Conscious Mind

First, i want to know do other animals have concious minds? or are we the only being with a conscious mind

Second, is the concious mind (compared to the sub conscious mind) a good evolution or does it cause us pain, disbelief and other such things from pandora's box lol

I'm no expert at all so if i'm wrong by a mile i apologize.

-Graham

Primates would appear to have conscoius minds. They have social structures, sometimes use tools, and can convey need and emotion.

There also seems to be a decent amount of evidence (to me at least) that elephants are conscious, that is, are aware of themselves as individuals, of their local community, of the greater community of elephants of which their herd is a part and of conditions in the world around them.
The evidence, as I understand it.
Elephants take a long time to reach maturity. This is indicative of a significant transmission of information, of a socialisation process. The young are being taught about the world around them and coming to a sense of themselves.
They have the largest and most convoluted temporal lobes of any animal. The temporal lobes are the sections which store memory. At the same time, this large memory capacity indicates, for me at least, a degree of cognitive sophistication. One example of this is that in Africa, a river marks the boundary between two countries (I forget which river, and which nations). One of these countries does very little about poaching, while the other has taken action, and reduced poaching significantly. Elephants know which side of the river they want to be on, and do not cross it.
They mourn.
They communicate, both through vocalisation and through the transmission of sound through the ground. Their feet are incredibly sensitive to vibrations. If a member of the herd is missing, or lagging behind as a result of disease or injury, they can communicate by stamping on the ground so as to create vibrations which the others will percieve and respond to.
They 'brew' their own alcohol. They leave piles of fruit for long enough to ferment, so that they can get drunk.
Every year, all of the herds in a certain area meet up at a certain area for what seems to be a party. I think that it also seems to have a function for breeding, in that it is here that young males will transfer to a new herd to find a mate. (I am unsure about this latter aspect of the meeting. That the meeting occurs, I have no doubt. If it is not to do with mating, then it has no clear function beyond social interaction, which is not a trait of many animals.)
Looking at the above, I feel that I have not made my case very clearly, but it is something which I feel to be true. I suspect that it has not been more remarked upon, because elephants lack the capacity for a technological culture, which we have begun to acknowledge in other primates, and as such do not present the signs which we might use to determine the presence of sentience.

i saw a show.. that showed elephants burying the bones of a dead elephant they found .. they sort of handled the bones first.. seemed to spend a few mins communicating they starting putting rocks on top of the bones

Aye, like I said, they mourn. In what would seem like a ritual way in a human community.
Another one occured to me as well. Giant squid. The giant squid is the only animal which has been found to date which has a brain which has as many different layers as ours. Given that we have no observations of them in the wild, let alone interacting, its hard to say what they do with all that complexity, but that their brains are so well developed also seems to me a good sign of consciousness.

[edit on 20-6-2004 by Yog the Sloth]

Dolphins have consious minds, there level of intelligence and way of thinking is so different too us though that they may as well be aliens.

Some of the things I've heard about dolfins...

THey seem to have a complex language...
They have saved people who fell overboard...
THey like to follow ships...
THey will socialize with humans, even in the wild..
THey attack seals for sport...
They have tried to mate with happless swimmers...

Lastly one story I read I thought was really touching. People go on boating tours to see/swim with dolfins in the wild. It was said that mother dolfins will nudge their babies towards the swimmers. The "researchers" thought it might be to expose their babies to more nuturing.. as humans would pet them and give them attention.

Animals always kind a amazed me... I remember I once heard that dogs have the intelligence of about a 2 year old child.

But we have
Seeing eye dogs, guard dogs, drug dogs and rescue dogs.. I even heard talk of siezure dogs after some studies suggested that might be sensative to that.

My grandparents dog used to guard my crib and wouldn't let anyone he didn't well know near me.

When I was still a baby and learned how to crawl I managed to get up the stairs.. but when I tried to get down, I fell. The same dog, who was sleeping on his mat at the top of the stairs.. ran down, jumped over me.. then braced the side of his body against the stairs and I hit him instead of the floor.

Animals of the domesticated type, mostly dogs and cats really seem to love the humans in their life.. and they can do some pretty odd things.

My cousins dog could say food...
My moms cat can say mom...
A friend with three cats have a very vocal trio.. all three can say yes and no and one can say hello. THe cat who says hello is blind... and he would often cry out hello, over and over again trying to get attention while we'd be on the porch. If you asked any one of the cats if they wanted a bath, they would cry no and run away. Once properly caught at bath and trim time.. all you'd hear is this voice pleading Nooooooo... repeatedly coming out of the bathroom.

If you hurt my cats feelings by pushing him off you or teasing him, he'd face a wall.. with his back to you, till you apologized. He was very affectionate and would jump on anyones lap that came through the door... but he once followed the cable guy.. around the house... staring at him.. and not moving when the guy would settle down to medle with wiring.. I tend to think this was an act of guarding me since he didn't once get affectionate with the cable guy.

My roomate brought home her moms cat which was abused by her brother, mom was too old to really takecare of her. The cat was very skittish, mean and prone to attack. It decided it liked me and took up residence under my bed.. but would attack my girlfriend when she came over and we'd be in the bedroom.

I was spending the weekend at my girlfriends, friends house.. they had one of those mean little dogs. He decided he like me too and abducted my lap.. if I stopped petting him he'd growl.. the owners tried to call him to get him off me because I was a little scared of him, but he wouldn't go. He cried when I'd go outside to smoke and abonded his owners in their normal jump on the face ritual to get them up.. to get me up instead.

My little cousin was "somewhere" and this guy had a monkey.. I think it was at the zoo or an amusement park. Anyway the monkey just loved my little cousin... and no amount of calling the animal, by the owner would get him to come... so the owner tried to physicaly take him and the monkey hissed at him.

I've heard stories of both dogs and pet pigs that have woken their owners during a fire.. one story involving a pig even said it actualy forced their bedroom door to get in.

Yeah there is so much about animals to discover

personaly i think they all must have a language or series of actions of some sort to communicate