wrote:
Rudy Canoza wrote:


Of course I have "anything" to support it, you ****wit.
The support is that there is NO evidence that they
ARE self aware, given what self awareness *means*.
Don't you get it, you moron? The absence of evidence
that they are is prima facie evidence that they are not.


The thing is that there isn't so much an absence of evidence, but
simply a lack of consensus in the intepretations of the possible
evidence.

There is a lack of evidence for the aspects of self
awareness beyond mere body awareness.


Example:

"After decades of studying animals ranging from coyotes, gray wolves,
domestic dogs, and Adlie penguins and other birds, I've come to the
conclusion that not only are some animals self-aware, but also that
there are degrees of self-awareness. Combined with studies by my
colleagues, it's wholly plausible to suggest that many animals have a
sense of "mine-ness" or "body-ness."

Notice he doesn't say "me-ness" or anything connected
to "being-ness".


So, for example, when an
experimental treatment, an object, or another individual affects an
individual, he or she experiences that "something is happening to this
body." Many primates relax when being groomed and individuals of many
species actively seek pleasure and avoid pain. There's no need to
associate "this body" with "my body" or with "me" (or "I"). Many
animals also know the placement in space of parts of their body as they
run, jump, perform acrobatics, or move as a coordinated hunting unit or
flock without running into one another. They know their body isn't
someone else's body."

The last sentence is a wild leap of inference that does
not follow in any way from the one that precedes it.



Now, with such a statement, we can no longer conclude that dogs lack
self-awareness.

You've dumbed it down to the point of meaninglessness.
People are interested in the question of self
awareness as part of the larger issue of consciousness.
This awareness of its body in a very primitive sense
as evidence of "self awareness", as a part of a larger
and more meaningful consciousness/sentience, is
laughable. We're looking for a sense of self awareness
as a sense of knowing that the individual possessing
the sense knows it exists in time and space, and all
the bull**** you've blabbered on about does not in any
way point to such knowledge.


"ON ANIMAL SELF-AWARENESS

The following points are made by Marc Bekoff (Nature 2002 419:255):

1) Researchers are interested in animal awareness because they are
curious to discover what animals might know about themselves. There
are, however, long-held and polarized views about the degree of
self-awareness in animals. Some people believe that only great apes
have "rich" notions of self --knowing who they are and/or having a
"theory of mind", which means being able to infer the states of minds
of others --whereas others argue that it is methodologically too
difficult to address this question because animal (like human) minds
are subjective and private. Many in this latter category do not
attribute any sense of self to animals other than humans, and some,
dismissing behavioral and neurobiological research on animal cognition,
wonder whether animals are conscious of anything at all.

It's this "theory of mind" for which there is no
evidence in animals other than the great apes; dogs
give no evidence that we can detect of having it.


2) What might animals know about themselves? Most studies of animal
self-awareness have been narrowly paradigm-driven. The "red spot"
technique was first used by Gordon Gallup to study animal
self-awareness in chimpanzees; it and variations have been used on
great apes and monkeys, as well as on a few dolphins and elephants. For
primates, a spot is placed on the forehead of an anesthetized
individual and self-directed movements towards the spot are scored
after he or she awakens and catches sight of themselves in a mirror, a
high score indicating the presence of some degree of self-awareness.
But in some cases, the data are derived from tests on small numbers of
individuals, many of whom fail it because they do not make
self-directed movements towards the spot. Those who pass the test might
not be representative of wild relatives because they have had extensive
human contact and previous experience with mirrors, factors that might
influence their trainability and willingness to use a mirror. Those who
fail the test might show some sense of 'self' in other contexts, and
other individual differences might also play a role.

Look at all the instances of the weasel word "might".



3) The concept of animal self-awareness remains open to different
interpretations, but we will probably learn more about the mysteries of
"self" and "body-ness" by using non-invasive neuroimaging techniques in
combination with cognitive ethological studies. If we look at
"self-awareness" as "body-awareness",

Which we shouldn't. Consciousness, which is the real
objective of this line of research, is vastly more than
mere body awareness. Dogs don't give any evidence of
these higher order or "richer" dimensions of consciousness.

A famous economist, Kenneth Boulding, observed that "No
dog knows that there have been dogs before him, and
will be dogs after him." Similarly, "the cats of Rome
know nothing of the mice of Athens." It is this type
of awareness that people are looking for in animals,
and of which self awareness is an important but only
small part. No animals give any evidence of these
higher levels of awareness, of true consciousness.
That doesn't mean they don't have it, but to date there
is ZERO reason to believe they do, apart from ignorant
and superstitious anthropomorphic projection.