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Originally Posted by Pierre
I agree to a point, especially about lower order organisms.
But when you start looking at some mammals and birds I'm not so sure. It's not all just " instinct".
If you've ever observed a cat, for instance, they are very measured, they weigh up,their surroundings, they make clear decisions based on the inputs around them.
What about chimps, you can't say they just run on instinct? They are every much self aware.
Birds!, crows, magpies etc show proper reasoning and problem solving skills. Not just Instinct.
Do they lock themselves away and ponder the meaning of life. Who knows, cavemen probably didn't. The luxury to ponder the meaning life probably came when we didn't have to think about surviving from day to day.
It's interesting because we can never really know what an animal is thinking, and even if we could hear their thoughts their point of reference to existence would be so far removed from ours we wouldn't understand it anyway.
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Cognitive reasoning is not the same as a developed ability to question on an existential level. by far, humans have the largest pre-frontal cortex in relation to the rest of the brain. we are far more developed in the realm of being self-aware. we are planners - big planners. other species may show an ability to reason, predict and logical processing, but not the the degree of a human adult. if cavemen presumably didn't ponder life / death, I doubt that animals do either, regardless of them being lower order or primates.
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Originally Posted by Pierre
Do animals know that being killed is painful?
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most likely is that the animal learns to avoid dangerous situations from its main caregivers. an adult zebra will run in the presence of a predator. the child learns to run in the presence of that predator in future.
3 chimps in a cage with some steps. there are bananas on the top step. one chimp goes up the steps to get the bananas and gets sprayed with cold water. another of the chimps tries and the same thing happens. the third chimp tries and the other two warn it off.
one chimp is replaced by a new chimp which has no experience of the cage and steps. when it tries to get the bananas, the other two warn it off. another old chimp is replaced as before and again, this new chimp tries but it warned off by the other two.
finally, the last chimp is replaced. the cage now has 3 chimps that have never been sprayed with water, yet they all know not to try and get the bananas.
animals may not know the danger, but they know to avoid certain animals and situations through a level of semantic knowledge.
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Originally Posted by Pierre
Does an animal avoid an electric shock? Probably not the first one.
After that it is aware of the pain that a shock gives and it avoid it. So yes it is aware of electricity. Does it know how electricity works? No. But neither do many humans.
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this is getting into Pavlov and Skinner territories of conditioning, reinforcement and superstition, and we could talk about that all day along with learning types. The animal does not know what electricity is, it is simply aware that a particular action results in an 'unpleasant state of affairs'. it has gained no knowledge of the technicalities of what happens, it just knows it hurt, and to avoid it.