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Do animals have feelings?

#31
Zinjanthropos Offline
Quote:could even align with theories of the evolution of human intelligence being a result of contact with psychotropic plants or fermented fruit.

The tree has been good to you. Have an apple.

Does the existence of conscious beings make the universe conscious? Is it strange that consciousness would  have to evolve from the unconscious.
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#32
Syne Offline
(Feb 17, 2019 05:55 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:
Quote:could even align with theories of the evolution of human intelligence being a result of contact with psychotropic plants or fermented fruit.

The tree has been good to you. Have an apple.

Does the existence of conscious beings make the universe conscious? Is it strange that consciousness would  have to evolve from the unconscious.

Didn't say I endorse those theories.

No, conscious beings do not make the whole universe conscious. Who said consciousness evolved from unconsciousness? That's like presuming life evolved from abiogenesis. Neither are supported by science.
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#33
C C Offline
(Feb 17, 2019 01:15 AM)confused2 Wrote: Personal experience coming up... When I was about 20 I caught glandular fever and (probably) a side effect was that I became partially deaf. I gave up trying to talk to people and would walk in the loneliest places I could think of. I found that the internal dialogue we all have (do we?) became a bit wild after about a week on my own and after a few more days it would stop almost completely. I don't have any deep and meaningful insights from that time - just O and she - end of story.

On the flip-side, some people never seem to be alone in their lives except temporarily, say, in a bathroom or dressing room. And if they're constantly engaged in discourse with whoever they're with, it's almost as if their "thoughts" are always public -- transpiring outside their bodies in the course of interacting with those other individuals. With the latter actually being part of their mind in a sense, contributing to their decision-making and conceptual evaluations of "what's going on".

Seriously, apart from the aforementioned exceptions, I don't know when they are ever by themselves enough to have a chance to reflect entirely on their own. Perhaps in bed at night they lay awake for an hour finally privately mulling over what happened during the day and what to do tomorrow, and what it all meant according to their own psyche.  Free of that "extended mind" of interacting family members, co-workers, clients, customers, agents, friends, neighbors, and chance encounters regulating them and the chit-chat exchanges composing those "speech thoughts" occurring outside the head.

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#34
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Feb 17, 2019 06:08 AM)Syne Wrote:
(Feb 17, 2019 05:55 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:
Quote:could even align with theories of the evolution of human intelligence being a result of contact with psychotropic plants or fermented fruit.

The tree has been good to you. Have an apple.

Does the existence of conscious beings make the universe conscious? Is it strange that consciousness would  have to evolve from the unconscious.

Didn't say I endorse those theories.

No, conscious beings do not make the whole universe conscious. Who said consciousness evolved from unconsciousness? That's like presuming life evolved from abiogenesis. Neither are supported by science.

I use the term evolution a lot. Perhaps in this case I shouldn't have. I see I missed a question mark as well. 

Regardless, it was just a question I posed, hoping it would gather some responses or at least further the pursuit of knowledge. These queries rarely do what I hope. It isn't my intention to sway people to my line of thinking. It may appear so but the fact is I'd rather keep learning. It helps me tweak my own perceptions of things. I have an opinion but I can't guarantee it will remain the same minute by minute. I don't mind being swayed. It is an evolving opinion....did it again, didn't I? 

OK, back to topic. Do humans only possess a specialty? Does having a specialty make one special?
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#35
confused2 Offline
I was earlier trying to hint at the importance to language to the perception of 'conciousness'. If a person doesn't respond to "How are you?" then you move on to the assumption that the person is 'unconscious' (asleep, deaf, or dead). If a person only speaks (say) French we (most of us) still give them the benefit of the doubt and assume any response even the apparently random noises (French) and waving hands are fair and sufficient indications of consciousness. Children can learn to speak any language - English, French and even Japanese - I would guess the ability to learn a language is innate - the language they end up speaking depends on the training they receive from the adults around them. My guess is that the languages we have are so much more efficient than 'no language' that our thought processes become (almost) entirely taken over by the language we were trained to use when we were young. To choose a car we might look at a cost of (say) $10,000, lifetime running costs of (say) $9,000 - cost of vehicle is $19,000 over (say) 10 years - I certainly do that sort of thing in words almost exactly as I would speak or write.

A dog can be trained to lift a paw either as a result of word or gesture. The training involves helping the dog to translate "Shake hands" into doggish - whatever that may be. You might say "Yes, but I trained him to do that." - so what language did your parents speak? - what language do you speak now? Is it the same language? If you speak the same language as your parents is it because they trained you to speak that language or did you make up a language yourself and by pure chance you weren't a Japanese speaking child in an English speaking family?

So dogs 'speak' doggish. If God were an English speaking deity then that would a significant point in favour of the English being 'closer to God' than (say) the French but I don't know of any evidence to suggest God favours the English language. So let us assume God speaks all languages but is limited to human ones. He wouldn't have spoken Neanderthal (evidence we killed them all) yet we can kill anyone or anything regardless of language without being 'struck down'. I've gone on too long already.
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