The surprisingly sophisticated mind of an insect
noemamag.com
noemamag.com
[1] https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/didi...
I see it as the LUCA were the humans of pre-cellular life. As the solar system calmed and mass/energy from the protostellar disk became increasingly expensive, our grandcell and it’s siblings were able to sustain themselves (perhaps at the expense of whatever non-cellular “life” filled the oceans at that time.
There’s a whole tree of life that paves the way to the cell. Unfortunately we’ll almost certainly never be able to study these exact paths as we have with cellular life.
Whenever a species has a property that is that strong of an outlier, it usually implies some evolutionary positive feedback loop. For example, a single cone snail has enough venom to kill 20 adult humans. Why would a little snail that eats small fish and worms need such insane toxicity? It's because it's an evolutionary arms race with its prey species that are building up tolerance to those same toxins. That feedback loop leads to stronger and stronger venom.
Humans are a tribal species. Through most of our evolutionary history, we were completely unable to survive when solitary, and our primary competitors for resources were other tribes of humans. In other words, our most valuable friends and more dangerous foes are the same species. This means that to successfully navigate our environment, we need to accurately recognize individual humans, remember who they are, understand their behavior to figure out the underlying intent, and use that to decide if they're on our side or not.
Of course, any evolutionary mutant human who can obfuscate that intent and appear to be a friend while actually being a foe would be able to take advantage of others. So we have also needed to evolve to detect dishonesty.
To accomplish that, we need a theory of mind: a mental picture of the mental states of the people around us. And, in fact, we need a higher order theory of mind. Each of those simulated minds contains further simultations of other minds. I know that Jan knows that Fred knows that Abby knows that...
That iterative process, I believe, led to humans having the most amazing social minds of any species, by a large margin. We understand social interaction they way birds and fish understand fluid dynamics.
That level of social cognition is so fundamental to what it means to be human that I think we often don't even see it for what it is. We take for granted that most people have a an "inner monologue" and that thinking in solitude still involves some sort of simulated auditory communication. We anthropomorphize animals and inanimate objects constantly. And when we do that, the properties of humans we impute on to them are almost always around talking and thinking socially like a human.
If you accept that, then one theory of what "consciousness" is is simply a theory of mind applied to oneself. If I know Fred then I have my own simulation of his mental state. But I know that he knows me, so my simulation of his mind includes an inner simulation of mine. Thus, it's natural for humans to have both direct cognition but also be able to observe it at a level of remove. We can "watch ourselves think" because we must be able to watch others think.
I don't know if that's what consciousness actually is. It's just a wild conjecture. But if that is where it arises from, then we should expect that few other animals have anywhere near the level of consciousness as us. Some more social species appear to have some theory of mind, but it's fairly rudimentary compared to ours.
If our perception of consciousness rests on that same social reasoning hardware, then in other animals, it will be comparatively lower fidelity.
Interestingly this leads to consciousness as simply an awareness of our own mind, rather than necessarily being in control of it as most people believe. However, many studies provide evidence that our conscious mind is not the only or primary decision maker in our heads.
I think children are conscious, mentally slow people are conscious, and I am conscious when inebriated even though a large group of people in any of those categories would never be able to solve large engineering problems.
I used to have a viewpoint more similar to yours but after spending more time around animals (at least birds and mammals) they honestly seem to have most of the same instincts as humans.
Children, mentally slow people, and drunks, are all still capable of social reasoning.
I also think that high functioning Autistic people, who absolutely lack the sort of social cognition you seem to think set people apart, also work against your claim. Unless you really claim autistic people aren’t conscious or don’t meaningfully contribute to society.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/chimps-best-humans-g...
High functioning autistic people don't absolutely lack social cognition, they just aren't as strong at it as neurotypical people. I believe this reinforces my point. We are so used to our fellow humans being incredibly good at intuitive social reasoning and theory of mind that even a relatively minor reduction in that capability is perceived as a deep flaw.
When someone has a shitty sense of direction or poor spatial reasoning, we don't think of them as having a mental disorder. But weaker social functioning seems more fundamental to personhood.
I'd imagine that if ants could voice their idea of success, it would be about numbers. Reproductive success. Winning from the colony next door. Not intelligence, which is neither and end goal nor an ability to apply some type of "rank" to.
Intelligence is an evolutionary trait to not die. The brain is a defensive organ, some 90% of our processing power (subconscious brain) is spent on that. It's not necessarily the only or the best method of defense. Nor is it a logical outcome of evolution.
Corvids can solve pretty complex mechanical puzzles. They can use tools. They haven't yet had the evolutionary pressure to do anything more elaborate than that. They don't have hands. They can communicate but it's unclear how much bandwidth that communication has.
Octopi are also excellent problem solvers and they even pass the mirror test. They have the next best thing to hands but they don't have access to many materials. I don't know how well they communicate.
Our main advantage(other than our habitat and our appendages, which other primates share) is not raw intelligence (whoever you define it). Instead, it's the ability to pool multiple brains together and communicate as we are doing so. That means that tiny improvements in cognitive ability have a dramatic amplification factor even over small populations.
More recently, we developed the ability to use brains that are long dead through writing. And even more recently, we have been able to use brains that are not even in the same physical location. We are augmenting our brains with machines now (indirectly, for now).
None of this would be possible without increasingly complex language. It probably evolved with our brains.
If you were stranded on a desert island and managed to survive, you could probably start a fire, build shelter, collect rainwater, build tools to fish, and possibly even create a raft (with stored food) to try to get away.
No animal would ever do that.
You might argue that that's only because you already knew about fire and rafts before getting stranded, but you couldn't even teach any of that to an animal no matter how hard you tried. Animals can definitely learn tools, but even when actively taught by humans the level of intelligence and problem solving they have is dramatically lower than any single typical human.
Further, the "innovative" solutions you use as examples might as well be used to realize how very useless we are without tools, whereas almost every other species survives without them.
The reason animals won't learn human things is because they're human things. I imagine dolphins trying to learn you how to swim would conclude that you suck at it.
I mean... most animals would drop dead on a desert island. Wolf, giraffe, turtle, pigeon, etc. All toast. Desert islands are, by definition, inhospitable. But a human would show a greater level of adaptability and resourcefulness than any other animal.
What makes the human species unique and supremely powerful on our planet is not individual intelligence, rather the systems and tools we invented to persist knowledge, tools, improvements and automation across generations.
This creates a system intelligence thousands of times more impressive than any single individual can reasonably produce.
To make this point, a thought exercise. Take a modern human being out of the system and dump them on an island with plenty of natural resources. They'll die. They can't hunt nor do they know agriculture or have the time to "try it".
Pretty crazy that this critical survival skill isn't even passed on, right? All the other species on the island know exactly what to do, and none require 20 years of education just to function.
Suppose somehow these individuals do survive. Could they now go on and recreate modern society? No. Because no modern human being has any idea about how anything works. They just tap a button and the next thing you know some product is on the doorstep.
Yes, the average human being is more intelligent than the next dog, primate, etc. But we're not rocket ship intelligent, none of us could even produce a single component of a rocket ship or have the faintest understanding of how it works. The additive intelligence of our system is what makes us unique, at an individual level we're very much "meh".
You are correct that no individual human could build a spaceship. Our ability to aggregate intelligence across brains and across time is our superpower.
But that superpower is open to exploitation. When working together as a group, you can't blindly assume all other members are good faith participants. Doing so would open the species up to being exploited and destroyed by an evolutionary offshoot that parasitized or otherwise took from the group without giving as much in return.
In order to aggregate our intelligence across the tribe, we also need a lot of individual level brainpower that we can put to use determine which other humans around us are helpful versus harmful.
That same brainpower can also be harnessed to let us solve problems individually. Sure, lots of us would die on a desert island, but that's because surviving on any isolated microclimate is hard. Plenty of animals die on them too!
But a solitary human would survive better than you give credit for across a whole range of environments. Any given animal might have some honed instincts to survive in a single climate, but none of them is as plastic and creative as we are.
And adaptability is highly variable by species; koalas will for quickly without their specific eucalyptus, but raccoons will thrive just about anywhere.
As I've read and researched, I've come much closer to the opinion that we're slightly smarter monkeys with writing.
I know this is, like, a meme in our culture. And I get that it's important for the pendulum to swing back from the 19th century idea of animals as dumb brutes.
But human beings are way fucking smarter than animals when it comes to general plastic intelligence and problem solving. I'm not disparaging animals here, and I'm certainly not saying that we shouldn't appreciate their many capabilities. But humans can do stuff like set up a tarp to collect condensation and understand the chemistry behind phase changes for how that works.
Sure, that's because we were taught by prior humans who incrementally figured that out, but no other animal is even capable of being taught anything anywhere near that level of sophistication.
Maybe not, there is no way to prove that thoughts require an "I" or existence. "There are thoughts" is more accurate.
Unfortunately it seems like an impossibly hard nut to crack...
But consider the programmable computer. It is far more effective than its predecessor single purpose electronic machines.
Consciousness is perhaps the brain being able to reprogram itself, i.e. adapt, which works a lot better than hardwired algorithms.
Doesn't Occam's razor demand that we must assume the distinction is only of degree, and not of kind? If it were the latter distinction, you would have to have three theories -- one for unemerged, one for emerged, and one for the transition between the two. Having one theory (everything is at least infinitesimally conscious) seems much more appropriate given our current understanding of the science and philosophy of consciousness.
The same place I draw the line between light and dark, between rich and poor, between freedom and slavery, between art and porn.
Is it?
There's a work of fiction on this topic that I really like. Without going into spoiler territory the author argues that it's actually a handicap, and we might be better off without that layer.
Some of these critters are far too bright to be that small.
For me that's basically saying conscious beings are information processing systems, therefore all information processing systems are conscious. Panpsychism does the same thing, but it's just like saying a tank is a vehicle, therefore all vehicles are tanks.
For me, consciousness is more than just perception, it's more like the awareness of your own thought processes. It's understanding and being aware that you are a conscious being. That's not a novel view, there are dictionary definitions that are consistent with this.
[Dictionary.com] Consciousness - the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.
Hoffman's conscious agents clearly don't qualify IMHO, and I'm pretty confident insects don't either. I'm less sure about some mammals like cats and dogs. It does seem like some animals, including some birds, do have a sense of self even if it's fairly rudimentary.
This jives more with my intuition that a toddler is conscious, even if they aren't really aware of themselves as a perceiving entity (aside, I wonder if such self-awareness is even binary or more continuous). And given this framing, it's very reasonable to ask whether insects may be conscious.
I would be absolutely fine accepting your definition of consciousness, as long as we have a clear widely accepted unambiguous term specifically for awareness of your own mental state and thought processes. IMHO we need a term for that, and that’s actually the interesting subject.
I think toddlers are conscious in the strong sense I prefer, based on my discussions with my own children when they were toddlers, as I was interested in this question at the time.
That is self-awareness, big difference. Consciousness is required for self-awareness, but you are placing the bar too high for consciousness. Anything that has brain (in any form) that experiences and can feel pain is conscious, whether it is self-aware or not. A 1yo baby is not self-aware, but I'm pretty sure it is still conscious. It is a pretty good bet that all animals are conscious to some extent, including insects. It isn't a terrible bet that even plants have their own plant-consiousness, fungus has its own fungus-consciousness, etc.
Philosophy programs, youtube channels and magazines don't do special episodes on the "problem of perception" because nobody would care (well in specialist journals maybe), but they do on consciousness. The only thing that makes discussions of consciousness interesting is the ambiguity in meaning, and the fact that some of it's meanings include self-awareness. It seems to me that those like Hoffman promoting a simplistic perception model and calling it consciousness is a kind of sleight of hand to make it seem cooler and more profound than it actually is.
Is this true? I always thought this was anthropomorphism. I have dogs and I thought dogs more just “are” rather than self aware.
The weirdest thing about these studies to me, is they always latch on to the most basic idea of “consciousness” and then extrapolate that to see we’re all the same.
In a philosophical/spiritual way I’m all about the idea of modesty and we’re all connected and I’m/we’re not special. But in practical way I don’t see the “actually insects are just like people.”
I'd consider it more from the perspective of Occam's razor and prior probabilities. You have a brain, you are alive, you have goals, make plans, learn, perceive the world, make predictions about the behaviour of other agents, and eat food. You are also conscious.
My default assumption would be that anything else that does the former things would also have the latter trait, until I encounter some particular evidence that they don't.
I think it depends on how deep we are trying to go. Most people are downright terrible at true self awareness and self evaluation.
I don't know. Dogs certainly know when things relate to them, when we are talking _about_ them and not _at_ them. It seems clear to me that they have an understanding that they are an entity. The question that we might not be able to answer is whether or not they can or do introspect about themselves.
> and then extrapolate that to see we’re all the same.
As our understanding grows, we have seen more and more evidence of behavior that we didn't really notice before (elephants mourning their dead - their version of it). It does not seem logical that humans suddenly develop 'consciousness' out of nowhere, and that there's a discrete jump between 'conscious' and 'not conscious' and that humans are somehow completely unique.
It would not surprise me in the least to learn that insects have their own version of consciousness. Even if it means they will forever be incapable of developing philosophers in their particular evolution tree.
Maybe our neocortex just allows us to communicate to others something that had been there for millions of years.
It's easy to fall into the anthropomorphism trap though.
I believe that my dog has emotions. I think he has feelings towards me and towards his brother and mother. But I also think he has minimal object permanence, and no ability to conceptualize my inner experience. He only knows what I'm feeling based on my face/actions/smells etc. I think if you took my dog and gave him to another family, he wouldn't think of me again, unless he heard my voice again in the futre.
When she says a cat knows what it's like to be a cat, it's not that I don't think cat's have an inner experience. Maybe it's not that they aren't ware of what it's like to be a cat, as much as it is that they're not able to be aware of what it's like to be anything else. And those feel like the same thing to me.
Oddly, after reading a few articles bout how elephants mourn their dead, I have sort of the opposite reaction, I assumed all animals did what elephants do and am kinda surprised they don't. Maybe I'm confusing consciousness with empathy or the ability to imagine another beings inner experience.
Sorry, all credibility out the window right here. They seem to be more interested in being literary than in being accurate.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...
> A pessimistic cognitive bias is manifested in an increased tendency of subjects to classify stimuli as likely to predict punishment (or a reward of less value). We were able to use the same approach to test for cognitive biases in honeybees because bees are capable of associative learning and can base judgments about novel stimuli on previous experiences [24, 25, 26, 27]. Using an olfactory learning protocol for conditioned proboscis extension, we trained honeybees to extend their mouthparts to a two-component odor mixture (CS+) predicting a reward (e.g., 1.00 or 2.00 M sucrose) and to withhold their mouthparts from another mixture (CS−) predicting either punishment or a less valuable reward (e.g., 0.01 M quinine solution or 0.3 M sucrose; Figure 1).
But fair enough, at least it has a specific definition in this context which I figured it did not.
Now there's a loaded, unqualified, and treacherous statement. Especially when the article started off euthanizing "lesser species" for scientific research.
EDIT:
> Eating crickets... Animal rights...
> ... We lose little by elbowing humans out of the center of every decision-making process, instead asking how...
There you have it. I hadn't finished the article when I started this comment, but... Now I'm glad I did.
People who degrade the value of human life so easily will end up committing atrocities. And I suspect the author will find himself quite shocked when he is "elbowed out" of the decision making process, and relegated to a diet of crickets or subjected to some experiment... Little to lose, indeed.
With regard to consciousness, humanity is alone and unique on planet earth, and perhaps the entire galaxy. This is so evident that it is pointless to debate.
This article haphazardly and sophomorically suggests that maybe we aren't so self important, and explicitly suggests that humanity should be elbowed out of some "decision making".
The cows and bugs, however, are not capable of making decisions, and cannot be part of the decision making process. It is logically impossible to "elbow" humans out.
I suspect that in reality, humans will elbow other humans out, under the guise of "you (I mean, we) are a lesser species, and we're all in this together, and so this decision that I'm making is really in your (oops, I mean our) best interest." For a deeper understanding of this point, look to "The Abolition of Man" by CS Lewis.
I don't care if insect protein becomes an additional source of sustinence.
I very much care if someone "decides" that some food is "too harmful" to "sustainability" and that it needs to be "regulated" for the benefit of humanity. I doubt that anyone has the capacity to be able to make such a decision, and will (intentionally or not) create an Animal Farm type scenario.
>> With regard to consciousness, humanity is alone and unique on planet earth, and perhaps the entire galaxy. This is so evident that it is pointless to debate
I disagree, I do not think it is evident at all. I do think it is engrained, and I suspect it is a view point that arose from a theological defense rather than a natural observation.
No comment on the rest of what you have to say, I don't think any of this points in the direction you are suggesting it does, but I can hardly fault you for being on guard against it.
I'm glad you see my guard against this slippery slope, but I'm disheartened that what is patently obvious to me is not to others. But in good faith...
What other species has set up such an intricate and varied system of communication? Of laws? Of art, poetry, and music? Of research and insight into the natural world that has propelled us to space? And all of which have been developed across language and culture barriers?
Yes, wolves howl together. Dolphins communicate and socialize. Chimpanzees and dogs display complex emotions. But the order of magnitude of complexity is nowhere even close to humanity's consciousness.
I'd posit that such human activities imply sentience and not just consciousness.
Certainly sentient beings need to have consciousness, but the converse isn't equivalent.
Many life forms have consciousness. Dolphins, cats, most humans, chimps, gorillas and numerous others.
What the non-humans don't have (or at least not, in our fumbling investigations, detected) is sentience. That's not the same thing as consciousness.
You've made my point quite well, the difference is in degree, not kind. I think other forms of life have internal experiences that are similar to yours or mine. I also think the natural observation would be that our internal processes are more complex, vastly so in some cases.
I also think that the reason that we draw the border such that man is one one side and all other life on another is theological in origin. Christian theology would need to defend man's place in the cosmos. I cannot think of any question from nature that would need this answer however.
Does that make sense? We don't typically see a trend or pattern and draw some cutoff point on it without good reason, and I don't see what the good reason would be in this case.
If the cost associated with all that starts to eat away at the health of the planet, the space adventures you hold in high regard are nothing but short-term entertainment.
Honest question, and I mean this with sincerity: how is it not? I mean it. The level of organization (across all levels!), knowledge transfer between individuals, the ability to modify our environment and use tools upon tools upon tools... Humanity has reusable rockets launching literal thousands of satellites. A globe-wide comm network. Symbolic thought that allows this very conversation to take place.
The rest of the animal kingdom does not. It's not even vaguely close. This does not mean I do not think animals think. This does not mean that they do not have value. This does not mean that they don't feel! When a dolphin uses a sponge to protect it's snout while hunting, and passes than knowledge on to its child- that's really interesting! It shows the very beginnings of cultural transmission. Same with chimps using sticks for ants, or that orangutan that learned how to fry food in a pan after watching its caretakers. But we aren't at the sponge-and-stick level of development, and possibly haven't been for millions of years, even before we were modern humanity. There really is something startlingly unique about the human mind works, and I think we do ourselves a great disservice by not acknowledging up front how unusual it is.
It isn't evident. The human hubris, on the other hand, is self-evident.
You have the tenor exactly backwards. Those statements don't demean humans, they question whether we have in our arrogance are not giving other animals the consideration they might deserve.
And when we consistently learn that we underestimated them, and researchers suggest to be less self-centered and more empathetic to other life, the only logical response you can produce is that the end of times is near?
You're an excellent data point to support the study.