Yeah, he knows a lot and can be an entertaining and informative read. It does philosophers an injustice to call him one though.
Sorry, off topic.
Anyway, I can’t tell whether the OP was really addressing consciousness or conscience. I think the incident mentioned might have been a display of dominance by the dog though.
Are animals conscious? Yes, in their own animal way.
Do they have a conscience? No, I think morality is a human invention. I do think animal can feel emotions though. Even something we could roughly equate with love.
I checked my dictionary, just to make sure, and here’s my two eurocents.
Conscience, as in telling right from wrong, is something taught. At the very least it is something you adopt, as an individual, by example.
Take for instance children of Klanspeople. They are dressed up by their parents in those stupid sheets, and those kids KNOW FOR A FACT that they are superior than everybody else, because they have heard nothing else all their lives. Does that mean these children have no conscience, or that they are stupid? No, they just never had anybody normal to act as an example. All they have is the Klan, and with only one “example” it’s slim pickings.
So, does a dog have a conscience? If you give the dog an opportunity to adopt one, sure. If a dog is raised within a family, that family becomes the dog’s pack. The pack will tell the dog what is right and wrong, just as the pack does for its human members. And negative conditioning (ie. punishment) is not necessary, just as Daniel Shabasson said. If a dog lives in a loving environment, denial of that love, even for a short period, will tell the dog what is right or wrong. Barring mental problems I’m convinced any animal with higher brain functions (humans, apes, dogs - which all dream by the way, which is a pretty high brain function) can be taught a sense of right and wrong - which is what conscience boils down to.
[/pedantic mode]
Hmmm, Skinny Guy with the behavioral approach, eh? I want to hear a humanist’s response to that one.
Sorry, just skimming through the archives, saw this and thought it would be nice to bring back up.
Several species of animals can use tools. Several more species can be taught useful things, however the ape species has 5 functional ‘fingers’, the ability to walk upright, the ability to learn complex skills and, now, the ability for simple communication in sign language. However, sentience might be questionable, for it is the ability to create, to wonder about one’s position in the universe, to use reason and to steadily work out advanced tools.**
A couple of points here. Apes cannot walk upright, at least for anything more than a short distance. Their hips joints are simply not built for it. They cannot walk upright with any regularity or as a primary form of locomotion.
Apes cannot learn sign language. The famous case of a few years back has never been replicated outside of the special situation with the ape and its trainers. Please see Steven Pinker’s book The Language Instinct for complete details.
I’m just trying to correct a couple of mistakes, not wreck your arguement. What is being done to our ape (evolutionary) cousins is dispicable and needs to be stopped!
Apes aren’t human, but I do believe the have sentience and, from what I’ve read of Diane Fossey’s and Jane Goodall’s work, even a conscience, a sense of right and wrong.
About anthropomorphizing animals. Yes, we have to be careful about this, because animals do different things than we do…they have different social structures, different senses, different cognative abilities.
But I think we can move past a strict ban on assigning emotions to animals. Yes, it is useful to concentrate on what animals acutally do, rather than what we imagine they feel, since the two are not neccesarily related.
But we can relate to a dog, or a cat, or a chimpanzee. We can understand them. This is not anthropomophism, this is simply recognizing that we share a common evolutionary heritage with animals. We share emotions with them because we share the same animal nature with them.
We should be careful of anthropomorphizing animals, forcing them into human shapes that do not fit them, but that doesn’t mean that they are not similar to humans. We should be just as careful about anthropomorphizing other humans…assigning them emotions, thoughts, feelings, etc, that they do not neccesarily have. Sure, we can talk to humans and they can tell us that they are angry or sad or whatever, but we know that humans often misrepresent their emotions…they claim to not be angry when we have good reason to believe they are angry, they say they love you when they really want to sleep with you, etc. So let’s be careful, but it is an extremely useful model to act as if many animals have emotions…probably because they do have emotions.