Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Perhaps the most surprising insight that has come out of the past 20 years of scholarly investigation into the nature of consciousness is that it might be far more widely shared among all of nature's children than most of us think. By consciousness I mean the ability to feel something, anything -- whether it's the sensation of an azure-blue sky, a tooth ache, being sad, or worrying about the deadline two weeks from now. Indeed, it may be possible that all animals share some minimal amount of sentience with people, that all animals have some feelings, however primitive.

Pet owners vigorously assert that their dogs and cats experience the pains and pleasure of life. Anyone who has observed a chimpanzee grimace at its own face in a mirror and then inspect its teeth and its backside will grant it at least some limited form of self recognition and feelings of self. Nature documentaries bring us closer to the suffering and joys of animals in the wild. Indeed, in the U.S., the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 encodes this general public understanding by granting mammals (with the notable exception of rats, mice, and farm animals) special protection against needless suffering not afforded to birds or to cold-blooded animals.

Detailed investigations by behavioral biologists have demonstrated that many other species have complex cognitive abilities such that were they to occur in humans, would be associated with consciousness. Octopuses can learn from each other; and ravens, magpies, parrots, and other birds can perform feats of problem solving, insight, and memorization, and even bees (with under one million nerve cells) can recognize individual faces, learn to navigate by landmarks, and chose a new hive site by deliberations and several days of dancing.

I'm not reading because I don't care what science says. From what I heard, it's nothing but a bunch of theories.

Isn't that all that science is? Nothing is solid fact, everything is theory. Gravity is a theory, not a fact.