Animals Are As With-it as Humans (Animals Are Conscious)

To answer the op, it doesn't change the way i think of animals, it changes the way i think of people... At the end of the day were nothing but glorified animals anyway!

reply to post by fulllotusqigong

People think they are "in control" and have "free will" but actually we are limited to the laws of ecology just like any other species of life on Earth.

Misuse of technology doesn't make technology in itself bad. It merely points to the cultural decadence of the society in question.

As for being limited to the laws of ecology. Not at all. We are free to oppose. This freedom in itself which is the freedom of reflecting an external reality back up to universals is the closest man can get to the concept of freedom.

Bear in mind that I'm referring to the very moment of reflection - which is the freedom to choose. I realize externals provide the basic data reflected upon - but the power of reflection itself, manifest in a free choice - is in fact free: free not to respond, or to respond, and thereby manifest it's individuality in a willful way.

Originally posted by fulllotusqigong
By destroying neurons in the brain stem that inhibit movement during sleep, researchers found that sleeping cats rose up and attacked or were startled by invisible objects—ostensibly images from dreams.

Destroying neurons in the brain of a living creature? This is precisely why I don't mind some mysteries never being solved - using anything resembling vivisection is evil and I don't want information gained with methods like that.

reply to post by psyko4570

But can we at least consider that an animals conciousness and mode of operation is simply different and not a lesser one?

Why? In fear of offending the animals? What you're saying sounds akin to saying "can't we agree that the 4th dimension is not a lesser dimension than the 3rd dimension"? No we can't. The experience of the 4th dimensions SUBSUMES and INCLUDES the 3rd dimension.

Likewise, the animal experience is perfectly deducible to man, while the experience of man is alien to the knowledge of the animal.

Does that make them less human justifying thier death to make more room for those of us that are 'superior' to them?

Saying animals do not possess human abilities, or that their conscious experience isn't identical with ours, is not the same as advocating Eugenics.

reply to post by dontreally

Cognitive neuroscientist Anil Seth of the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, is impressed by the work, but also circumspect about what it says about free will. "It's a more satisfying mechanistic explanation of the readiness potential. But it doesn't bounce conscious free will suddenly back into the picture," he says. "Showing that one aspect of the Libet experiment can be open to interpretation does not mean that all arguments against conscious free will need to be ejected." According to Seth, when the volunteers in Libet's experiment said they felt an urge to act, that urge is an experience, similar to an experience of smell or taste. The new model is "opening the door towards a richer understanding of the neural basis of the conscious experience of volition", he says.

So the latest on free will research is still undecided --

Animals also have urges -- and the urge to "not act" is still an urge -- measured by the "readiness potential" of the brain.

how does the brain decide to make a spontaneous movement? They looked to other decision-making scenarios for clues. Previous studies have shown that when we have to make a decision based on visual input, for example, assemblies of neurons start accumulating visual evidence in favour of the various possible outcomes. A decision is triggered when the evidence favouring one particular outcome becomes strong enough to tip its associated assembly of neurons across a threshold.

I see no reason why this wouldn't apply to any other animal also.

reply to post by smyleegrl


As a profound lover of animals in this world on earth and in the sea...........................I always knew that because I could feel them innately and have a sense of communication and empathic sharing. They are extremely senstive to us. They know when we feel fear, love, sadness, peace, chaos and everything else.

What disturbed me always was how people seemed to be ignorant of this. Like us they are complex and very individualistic equipped with personality quirks, likes and dislikes. One thing is that they are more in balance with nature and everything that is. They bring that balance in because we as humans have been proven to be incapable and selfishly destructive.

Even prey animals are following their purpose but they are still serving the balance in the end in doing so.

In terms of mamals with a devined purpose they serve as are our balance along with the ecosystem of this earth to undo so much of our destruction and chaos.

Originally posted by dontreally


Likewise, the animal experience is perfectly deducible to man, while the experience of man is alien to the knowledge of the animal.


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How is it that you've come to understand the intimate details of every other animal consciousness on Earth? Perhaps you've developed a device which allows your mind to inhabit the body of an animal?

reply to post by yourmaker


A star for you.........if everyone just did that one simple thing, treat everyone else, including animals the way they would like to be treated, the world would be a lot better off.

Animals are earthlings and some of them have been here far longer than us. The real earthlings have adapted genetically to the planet and are in complete equilibrium with the planet. Unlike our present selves. In the distant past we lived like the animal, perfect, sublime. We left nothing behind and lived.


One can say that we are alien to this planet, a plague. Everything around us that is not built by man is beautiful, perfect, balanced. We feel as if we are separated from nature as we truly are.

If we compare man with the animals in reference to intelligence, it seems difficult to draw a line of demarcation between them; for some animals are, in this respect, notoriously superior to some men. Is it possible to establish such a line of demarcation with any precision?

"Your philosophers are far from being agreed upon this point. Some of them will have it that man is an animal; others are equally sure that the animal is a man. They are all wrong. Man is a being apart, who sometimes sinks himself very low, or who may raise himself very high. As regards his physical nature, man is like the animals, and less well provided for than many of them; for nature has given to them all that man is obliged to invent with the aid of his intelligence for his needs and his preservation. His body is subject to destruction, like that of the animals; but his spirit has a destiny that he alone can understand, because he alone is completely free. Poor human beings who debase yourselves below the brutes! do you not know how to distinguish yourselves from them? Recognize the superiority of man by his possessing the notion of the existence of God."
- Spirits Book, Allan Kardec

reply to post by wildtimes


A star for your kindness.

Birds are tricky.

I had two baby birds (sparrows) and tried as we might they didn't make it.

Really hard when their just hatched and the mother just leaves them.

At least you tried.

How can we be certain that animals don't create gods for themselves as well? They don't carve little totems, of course, to serve as evidence to us. But I will not say that animals are incapable of creating fictional scenarios in their heads, only that they are incapable of expressing them to us.

Originally posted by jeantherapy
How can we be certain that animals don't create gods for themselves as well? They don't carve little totems, of course, to serve as evidence to us. But I will not say that animals are incapable of creating fictional scenarios in their heads, only that they are incapable of expressing them to us.

Have the animals, in the higher worlds, a knowledge of God?

"No; man is a god for them, as spirits were formerly gods for men."

604. The animals, even the advanced ones of the higher worlds, being always inferior to man, it would seem as though God had created intellectual beings condemned to a perpetual inferiority such an arrangement does not appear to be in accordance with the unity of design and of progress discernible in all His works.

"Everything in nature is linked together by an enchaining which your intellect cannot yet seize; and things apparently the most discrepant have points of contact at the comprehension of which man will never arrive in his actual state. He may obtain a glimmering of them through an effort of his intelligence; but it is only when that intelligence shall have acquired its full development, and shall have freed itself from the prejudices of pride and of ignorance, that he will be able to see clearly into the work of God; until then, his narrowness of thought causes him to look at every thing from a low and petty point of view. Know that God cannot contradict Himself, and that everything in nature is harmonized by the action of general laws that never deviate from the sublime wisdom of the Creator."

- Allan Kardec

reply to post by jeantherapy




Kitty Cam Research Reveals Cats Love Killing More Than We Ever Knew

I think my sister's cat might of killed off the oven bird song birds living on the ground on our neighbor's property. I could hear them singing earlier in the summer and I saw the cat going off that direction several times. Then I stopped hearing them singing.

People get pissed when it's stated cats are one of the main reasons song birds are in decline but for anyone who hangs out in the woods watching birds it's more than obvious. Too bad cat owners are not more aware of this -- I mean I'm sure some are. I tried the "cat bib" but the cat kept getting it off and my sister would not let me put the collar on the cat so I couldn't tell if the collar was too loose from her being overly concerned about "kitty." haha.

I mean it's not that funny considering cats are domestic pets while song birds are disappearing fast from modern humans and their domesticated animals.

reply to post by jeantherapy


Ramana Maharshi, the advaita vedanta master in India, had a cow as a best friend and Ramana gave the cow the mukti liberation transmission when the cow was dying to make sure the cow's spirit didn't need to reincarnate -- in other words the cow achieved eternal liberation, something only maybe half a dozen humans ever achieve at one time on Earth.

I think there are spirit animals -- like the white bear I had a dream about standing against this big old oak tree in the yard I grew up in. I went back to check and sure enough that tree had just been cut down. Then I read that white bears are an Indian spirit for transition.

reply to post by fulllotusqigong


Do you think the domesticated cats are in a conflict between their wild origins and their modern dna? What I mean is: the house cat doesn't need to kill for food but does it still have a genetic drive to kill which we haven't bred out of them? Thanks for the video btw, and I'm not really sure which of my posts you were responding to.

reply to post by fulllotusqigong


That's a neat story but how can it be proven that the cow's spirit didn't reincarnate? As far as I know we have no methods for tracking the energy which binds all creatures after it has left the body.

reply to post by fulllotusqigong


You realize beyond the mechanistic-behaviorist approach you continue to refer to - there is the simple philosophic approach.

I cannot see how the former can ultimately change the conclusions of the latter. It's interesting, no doubt, to discover the connections between the neurological and psychological sphere, but to base questions of meaning on the former, is to whitewash the entire issue with a prejudice towards the deterministic.

Where can free will be identified? Where is the essence of consciousness found? These are philosophical and not physiological questions. The physiological is at most a corollary of spiritual movements, not the other way around, which is what this one-sided approach towards psyche through neurological processes is intent on proving.

The psycho-somatic sphere is encompassed by an indeterminate sphere beyond the framework of scientific investigation. It can never, as a matter of fact, change that basic reality.

Therefore, science can only pass judgement on phenomena within the determined order. Where consciousness originates, or even more importantly, the experience of the human being relative to the experience of the animal, are questions science may investigate, but to find conclusions that so differ from everyday experience based on superficial correlations between human and animal homology, skews the picture.

It's similar to saying that a #ty 1987 volkswagon is the same as a 2012 Audi R8 GT because they have similar internal mechanisms, i.e. engine, carburetor etc . But the experience of each is worlds apart. Saying the consciousness of animals and humans is the same - consciousness being something inherently beyond the sphere of scientific methodology - is akin to saying the experience (which is the conscious part) of driving both cars is the same. They are not.

I am open to the similarity of biological organization. I reject the spurious conclusion that any similarity implies a similarity in consciousness when experience so blatantly contradicts that notion.

reply to post by jeantherapy


They express their capabilities through outward expression i.e. through behavior - just as we do.

We understand the internal nature of things by analyzing their outward expression; this we call science. The premise of this procedure is: matter contains a rational component. We deduce the inner nature of things through the outer nature..

Now, analyzing and studying animals has bequeathed me with a knowledge of how they think.

Humans *are* animals.

reply to post by dontreally


Are you open to reading the book Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity by Gregory Bateson?

Here's a review that covers similar issues you're discussing

So the person doing the review obviously doesn't agree with Bateson. The book is very radical but it shouldn't be underestimated.

That book is out of print but to really understand it requires multiple readings with lots of pondering.

So then let's consider John Gray's book Straw Dogs instead.

John Gray's 2002 book 'Straw Dogs' offers a profound assessment of what it means to be human, challenging our long-held assumptions about our place as humans in the hierarchy of life. The book was named among the top 100 Blackwell Books of the Decade so we invited John to come and discuss his bestselling book.

As far as physiology and spirituality I'm not sure one is the corrollary of the other -- but then you seem to indicate some sort of mystical philosophical state.

Are you referring to "determinate reflection" in Hegelian dialectics? Have you studied Slavoj Zizek? I've critiqued him at length in my masters thesis on radical ecology that you can read here radical ecology, sound-current nondualism and music theory -- epicenters of justice

So the question is can animals be spiritual? I think this is a cultural question. For example the Bushmen culture routinely relied on spirit travel into animals -- and communication with lions to keep them from attacking the humans. The same happened in Thailand with Phra Achran Mun, the most famous Buddhist monk there -- he would purposively make his students meditate in the most tiger-ridden areas of the jungle because he said that fear of death was most amenable to achieving meditative samadhi for spiritual powers. But the monk would then use his astral communication to keep the tigers from attacking the humans.

So just as spiritual masters can heal dead people as ghosts - so too can animals be communicated with and if this communication is a two way process then that would indicate that animals are also spiritual. Can animals develop spiritual powers?

Noam Chomsky once remarked that if humans didn't have the sense of the I-language based on the I-thought then humans would be able to develop the same capabilities as animals -- like how rats can see x-rays or elephants can hear infrasound or some shrimp can create sonoluminescence or electric fish have "quasi telepathy" -- and indeed these are the abilities developed by humans considered to be spiritual masters.