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rfmcdonaldYesterday, as I was scattering goldfish flakes over the surface of the aquarium, it occurred to me that I may be recognized as a gold-like figure by the goldfish. I feed them, I watch them, I periodically change the water, I sometimes add new plants, and they can always see me from my seat in front of this very desktop less than a metre away. Sometimes I even show my additional favour to them by giving them the goldfish delicacy of thawed shelled peas.
Goldfish look pretty but they are not smart. I can't imagine that their thought processes are any more complex than "Swim/swim/swim/food?/food!/swim/swim/excrete/swim/swim/sleep/. . ./swim/swim/swim/food?/food :-(/excrete/swim/. . . " They probably do have a sense of subjectivity, a sense of that they exist and have a relation to the environment, but by human standards it's so vanishingly attenuated.
Not necessarily so other animals. Leaving complex too-using aside, other primates lie, elephants mourn their dead, blue whales are changing the pitch of their songs for some non-material reason, Shakespeare is angry at me--or at least unwilling to respond to my affection--after I release from the Box of Fear (tm) once one commute or another is complete, and one octopus that I'd read about in Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon removed from its performances at a circus to a sanctuary became so depressed no one was paying attention to it that it tore its body open with its beak and died of the consequent infection. In these cases, I'm strongly tempted to say, someone--not something--is there. In that respect, they're human-like, sharing with us a consciousness that differs from ours only in degree, not in kind.
But am I right to think so?
Thoughts?
Goldfish look pretty but they are not smart. I can't imagine that their thought processes are any more complex than "Swim/swim/swim/food?/food!/swim/swim/excrete/swim/swim/sleep/. . ./swim/swim/swim/food?/food :-(/excrete/swim/. . . " They probably do have a sense of subjectivity, a sense of that they exist and have a relation to the environment, but by human standards it's so vanishingly attenuated.
Not necessarily so other animals. Leaving complex too-using aside, other primates lie, elephants mourn their dead, blue whales are changing the pitch of their songs for some non-material reason, Shakespeare is angry at me--or at least unwilling to respond to my affection--after I release from the Box of Fear (tm) once one commute or another is complete, and one octopus that I'd read about in Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon removed from its performances at a circus to a sanctuary became so depressed no one was paying attention to it that it tore its body open with its beak and died of the consequent infection. In these cases, I'm strongly tempted to say, someone--not something--is there. In that respect, they're human-like, sharing with us a consciousness that differs from ours only in degree, not in kind.
But am I right to think so?
Thoughts?
