How do you know that? We don't even understand our own consciousness, despite knowing how neurons work and how memory works to a large extent. Making assumptions about the minds of other life is foolish.
[ - ] CHIRO 1 point 3.1 yearsMar 31, 2022 08:50:23 ago (+1/-0)*
I'd agree with you typically. There's the paper by Nagel What Is It Like to Be A Bat? I don't really disagree that there could be something it is like to be an ant, but it probably falls so short of what consciousness means for human beings (what it is like to be one of us), that it hardly makes sense to call it consciousness.
There could be brute sensation for example, but highly non-specific, like a pain signal. It's almost unthinkable that the ant could reflect on that sensation, and so it could not form judgments about it. At that level, it's probably better to think about what is going on in the ant's brain as unconscious. It's difficult to describe consciousness. It seems to require some ability to report that you have something going on inside.
Other than that, you look for social behaviors that suggest it. I remember reading once about an ant expert who said that when ants die, the other ants don't notice; they'll walk right beside it without responding for days. It takes around three days for the ants to actually respond to the dead ant, because that's when certain acids are being released from the corpse. Those chemicals signal other ants to discard the body.
The ants have a 'garbage dump' outside of their nest, called a midden. If the researcher coated a living ant in oleic acid (the scent chemical released when the ant body decomposes), other ants would pick him up and throw him in the garbage. Until the ant learned to clean itself off, this would continue to happen. It's doubtful the ant in the OP could judge that he'd been abandoned, or have a feeling about that fact. It might mount some kind of stress response that creates a form of panic, causing the ant to retreat and find some new alternative, or maybe not.
This learning thing might trick us sometimes. Learning is something we equate with intelligence, so if we realize something is capable of learning, we assume things that might not be there. Reasoning processes can take place without consciousness. We do it all of the time, and humans learn plenty of things we aren't conscious of.
I feel bad for the little guy. But you know, he’s prolly like, ‘fug 'em, ima go do muh own thang'! He probably turned out better than the others in the long run.
[ + ] CHIRO
[ - ] CHIRO 2 points 3.1 yearsMar 30, 2022 22:10:28 ago (+2/-0)
[ + ] big_fat_dangus
[ - ] big_fat_dangus [op] 0 points 3.1 yearsMar 31, 2022 03:56:08 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] CHIRO
[ - ] CHIRO 1 point 3.1 yearsMar 31, 2022 08:50:23 ago (+1/-0)*
There could be brute sensation for example, but highly non-specific, like a pain signal. It's almost unthinkable that the ant could reflect on that sensation, and so it could not form judgments about it. At that level, it's probably better to think about what is going on in the ant's brain as unconscious. It's difficult to describe consciousness. It seems to require some ability to report that you have something going on inside.
Other than that, you look for social behaviors that suggest it. I remember reading once about an ant expert who said that when ants die, the other ants don't notice; they'll walk right beside it without responding for days. It takes around three days for the ants to actually respond to the dead ant, because that's when certain acids are being released from the corpse. Those chemicals signal other ants to discard the body.
The ants have a 'garbage dump' outside of their nest, called a midden. If the researcher coated a living ant in oleic acid (the scent chemical released when the ant body decomposes), other ants would pick him up and throw him in the garbage. Until the ant learned to clean itself off, this would continue to happen. It's doubtful the ant in the OP could judge that he'd been abandoned, or have a feeling about that fact. It might mount some kind of stress response that creates a form of panic, causing the ant to retreat and find some new alternative, or maybe not.
This learning thing might trick us sometimes. Learning is something we equate with intelligence, so if we realize something is capable of learning, we assume things that might not be there. Reasoning processes can take place without consciousness. We do it all of the time, and humans learn plenty of things we aren't conscious of.
[ + ] 1Icemonkey
[ - ] 1Icemonkey 0 points 3.1 yearsMar 30, 2022 20:29:49 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] bosunmoon
[ - ] bosunmoon 0 points 3.1 yearsMar 30, 2022 19:42:07 ago (+0/-0)