March 24, 2013
One of Us.
"These are stimulating times for anyone interested in questions of animal consciousness..." [Via]
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The Brains of the Animal Kingdom: New research shows that we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence. Primatologist Frans de Waal on memory-champ chimps, tool-using elephants and rats capable of empathy.
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They know what they're doing, don't they? Even stinking mosquitoes outsmart some of us. They wait. They watch. They go for the ankles, or the place you can't reach. So consciousness is there alright, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. Mostly it's an elaborate ruse told with a poker face - or worse, a button-eyed impassivity. Still, my heart bleeds for them all now... God bless them!
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Emotion is what motivates us. Ants aren't following pheromone trails when they come across them in the same way that power flows through a cable when a light switch is switched. Ant's follow trails because it feels right. I think there is an argument for that. Do you remember the lioness and the cub at the rivers edge? Since it's a mammal it might be easier to convince you that it had an emotional response. Even if it was as lacking in free will as a light switch or a wind-borne leaf it was experiencing something. Tool use. Language. It's convenient to dismiss moral questions that might arise in our relation to animals by judging the moral value of a creature in terms of which particular things we are best at.