Yeah. This stuff where animals don’t know what’s going on, and it’s a surprising breakthrough when we find out they do, must come from people who either don’t know up from down or have never interacted with animals.

Unlike us, they have to survive on their own and so they can’t afford to be clueless about stuff. We have the fancy fancy brain, but they’ve still got all the standard stuff for understanding the world.

[–] HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Team the medias indicators that science has just discovered it. Is crap. Its more science has just proved or documented something ot has suspected for a long while.

Anyone with a dog knows they have such ideas and thoughts. But recognising it via anecdotal evidence and actually proving it in a way that stands up to challenge are 2 very different things.

Unfortunately modern media really dose not benifit fro pointing that out.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Well... we're not still in the "animals don't feel pain" days of science, but apparently:

The existence of theory of mind in non-human animals is controversial. On the one hand, one hypothesis proposes that some non-human animals have complex cognitive processes which allow them to attribute mental states to other individuals, sometimes called "mind-reading" while another proposes that non-human animals lack these skills and depend on more simple learning processes such as associative learning;[4] or in other words, they are simply behaviour-reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind_in_animals

[–] HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ask any vet about that and honestly nope that is not what science thinks. But some scientists do propose other explanations for events that how science works.

Technically you don't feel pain. Your body sends signals to your brain and muscles. Your muscles react to those signals. And your brain interprets them in a way that results in you changing actions. IE your mind creates pain you don't feel it.

The destination seems non existant in the mind of yourself with your hand on a hotplate. But it is a scientifically accurate one. One that must be considered when considering how pain killerssuch as opiates work.

And it is this gap in human vs scientific language that media loves to sell articles on.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I literally sent you an article with citations, for the idea that ToM in animals is controversial within "science," with some alternate explanations like associative learning, and you're still in the mode of trying to explain it to me, to help me out of my ignorance about it.

Read the article. If nothing else, just read the "History and Development" section where it talks about particular researchers and papers. I get where you're coming from, because it's hard to believe, because most sensible people (probably including pretty much all working vets, yes, or at least I would hope so) understand that animals have a ToM. But within "science," it's considered controversial. I think the question of what the psychology is that leads some people who do science to think that, would be a fascinating question that I don't really have a firm answer for.

[–] HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You sent articles that propose an hypothesis not a tested theory. Hence they are just some scientists proposing as of yet unfounded ideas. They are not valid theories until both tested and reviewed by independent groups.

Hence my who,e point that modern media likes to misrepresent science.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If only I'd sent you an article which referenced peer reviewed studies, things like:

Academic Journals in Psychology/Neuroscience:

Heyes (2015) in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Premack & Woodruff (1978) in Behavioral and Brain Sciences - This is actually a seminal paper that first proposed the concept of "theory of mind"
Calarge et al. (2003) in American Journal of Psychiatry
Horowitz (2011) in Learning & Behavior

Animal Cognition/Behavior Journals:

Elgier et al. (2012) in Animal Cognition
Hare et al. (2000) in Animal Behaviour
Whiten (2013) in Animal Behaviour
Penn & Povinelli (2007) in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
Call & Tomasello's various papers in Journal of Comparative Psychology
Bugnyar's papers in Animal Cognition and Proceedings of the Royal Society
Dally et al. (2006) in Science
Maginnity & Grace (2014) in Animal Cognition

Major Scientific Journals:

Several papers in Science (like Warneken & Tomasello 2006, Herrmann et al. 2007)
Papers in Current Biology (like Flombaum & Santos 2005)
Papers in Nature Communications (like Bugnyar et al. 2016)

Alas, if I wasn't stuck in the trap of referencing only media, I might have sent you something like that. In a comment.

[–] HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Nearly all of these present hypotheses. As of this moment there is no clearly accepted theoretical model on how animals or human consciousness works. Just lots of open to debate hypotheses. Because for all we understand about neurons and processing of the mind. Much of the hypotheses are not truly testable. Just collections of experiments and ideas the scientific community is unable to form clear understanding and agreement on.

If you read this collection and say science believes animals feel no pain you are either misinformed or lieing. These are just a collection of opinions and experiments that fail to form clear conclusions as of yet. Because the simple fact is the mind is still very unknown for both humans and animals.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you read this collection and say science believes animals feel no pain you are either misinformed or lieing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_animals#History

The idea that animals might not experience pain or suffering as humans do traces back at least to the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes, who argued that animals lack consciousness.[14][15][16] Researchers remained unsure into the 1980s as to whether animals experience pain, and veterinarians trained in the U.S. before 1989 were simply taught to ignore animal pain.[17]

I was clearly referring to the past view, which is why I said we're not in those days anymore. I was indicating the pretty benighted attitude that science used to have about animal pain, and that some scientists apparently still do about ToM.

As of this moment there is no clearly accepted theoretical model on how animals or human consciousness works. Just lots of open to debate hypotheses. Because for all we understand about neurons and processing of the mind.

You're tangling up separate issues. The computational process which indicates that a creature's mental model includes other entities which are doing their own processing has nothing to do with consciousness. Even AIs can have a "theory of mind" about other entities or not.

You seem really committed to the idea of lecturing me on this. Not sure why. Anyway, I've sent you enough citations that you can educate yourself on the topic if you feel like, I'm pretty much done with talking about it.

[–] HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago

Actually when you discuse the 187th century. You are talking about pre revisionist science. IE before the definition of the scientific method.

And all the articles you shared were dated 1990s to late 2010s so no you were in no way talking about past views. But instead questioning hypothesis and reviews that has so far failed to form scientific theories on the subject.