Correlation and Resemblance Between Human and Animal Consciousness (CRHAC)

A rough draft of a proposal for a book about the ethical treatment of animals based on current and future philosophy and science.

Kris, the argument seems to stall until you can define what a concept is.  By definition, once a concept is “contained in fragile flesh” it is no longer a concept, but a phantasm.  The concept of a tripod is immaterial, and must be, because it applies to all tripods real or hypothetical.  Dogs can learn what a “tripod” looks like, and recognize its subsequent instances, but this is a perceptual abstraction; dogs demonstrate no understanding of the proposition:  “no tripod is that which wobbles”, and if they did understand it, there leaves little to recommend about their intelligence if they would hide such understanding from our view and voluntarily become pets.

“[F]aith does not know, it is a belief at best.”  That is exactly what you are purporting to do with agnosticism.  You “believe” agnosticism accommodates modern reality, but with no proof.  Before asking about animal consciousness, how can one be sure that other human beings have a subjective consciousness?  This cannot in any way be empirically proven.  For example, to claim that another’s outward bodily behaviors indicate subjectivity (e.g. I wince when I feel pain, therefore he winces when he feels pain,) is to beg the question:  “he is there because he winces”.  Invalid.  You mention that we “put value on human action”; why not equally value animal action?

Thus both the residency of concepts in the physical brain and the subjectivity of other minds are suspect.  Your insight into why people value the U.S. citizen over the Iraqi is interesting, but I’m not sure the Ph.D and refugee would fall on different levels of the CRHAC.  Consciousness is always consciousness “of something,” so if comparing consciousness of perceptions, man and ape may rate 90%; if comparing consciousness of what a tripod is in itself, anything other than man always scores 0.00%.  What the Ph.D. and refugee have in common is that if they discern a stick is useful for fishing, they might mass-produce the stick; apes have yet to do something so insightful.

Lastly, what of knowledge that is impossible to convey by language or sensation, but only by inter-subjective experience?  Love would be an example of this.  I can read all the novels and receive all the lectures I wish, I can boost my endorphins and come into contact with others, but what of the inter-subjective experience of “love,” that beckons to me, that I can pursue or reject, that which always remains a mystery and can hardly undergo replication, even at will?  In love I submit myself to the mercy of transcendent laws; it is not sensed; it is experienced.  If animals experience it, they ought to try harder at writing poems.

@ Henry
After thinking about your comment for a few weeks, my when dealing with pure Husserlian Phenomenological consciousness, one should never compare one human to another.

With that said, watching my rats build thier nests, jump to me if they are held by another person, and the concentration that goes into thier thinking process sometimes, I would have to say that they conscious. very conscious. Are there degrees of consciousness? I dont know, but that is what this article was hinting at.

http://krisnotaro.com/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

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