nearby active rodents.

[_Robert_Participant]

I have observed raven funerals near my house. A bobcat got one and they hung around the pile of feathers for half a day.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Davis, i think you assume way too much in the way you separate us from other animals.  You say only we have internalized pain, self awareness, express it to others and ponder our existence.  I would guess at a minimum whales, elephants and other primates are included in those criteria.  I bet ethologists would concur at a rate over fifty percent with my assertion.  Also consider that each year we discover more depth in other animals and not just mammals…some birds are incredible and so are cephalopods. We are fighting the initial and still strong religious anthropomorphism that posits a special creation for us.  But other animals just keep blowing us away.

[tom sarbeckParticipant]

Ditto, jake.

A decades-ago linguistics course instructor spoke (in a way that sounded to me like he was bragging) of human language having grammar and syntax.

I asked if he was saying our having such a language makes us superior to other animals.

Right there in class he got really pissed off.

Doubting that I would learn much from him, I dropped the course.

 

[PopeBeanieModerator]

[network error] The AZ-mediated channel connecting to the conscious entity known as @Earle no longer detects the specified sentience in this thread. [beep]

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