Hi AndyT_81,
I’m comfortable if, in providing a response to the EAAN, you are required to suggest that frogs/spiders/insects etc. have some sort of consciousness that is in any way relevant to our own cognitive function and beliefs. This seems to me to be a very unattractive option. It seems to me that beliefs (in the usual sense of the word) require some sort of possibility of choice, in that I can choose to believe in some proposition or I cannot.
Until recently, I had two labrador retrievers as pets (the oldest recently died). When I would take them to the nearby park and throw a tennis ball for them, one of the dogs would always take off running as soon as I cocked my arm. The other would usually wait to watch and see that I released it, and in which direction. Two dogs, two different sets of choices. Even for the dog that would wait cautiously, sometimes, I could never tell why, she too would take off early, even before the other dog. Clearly, there is something we would call “choice” going on here, even an a brain as humble as a dog’s.
Also, there seems to be a need for some conception of self-consciousness for such a choice (i.e. I think there is a tree over there, I think that God exists). If a creature is determined (even in a probablistic sense) and has no concept of self-choice (even if such choices are ultimately illusory), then I think using belief in such instances is misguided.
Well, setting aside for the moment why that would be misguided if it was the case, I wonder what you would conclude about my dogs? Do my two dogs each have a “self-choice” about whether to “run early” or “wait” in pursuit of the balls I throw for them? How about the one dog who waits two times out of there, but one time in three decides to jump the gun?
If you are suggesting that a pigeon in some way has a belief about the causality of pushing a button and getting food, then you may as well assign beliefs to neural network algorithms in computing or optimisation problems. Such algorithms receive (name removed by moderator)uts, produce outputs and are adaptive, so why can’t we say that these processes also involve beliefs?
They can. A belief is a state of selection of some proposition over one or more other competing propositions. When a chess playing program sees my first couple moves, just by virtue of the rules and databases the program relies on, it develops a “belief” that I am beginning with the “Italian Opening”. If I’m only two moves in, it can “anticipate”, by rule, what my next move will be. It’s not sentient or conscious in the human sense, but belief is just the embrace of some proposition from a field of other propositions. In humans, the rule set is often so complicated that it becomes inscrutable, but at the end of the day, some set of rules (which may not be strictly intellectual – “I want X!”) produce a selected proposiiton, a belief.
I guess it comes down to how you define “awareness of one’s surroundings in the cognitive sense”, this is pretty ambiguous.
Well, it’s easy to test. If you change the surroundings, and the subject reacts, repeated testing and observed correlation will provide all the basis you need. If I put my finger near a spider crawling on the desk nearby, it will react. And it will do so repeatedly, moving away from finger in directions and timings that cannot be accounted for except for the perception of my finger. The spider is aware of its surroundings and has some demonstrable faculty for processing that in a way that it may react.
If I stick that same finger in a cup of water nearby, the water reacts, to, but in a deterministic, automatic fashion. I can predict that the spider will react to my finger, but I cannot predict, as I can with the displacement and rippling of the surface of the water in my glass, the specifics; those are up to the spider, and that is why we distinguish those reactions as nominally cognitive functions.
Exactly! Would you say that you have “beliefs” about your heart rate, adrenelin levels, sweat response or any other subconscious processing your brain engages in? Surely not. So clearly a belief is something that requires some level of consciousness and concept of self-choice. To apply that to pigeons, spiders, insects and even higher order mammals I believe is a real stretch.
It is a stretch, but a stretch in the sense that we are moving from one end of the “cognitive capability” spectrum to the other when we talk about humans and spiders. The “rules systems” get more complex and nuanced as you move up the spectrum to humans, but the “workflow” is the same (name removed by moderator)ut ->cognitive processing → mental state → action. The cognitive processing and mental states are much more rudimentary for a spider, but it doing the same kinds of things we are, just in a more rudimentary way.
Yes perhaps, but it is these “strange loops” which seem to be necessary to make the concept of belief meaningful. A belief involves the conscious notion of a subject and an object of belief (say a proposition). If this conscious notion of a subject is missing (which I would argue to be the case for likely all (or most) animals except for us) then to apply the term belief in such cases is to distort the term.
Well, its not clear how we establish such distinctions experimentally, but I don’t think it matters. Even if suppose that humans are the only ones with such “strange loops”, I don’t see how this helps against the objections of the EAAN.
Out of time for now, will continue anon.
-Touchstone
