[New Scientist] Animals are conscious and should be treated as such

[Robert J. Niewiadomski]

It is official now :) And declared as scientific fact :) Adjustments to legal systems should immediatelly follow IMHO :) Should their legal status be made equal to "minors" at least? And protected as such?

Animals are conscious and should be treated as such
24 September 2012 by Marc Bekoff
Now that scientists have belatedly declared that mammals, birds and many other animals are conscious, it is time for society to act

ARE animals conscious? This question has a long and venerable history. Charles Darwin asked it when pondering the evolution of consciousness. His ideas about evolutionary continuity - that differences between species are differences in degree rather than kind - lead to a firm conclusion that if we have something, "they" (other animals) have it too.

In July of this year, the question was discussed in detail by a group of scientists gathered at the University of Cambridge for the first annual Francis Crick Memorial Conference. Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, spent the latter part of his career studying consciousness and in 1994 published a book about it, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The scientific search for the soul.

The upshot of the meeting was the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which was publicly proclaimed by three eminent neuroscientists, David Edelman of the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, Philip Low of Stanford University and Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology.

The declaration concludes that "non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

My first take on the declaration was incredulity. Did we really need this statement of the obvious? Many renowned researchers reached the same conclusion years ago.

The declaration also contains some omissions. All but one of the signatories are lab researchers; the declaration would have benefited from perspectives from researchers who have done long-term studies of wild animals, including nonhuman primates, social carnivores, cetaceans, rodents and birds.

I was also disappointed that the declaration did not include fish, because the evidence supporting consciousness in this group of vertebrates is also compelling.
(...)

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528836.200-animals-are-conscious-and-should-be-treated-as-such.html

[Lifebringer]

My Dynk definately is conscious, we are communicating right now my hubby and I. He knows my husband, Mr. testosterone playfiend has been sick with a flu/cold bug, and now that he's feeling better, the Dynk wants to play to give him exercise. Thank all of you for you prayers for my family's health and well being. They are fine and I think of you guys and gals all the time.

I miss your contact when I'm not here and now the Dynk will activate my computer to turn it on for me at a certain time in the morning. He puts his paw gently on my face in a "it's okay, this too shall pass" and closes his eyes when when we touch foreheads. A loving gesture, therefore conscious.

[sigma6]

Did you catch that? "non-human animals" what is the underlying premise here, that we are animals too right... Is that what we really are...? Is it? Does it matter that we are being 'construed to be 'human animals'... ?

Careful, this is just another round about approach in my opinion to tie man back to the animals.

For example, Alfred Adask, a commercial redemption truther, was in a pitted financial battle with a US Drug Enforcement Agency (maybe the FDA) he was a very experienced journalist and came across an interpretation in their legal text that made the inference that "man" as defined in their statutory codes, (the same statutory code they use to take away our inalienable God given rights) was inferred to mean that "man" as defined, IS an animal.

The legal implications of this are mind boggling. In question was the usage of the phrase "man and other animals..." This would normally go over the heads of thousands of even advanced readers, but in a legal text every word, phrase, comma, and period is carefully chosen. (it's a freemason code) In any event, when he brought this to the attention of the court in a case where they were fining him over a hundred thousand a month (serious case) It stopped them dead in their tracks, according to him, and they didn't get back to him for over 5 months!!!

Point is when I hear the word "evolution" and "consciousness" in the same sentence let alone the same paragraph, it sounds alarms. These materialist scientists have been exposed, so now they are trying to mix consciousness back in after trying to remove consciousness from scientific study for the last 100 years... ha laughable. Man is just different by a degree?, to that I say open your eyes and look around you. Show me the next animal on the rung that is creeping up behind us in the "evolutionary development of consciousness" laughable again... Apart from some great movies that overly project personalities and characters on animals, there is a bit of a lighyear expanse gap between "Man" and all the rest of what is living on this planet, that is some degree of difference, but an abuse of the term if that is what they are saying...

Man is the dominant intellectual being capable of the highest level of self awareness and intellectual capacity, there is no second place creature (outside of science fiction stories). Not to say animals don't exhibit aspects of intelligence, emotional awareness, and intellectual capacity, but there is a definite limitation on these abilities even when artificially nurtured in a lab. And we don't give them anywhere near the level of respect we should, but there is no "Second place" comparison with man. It is on a another level completely. This is comparing apple and oranges. And mixing up intelligence, cognition, behaviour, emotional intelligence, instinctual behaviour, intellectual capacity, in a big jumble.

Notice the language since animals have the same "neuro anatomical..." (materialist description that has nothing to do with consciousness what so ever according to the same materialist scientists who developed biology to 'disprove' the scientific validity of consciousness in the first place! There is just too much loose talk and use of phrasing in the above. It stinks of propaganda. Basically as soon as I hear the word "evolution" used in science without a proper context... it is always politically motivated as the entire hopelessly re-invented, patchwork, misnomered concept of evolution is in the first place.

I always mention to people a lot of what they think is "evolution" is nothing more then adaptation Which is when the phenotypic expression of an existing pool of genes in response to environmental pressure comes into play. In fact in my day, when I confronted my "Animal Behavioural Psychology" professor about this question in earnest after a lecture one day, he went from this confident cocky self assuredness into what looked like he was under a personal attack! I had not realized at the time what the big deal was... I think he was concerned that I might be a "creationist" with an "agenda" and I was not up to speed on how political univeristies were at the time. I was just confused because I was having difficulty pin pointing where the two were different.

In retrospect it is now clear, I was supposed to be confused. In fact I was supposed to be tricked into believing that they were essentially the same thing. That was how the text was trying to parlay it. He eventually danced around this and we then talked about evolution in general and he actually offered that life may in fact have come from another planet. (which was pretty radical at the time.) and I think he was trying to 'blow my mind' At which point it immediately came to me to say, "but that doesn't really answer the question does it, you have simply removed it to another planet!" again this was spontaneous on my part, and again he was utterly stunned... (like I had turned into a vampire before his eyes...) Needless to say he never talked to me after lectures from that point on...

And what I find interesting today is that whenever I hear a description of 'adaptation' being referenced it is now made to sound as if it is "evolution" (wtf?) ie that it is now somehow evidence or somehow related to "evolution" ... (the truth of the matter btw even according to "evolutionists" is that yes there is a well known process known as adaptation, that has nothing to do with evolution... BUT, what if instead of selecting from an existing pool of genes, a mutation occurred instead, and that this mutation bestowed a unique advantage upon its owner... blah blah ... here we go...

Well we all know how 'advantageous' genetically mutating things is, look at all the wonderful "advantages" bestowed on GMO foods...
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?50080-Secret-Study-just-made-public...-GM-Corn-Causes-Massive-Tumours-Organ-Damage...&p=558740#post558740
..mutations rarely, if ever bestow ANY advantages, nor has there ever been a laboratory induced case of this fanciful concept ever reproduced under any conditions which of course is never mentioned. So far anything so called 'genetically modified' in a lab has serious deleterious side effects and even if mutations could create something "advantageous" it would mean a million "dis-advantageous" mutations would have to occur before this "lucky jackpot" approach to biological evolutionary development ever manifested itself....LOL And if that was the case, the species would be long dead before any such system could conceivably work and new studies of genetics clearly show that this does not explain genetic variation nor fit the time line of advancement at all...

There is an agenda going on! There is a war between the heavily financed and freemason controlled university money vacuuming proponents who control BILLIONS of dollars of public funding and the few scientific minds that still put science first. Science is accumulating mountains of data that the "evolutionary" model does not, and can never explain. What I see them doing here is since they realize they can no longer deny the existence of consciousness, and people don't realize it wasn't even more then 20 -30 years ago, this was a TABOO subject in these very same universities, now tell me who is the hypocrite?... and like banks that change their banking policies last week, they act like these changes have been instituted for 'decades' the way they carry on...

Problem is they are already trying to couch it right back into the same old paradigm (agenda) Man is not unique, man is just another animal, that kind of walks funny, doesn't have any fur, or claws, can't really swim or run well, in fact before consciousness developed we wouldn't have survived even one generation... we'd have been next on the menu after the dodo! but this is what they would have us believe... What is all this really trying to mislead us away from... I will tell you... OUR OBVIOUS UNIQUENESS IN THE ENTIRE PLANET, OUR CONSTANTLY UPGRADING DNA, that is happening even today... Where is the parade of scientific bigwigs on that? Darwinian evolution cannot explain this genetic 'evolution' not even close...

Lloyd Pye ever so clearly exposes the myth of the "missing link" (still missing since the inception of "evolution") By putting in a chart formation, and showing side by side comparisons, and what would be required to be found, in fact it would require finding at least a dozen such missing links to show the possible "evolutionary chain" from ape to man... (yet not one, despite the claim every 20 years or so of a new 'find'... all of which are neanderthal or related to hominoids such as bigfoot species... which is just more misdirection)

In conclusion: I'm am putting a "not buy" recommendation on this one...

[huyi82]

of course animals are conscious, you don't need a scientist to confirm that at all?

[mojo]

Thanks to the OP for sharing your thoughts. I realized the pain of the fish after being caught and changed my way of ending their life. Its the same with some hunters understanding the almost 'Avatar' like reverence of animals. And should our respect end at animals? What of plants? It comes down to the attitude of the person using the resource and if that is the case what does that say of our acceptance of animal slaughter houses and large monoculture farm factories?...I know I'm speaking to the choir...;)

[Setras]

this thread made me dig out this pic from 2005 and make it my new avatar..... When I looked into this dolphins eye i could feel him trying to figure me out...... at least he didn't say "goodbye and thanks for all the fish"

[Ellisa]

What a marvellous conclusion to this research. Of course we sense some animals have consciousness. My little pug adores me, plays with me and is a great little companion. The large fluffy cat that lives here lets me use his house in exchange for food and a warm place to sleep on a cold night. Sometimes he says hello.

Humans are animals, and acknowledging that makes it easier to find our place in the life on the planet. We should use our seeming superiority to ensure there is a place for all the life that this planet supports, otherwise we may not be the survivors!.