On Sunday, February 16, 2014 10:23:27 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 15 Feb 2014, at 23:17, Russell Standish wrote: > > > On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 11:08:07AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> > >> On 14 Feb 2014, at 20:47, meekerdb wrote: > >> > >>> On 2/14/2014 7:12 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: > >>> > >>> I find cuttlefish fascinating. They are social, relatively > >>> intelligent, can communicate, able to grasp and manipulate things. > >>> It seems like they were all set to become the dominant large life > >>> form (instead of humans). > >> > >> A mystery: they don't live a long time. Usually "intelligence" go > >> with a rather long life, but cuttlefishes live one or two years. > > > > Yes - I find that surprising also. > > > >> Hard for them to dominate, also, as they have few protections, no > >> shelter, and are edible for many predators, including humans. > > > > One could say the same about early home 2 millions years ago. The > > invention of the throwable spear changed all that. > > Yes. > > > > > > >> They > >> survive by hiding and fooling. They can hunt with hypnosis (as you > >> can see in the video). > >> > > > > I feel privileged that these wonderful animals (giant cuttlefish) can > > be found less than 200 metres from my house. I have often observed > > them when snorkling or scuba diving. > > You are privileged indeed. > > > > > > > I had to laugh at the Texan prof's comment that they are as least as > > smart as fish. > > That is weird indeed. fish are not known to be particularly clever. > > > > > I do have a habit of underestimating fish intelligence, > > Me too ... > > > > but IMHO their intelligence equals that of some mammals or birds, and > > clearly outclasses fish. > > I agree. > > > > > I think I mentioned the anecdote which > > convinced me they exhibit a second order theory of the mind, which may > > well be sufficient for consciousness. > > Which I call self-consciousness, and I think this is already Löbianitty. > I do think that all animals have the "first order" consciousness, they > can feel pain, and find it unpleasant, but can't reflect on it, nor > assess "I feel pain". they still can react appropriately. I m not > sure, but it fits better with the whole picture. > > Bruno > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Allowing that brain science is a lot nearer the end of the beginning than the beginning of the end, all the functional evidence suggests humans and animals are much more alike in their experiences toward the lower levels of instinct, in its broader sense to include emotion and pain, anger, fear, bluff. It makes sense we experience that level of things pretty much the same. Neither animals nor humans are able to 'remember' agonizing pain. Or paralyzing fear. Both humans and animals can make associations between negative experiences and events or derivative instincts like fear, or threat, or whatever. There's no evidence or reason to think we experience any of that more deeply or insensely than animals. Or that we are any better at conjuring reflections about emotion and instinct after the event. We don't seem a lot better at remember dreams. So a lot of this is evolutionary legacy. Why would it necessarily be different for other low level machinations? It's a possibility, but the good money isn't on those numbers. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
