Are squirrels conscious?

[Guv]

This morning while feeding peanuts to a squirrel, one of my neighbors returned with his dog. The dog is very old and walks slowly. He does not bark, and seems harmless, even though he is a fairly large dog. I was sitting on steps leading to the entrance to my apartment building. The dog was obviously heading for the entrance.

The squirrel had just finished eating a peanut and was about to come to me for another when the dog starting approaching. It seemed to me that the squirrel spent 5-10 seconds considering the situation. He looked at me; He looked at the dog approaching; He looked at me again, then at the dog again. Finally he ran up a nearby tree, returning for a peanut when the dog went into the apartment building. On other occasions, a younger, more active dog has scared off a squirrel that I was feeding. On those occasions, the squirrel seemed to act instintively, without suggesting any mental activity.

This morning the squirrel really seemed to be trying to estimate his chances of getting a peanut and getting away before the dog got to where I was sitting. I used to think that squirrels acted almost completely on instinct and had minimal thought processes. Now, I have upped my estimate of their mental capacity. It has made me wonder if they are conscious as well as intelligent?

I believe that humans other than myself are conscious. I do not think you can prove this, although some convincing arguments can be made. I also believe that the smarter monkeys, chimps, et cetera are conscious, and maybe dogs, cats, and a few other animals are conscious. I never really thought that lower level animals were conscious. Now, I wonder.

Do any of you have opinions on what animals have consciousness? Certainly not insects? Or do some of you think otherwise? After all, bees and ants have rudimentary civilizations (division of labor, cooperation in building their home, cooperation in finding food, some communication skills, et cetera).

Now that I have been thinking about it, what about a human fetus? Is it aware of itself?

I dont think squirels think before they do anything, yesterday I was fooling around with a racoon trap, seeing how it worked, and I must have forgot to let it down, now you should know, there was NO food in this thing, this morning I woke up and found a squirel in there,
there was no food or anything, and it(the trap) was sitting on a picnic table.
a squirel has got to be awefully dumb to walk into a metal cage, that offers nothing,... no food, no shelter, nothing.
I am pretty sure racoons can think and are conscious.. have you ever seen one of them eat?
they eat with there hands, I have also seen some of them that wash there hands if there is nearby water.

I know this cant be proven, but I think, the bigger the animal, the smarter it is,
for example, a fly just flies around, looking for food, and laying eggs, I know a fly is an insect, but I think it can also be thought of as an animal,
then there is the bee, it has a queen, and worker's, then theres the chipmunk, which stores food in its cheek, then theres the racoon(I am bypassing the squirel) who eats with its hands, then there is the cat/dog, who can be house trained, and are "mans best friend", then there is the human, which... ummm you know what humans do, and thats about as far as I can think of.....

[Tyler from Alaska]

About 20 years ago, there was this one cat that always crapped on my mom's front yard. End up I have to clean up the mess. One day, I was just totally sick of it. I waited until came by. I came out with a donut in one hand and water ballon in the other hand. I gave it the white powder donut and as it was almost done with it, bam right on the head with the water ballon. After that, every time it see me, it just take off running. I think animals can be taught and train. Yes, it was kind of cruel what I did, but when you were a kid, you don't think about morality.

[Sam Finch]

Well this question is a bit hard to answer because you have to define what concious means, If you define it as self aware you have to define self awareness, which is quite hard to do. A squirrel can't sit there and think "I'm a Squirrel" because it doesn't speak English, It obviously sort of thinks "I want those nuts" and "I should run away from that dog" because it goes and eats the nuts and then runs away from the dog. Squirrels have shown problem solving skills and other signs of intelligence so obviously it's not an instinctive reaction and there's some thought involved, where do we draw the line.

If we can find the line then it's easier to check if a Squirrel qualifies.

[Guv]

I thought that "consciousness" was current jargon for awareness of self. I am not happy with the dictionary definition of this term (I do not believe that thinkers in this area are happy either). I prefer to impart a sense of the meaning by describing some thoughts.

When I play chess or ski or whatever, there is some part of my mind which says things like "I am Guv; I am playing chess; I want to win; this is a boring or difficult opponent; Next weekend, I plan to go skiing; I first played chess with my father; I would rather be with my girl friend."

When a computer plays chess, there is no such internal activity, only some number crunching and data manipulation related to the chess-playing software. Nothing in the computer cares about winning or has an opinion about liking the game.

The awareness of self that I have and the computer does not have is what is called consciousness. It is also that part of me that is aware of my past history and has anticipation of a future.

An interesting question being discussed these days: "Is consciousness a byproduct of intelligence, or is it required for intelligence?". After all, a computer now plays chess better than any human. Perhaps a computer could ultimately do almost any intellectual activity that humans are capable of, without being conscious.

[dvst8]

Guv

"Is consciousness a byproduct of intelligence, or is it required for intelligence?"

well that absolutely depends on your definition of 'intelligence'

dvst8

[Zaphod64831]

I think that intelligence is determined by the ability to think beyond instinct. The degree of inteligence, though is another matter. I would think that squirrels have some amount of intelligence, since they seem to have the ability to go beyond their instinct of running away from people and stay around instead.

Also, I think that dogs are actually intelligent to a large degree, not exactly einsteins but they can be trained, the associate words with actions, and they learn to recognize certain situations and assess their actions accordingly.

Scientific studies prove this, the most popular being Pavlov's experimentations with dogs.

[Sam Finch]

I still don't think that an awareness of the self is enough, as I said before, a squirrel can't think "I am a squirrel" because it doesn't have a language to think it in, thus we have no real definition of self aware.

Guv mentioned this Idea.

. It is also that part of me that is aware of my past history and has anticipation of a future.

this is a slightly more tangible idea. Squirrels store nuts for the winter but this is just an instinct. (If the sun is in the right place it stores nuts)


We could do a test whereby a squirrel has a certain amount of nuts, it gets one pile every week, just enough so If it eats them all at once it gets hungry towards the end of the week, but if it spreads them out it does not get hungry. We can give thee squirrel these nuts as specified and see how it reacts.

We could also do a test whereby the squirrel is given a button and a light. If the light is green then when the button is pushed it gets a nut, if the light is red the button does nothing, the light goes red/green at some interval of time, we can see if it starts saving nuts for later. (make sure the light conditions are not in store nut mode.

while this isn't a definate indication of consciousness it is at least some evidence of an awareness of the future.



However is an awareness of the future a good enough indication of consciusness? well that's up to you lot.

[Zaphod64831]

I disagree.

I think that the fact that they have no language gives them even more intelligence than if they had one.

Our thought processes would be almost ten times faster if they weren't limited to a language to think them in.

Besides, if it had no sense of self, then why would it want to preserve its own life? Just because it has no language doesn't mean it can't think "Oh crap, if I want to stay alive I'd better stay away from that dog."

I realize that this concept may be hard for people to grasp, I certainly couldn't imagine thinking without a language, mostly because I've never done it other than when I was an infant.

That makes me wonder if that's the reason we can't remember anything at a young age very well, because it's too difficult to translate our own thoughts.

[Sophtware]

Here's some interesting stories about animals that would direct them towards being intelligent.

I remember being on a farm when i was a small child.. and my grandfather used to go hunting with his "Birddogs" as he called them..it was really strange to see this..but whenever he would come out of his house with his rifle too go bird/rabbit hunting the dogs would go crazy because as soon as they seen that rifle..they new it was time to go hunting...Also have any of you ever seen a dog grin?? my pitbull does, it's really weird....what i think happens is that the dog (given enough time of seeing people smile) they think/or some how process the thought "well my master and his friends are doing that thing with there faces maybe i can do it to!"

On to the unintelligent parts....i have seen dogs that ..arent really stupid..but this could be considered stupid... they walk through a open door or some sort of open space...and they cannot comprehend going back in the same direction. It's really weird.


I beleive that animals are intelligent ...too a point..
Then again humans are only intelligent too a point.


See ya

[Sam Finch]

Zaphod

Our thought processes would be almost ten times faster if they weren't limited to a language to think them in.

Not a scientologist are you?


I'm not questioning the Idea of a squirrels intelligence (Anyone who remembers the old Carling Black Label advert will know that they're pretty smart, or at least the ones who drink carling black label are)

What I am questioning is the idea that we defne conciousness as having a concept of the self.
I don't think a squirrel can really have that concept if it doesn't have the words to describe it. Even if it does it is very difficult to define what theat concept is without a language.

Has anyone ever read a book called 1984 by George Orwell? Basicly it describes a worst case scinario of comunism gone too far. The Party (the government) tries to controll the minds of the people not just their actions. one of the ways it does this is by controlling the language.

The Idea of it is that nobody can want to be free If they don't have a concept of freedom, and by having a word for freedom you are giving them that concept. Nobody can ever think "I want to be Free" because they don't have the words to think it with.

It's the same for a squirrel. We are given a concept of ourselves when we are given the words to think it with. Otherwise the concept probably wouldn't occur to us.
It doesn't make us any les conscious, or less intellecent, we just wouldn't think of the concept.

[Guv]

It's too bad that Chomsky (?spelling) or one of the other Language hotshots is not here.

The comments about language bother me.

First, I suspect that there are two aspects to language. One: Language as used for communication with others. Two: Its use for internal thought processes. I remember reading about a clincal psychology experiment or poll which indicated that people seem to fall into three classes based on how they think. Class 1: These people are aware of manipulating visual images when they think. Class 2: These are aware of manipulating words. Class 3: These seem to process some abstract symbols at a subconscious level (I happen to fall into the third category). I do not remember whether there were those who used more than one mode. This might be an interesting subject for a poll of forum members.

The above suggests to me that the language used for communication with others need not be the same as that used by internal thought processes.

With apologies to Zaphrod64381. I strongly suspect that language is required for efficient thinking. Language allows complex concepts to be represented by single words or short phrases, kind of like shorthand for the brain. I would be interested in some supporting remarks on thought being 10 times as efficient if done without language. I flat out do not believe that.

Except for other primates (yes) & really low level life (no), I do not have strong beliefs about which animals have cnsciousness. I do have a stong belief that animals do not need a language similar to or as rich as human language to be self-aware or have consciousness.

Note that there is strong evidence that complex behavior can be "hard wired", id est instinctive. I remember reading about some European birds who seemed to be born with the ability to navigate using celestial clues to guide them when they migrated between Europe & Africa. Humans seem to be born with hard wired circuitry allowing them to judge distance using their binocular vision and recognize 3D objects. If abilites as complex as these can be instinctive rather than learned, it seems dificult to decide what animal behavior is learned rather than instinctive.

My squirrel intrigued me because he seemd to be using some mental processing to decide whether or not to over ride his instinctive danger avoidance behavior.

[Iain17]

Guv

This has brought up an idea i have had for a while, but never put a voice to. Seeing as we are on the subject of thought processes, it seems the time is right.

I have often wondered if good programmers have a different way of thinking to other people. I have been pondering this idea a lot more recently as i have been trying to teach someone who has no programming experience Visual Basic. Sometimes he does very well, yet other times he just cant seem to grasp the flow of how a program works. Obviously i have to take into account that i am not a qualified teacher, and i am probably not explaining things very well sometimes, but i never had this sort of problem when i started out.

This makes me wonder if it takes a certain way of thinking to be a good programmer. Are programmers more logically brained than other people. Can this way of thinking be taught, or are the best programmers people that naturally think in a certain way? Does it all boil down to the fact that computers are trumped up logic machines. Well most of the time, sometimes things appear to happen for no apparent reason Maybe that is why some people seem to have a flair for programming, they "think" in a similar manner to the computer. If this is true then maybe it is easier to transfer an idea from their head into a program, as it has already been thought out logically. Does it require less translation from English into a programming language because the way they have thought it out was closer to a programming language than the way a non-programmer thought through the same problem?

Food for thought.

[HarryW]

What kind of academic background/life interests does this person hove?

I know what you mean, but I think a lot of the problems when people start doing something like this is that they are initially unable to think in a structured manner, in the same way as a keen mathematician or philosopher would do. I think people get into certain kinds of mind-sets depending on the way of thinking that their hobbies or careers require. I ahve a sister, for instance, who is a fantastic artist, and can think really creatively in a way I just cannot follow, but she is terrible at maths, or any kind of logic.

This is not a matter of intelligence, in my opinion, it's just a way of thinking. I have always been a maths/physics/computers person, so I think in a (relatively) logical way. I have trouble with creative tasks because there is no problem -> solution situation, it's too fuzzy for me to really do well at.

I think that, had I taken up different activities in my life, I would think in a very different way.

I expect that 'good programmers' (although I think pure logic without creativity can be a hindrance in this field sometimes) are more conditioned to that way of thinking, or maybe just more interested in the subject.

[Guv]

I was a programmer before the prehistoric Mainframe era. I started with a thing call a Card-Programmed Calculator, which was a latchup of a several IBM Punched Card devices.

I am still not sure what makes a good programmer. Some level of intelligence and logical ability is obviously necessary, but the other requirements are not obvious.

I have known good to excellent programmers with all sorts of backgrounds: Artists, mathematicians, English majors, engineers, you name it. It could be that certain personality traits are more important than specific education/experience.

The best programmers I have known liked what they were doing, so this might be important. However, this is true of the best in many different areas. I am not sure you can be a lot better than average at anything you do not like.

Some mental ability I call "contingency planning concepts" seems essential.

I remember an engineering physicist who had everything you would think a programmer needed, especially for scientific & mathematical applications. His problem was that he wanted to write programs starting with the first executable statement and ending with the last. It was some weird obsessive compulsive personality quirk. I am not sure what he might have done with VB and similar modern event-driven programs. It might have driven him crazy. On the other hand, it might have forced him to realize that you cannot create a program in the exact order in which the computer is going to execute the instructions, which is what he tried to do.

The above individual and other experiences have made me suspect that a programmer requires a compromise between being highly organized and being sloppy in his thinking. It seems to me that sometimes I write a lot of subroutines early (seldom first). Sometimes I merrily write high level code with many calls on yet-to-be-written Subroutines. When in the second mode, I am aware of thinking "I know I can write a subroutine to handle this, but will worry about the details later." Sometines I just start writing statements and expect to be able to "figure it out" as I go. Sometimes I spend hours working out algorithms before doing any programming. It seems that one size does not fit all. Too much organization and you get lost in unimportant details. Too little and you cannot make it work.

[HarryW]

Where does one go to feed squirrels?

It sounds like fun

[Cybrg641]

I don't know about squirrels, but I am pretty sure dogs and cats are able to think somewhat logically. My dog, for example, KNOWS that when nobody is in the house she can do whatever she wants. She usually goes through the garbage and tears things apart . Another thing about dogs is that they have the ability to learn new things. Like tricks and stuff.

[HarryW]

So long as they're not old dogs

[HarryW]

Any conclusion on the conciousness of squirrels front? You've all had long enough to think about it

Since the posting of this thread I have learned some more about the nature of intelligence. One of the ways it can be considered is as a combination of perception, cognition and motor movement. "Motor movement?" I hear you say, well yes in the case of human intelligence at least. We need to be able to control our muscles in order for our senses to function. Whether this would be needed for AI I am not so sure.

Perception is the aquisition of raw data about the world around us. Cognition is the interpretation of that raw information, giving it meaning and allowing us to use it. So for instance you perceive the colours and contrasts of this page, but your cognitive processes allow you to interpret this information as a page, both from what you expect to see and the details of what you are actually seeing (top-down and bottom-up).

This isn't exactly a complete definition of intelligence, but it a model that can be used in the development of artificial intelligence and cognate systems (that's why I'm interested in it).

Now, conciousness... I'm not quite sure how this relates to intelligence. I think it's similar, but not the same. I would also say that intelligence comes before conciousness, thus a computer might be made intelligent yet not concious.

[HarbringerOfVole]

I had just finished writing out a large post on this forum, when the silly computer decides to go and crash! Well, here is the editedversion, as I can't be bothered to write it all out again...


On Selfawarness as conscious:
Self awarness is actually a widley accepted definition of conciouss, but as previos post pointed out, it is insufficint. The classic test for animal self awarness is to see if they can tell a reflection of themselves is a reflection, or see it as another animal. Dolphins, chimps in their prime(not young or old) and humans (but not babies!) all pass this test(but squirrels, unfortunatly do not), and if accepted, it means that babies are not conscious. (which is entirly posiible, and indeed quite likley, as their brains have a lot of developing to do, the glial cells have barley develped at all). It also means that if someone programs a robot to reccognise images of itself, it would be defined as conciouss, a result most people would describe as ludicrious. Conciousness, claim others, requires more than just the neuroscience of the brain, the chemical and electrical interactions, it, the claim, is impossible to explain by these means. The claim it needs a 'ghost in the machine', a 'soul', or similar thing, to explain it, and they claim (usually) that machines can never be conciouss.
Conciousness can also be decribed as the ability to think abstract thoughts. Anyone can think a thought, but we can also think about those thoughts, up to infinity (Eg I think 'I know Sharah did it', and John thinks 'I know that he thinks Sharah did it' and I think 'I believs he thinks that I know that Sharah did it' and so on) This however could eliminate the severly autistic, as they have no comprehension of others as beings with minds, the treat everyine like mechanical toys. Clearly, this is a difficult question, but sqirrels seem doomed to be not self aware, and not conciousess.
On language and thought:
It was claimed early on that to be self aware required language, but chimps (whilst they do commincate somewhat) do not have a laungaue capable of express ing abstrcat thoughts, but they (in their prime) pass the self awareness test, showing that the spoken language is not a neccesity. It was also suggested that the (human)brain thought entirly in human laungauge, later refuted, and then claimed that people used one of three types (Words, images, abstract symbols), while it is the case that all people use all of them. It is easier to think about how a corkscrew works in pictures rather than words, it is impossible to think abstract thughts in pictures, and the brain uses symbols to think, underlying both these processes. There also is, acording to some (See S. Pinker, 'language of Thought'--definatly the corrct author, maybe not the exact title!!) a univeral human language of thought, which he refers to as 'menatalese', which all humans use to process information, as humans process information v. simiraly, regarless of launguage.
On 'Hard wiring' or instinct, and intelligence:
The example of birds is actully an interesting one, because if birds were hard wired with th knowledge of the stars, then they knowledge would be usless. The reason for this is evident, as the birds evolved/were evolving in a time when the night skys were completly differt, and the night skys chane all the time (slowly treu, but fast enogh that the patterns 'hard wired' in would become worse than usless, and be a hiderance, to the birds now). BIrds actually watch the night sky form the nest, and learn the movements of the sttars, so the navigate as adults, but the ability to navigate by these learned postions is probably an innate one, and it this combination of instint ad learnig that make biological systems so succsesful.
Intelligence can be defined to a certain extent as an ability to go beyond instinct (as mentioned earlier in this forum), and the ability to plan present action based on past and future experiences/pedictions is just one aspect, perhaps the lesser, the other being the abilty to modify them by sybjective wants (For exapmple planning can be seen in 'I will not eat this cake now, for then I will not be able to eat my tea' and wants is shown by 'I will not eat this cake, for then I will not lose weight, as I want to'). I do not believe that anyone has yet shown animals have the ability to plan according to subjective want, based on information not currently present. However, I don't bliev that this can be taken to far, I am not sure that you can say that Einstien or Bach were more mentally flexible in this way than anyone else, it is only really useful when applied to large groups, not individuals.
Finaly, on Machine conciosness.
There is a test that is accepted by most academics as proving machine conciosness, and that is the Turing test. In the Turing test, a person speaks (usually via a keyboard) to an unknown - either a computer or a machine. I f the machine fools the person into believing it is a human, it passes. (There is a interesting case of a woman who failed the tueing test, as her answers were considerd by the other humans to be too long and factual to be from a human) I belive that this test is not sufficient, for two main reasons. One, the test is subjsective, and some humans may pass the machine, and others fail it, (I have already menationd the human who failed it), so is the machine conciousss to some people, but not others? The other reason is that I believ that such a machine would mearly be an efficent language processor. An famous example of this is the Chinese room. If a man is placed into a room, and tarined to, when a specific symbol comes in to thr ooom, to take another symbol from a box and pass it out of thee room. The man becoms very good at his job. He dosn't know it, but the symbols coming in are question about Chinese storis, in Chinese, and he answeres thwm by putting out the Chinese cahracters. Does this man therefore know Chinese? Most people would say no, some say that the room and the man understand Chinese. (I would say that he knew the written language to a certain extent, but not that he understood). The machine that passed the Turing test could be very similar to the man in the room, the computer juat responding approritly from cleverly written speech analysis/construcion programs, not that the computer understood the converstaion! As a machine that did understand the conversation would reacat the same as this one (or a human, and same, I do not mean identiacally!) I belive this test is insufficent proof.
However, the behaviorlists would say thatif something acts exactly like ssomething, it is that something, if a computer acts as if it understands converstaions, it does, if the man/room acts as if it understands Chinese, then it does! Personally I see this idea as failry silly, but it can be a useful model to understand certain aspect of human/animal behaviour.
So, I'd have to say the evidence points to squirrels not being concious, and machines not being concious (at present), and squirrels being intelligent, and machines possibly being intelligent (or acting as if they are..).

[Guv]

Harbringer is correct. The night sky does change too fast for a hard wired star map to be useful.

Experiments with raising newly hatched birds in a planetarium strongly indicated that birds had the following hardwired capabilities.

They had an instinct to watch the night sky and learn to recognize the hypothetical point around which stars seem to revolve.

They had an instinct to fly away from the hypothetical point as winter approached, and fly toward it as summer approached.

I did not post the details because I did not expect anybody to be sharp enough to know that evolution of complex instincts is slower than changes in the appearance of the night sky.

I have more curiousity that knowledge or strong opinions on this subject. I started the Thread because I wondered what others thought about consciousness in general and animal consciousnes in particular.

Some big minds are studying consciousness and writing about it. When I learn more I might start developing some strong opinions.