A2 - Wednesday, March 31, 1982 - North Shore News

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

“The traditional quesuon = Gons.” - are these animals not peo-
of whether or not a creature —- That's’ fairly definitive, ple?
is Conscious has to be re- isn'tit?

jected in favor of a broader
question about graduations
or levels of consciousness ...

and adapt, it becomes clear

Once again we see that at
its cutting edge, scientific
Western thinking is coming

psychologists haven't quite

; . “Whether we mean by more and more to adopt the
e mind simply the ability toex- views of ancient Oriental
perience sensory input or teachings.
ain, or the ability to learn Although the
e P

that we are no talking about

taken the next logical step,

14,08”

50 COPIES
. . . i th For Onl
I HAVE LONG believed that animals periencing either mental ac. degrees of development the truth is Taal mack Tay FOR SPEC NO CeOmon
. tivity or feeling has been within the realm of minds ... begin to accept the idea © BRING YOUR INSTANT PRINTING TO
possess consciousness. debunked by _ scientists “To take the levels-of- intelligence, language and ‘Mi
themselves consciousness theme emotions in animals, sooner oe wilttiam meek
They experience the world) infant human who lies The SO delegates at the seriously, however, istotake Or later they are going to printing Itd.

into which they have been
plunged in varying ways.
They are aware of pleasure
and pain.

Since most of them lack a
developed cortex, they do
not perform certain feats
which humans like to think
can only be performed by a
“higher being” like

mindlessly screaming in his
cnb.

I was therefore pleased to
read an article in the March
issue of Psychology Today
by Robert C. Solomon,
reporting on the results of
the Dahlem Conference in
Berlin, a gathering of

Dahlem Conference,  in-
cluding neurologists, animal
behaviorists, psychologists,
evolutionary biologists and a
sprinkling of philosophers,
decided that it was time to
abandon the dogma that a
dog doesn’t have a mind.
Since Descartes made his

seriously not only” the
presence of a minimal mind
but a variety of
abilities and processes.”
Solomon quotes biologist
Lewis Thomas who says,
“there is more than one kind
of self-consciousness and a
ladder of levels upon which

have to confront the ethical
question: In which way, then

mental |

988 1817

prestigious scientists who pronouncement three cen- the pianied creatures with
themselves, although, of have finally agreed that the tunes ago that animals are ™!n¢s istribute FO t
course, it is well-known by study of animal con- mere machines, few scien- themselves. 2 R1 SPECIAL!

now that dolphins and

Sciousmess constitutes a

tusts have dared to msk the

Eggs Benedict with Hollandal:

whales possess cortices no legitimate field of inquiry. charge of “anthropomor- Animal psychologists once or

less complex than man’s. The Dahlem conferences phism” im_ their attitude dismissed the idea of animal Ham & 2 Eggs any style
And there is at least some have traditionally been toward the creatures with minds, animal = con-

evidence that the language oriented toward the whom we share the planet. sciousness, aS an absurdity.

of cetaceans may be vastly biological sciences, attrac- And, of course, society's But now, the idea has

more intricate and subtle
than any human tongue.
I submit that even a crab

ting top researchers from
around the world, who ex-

changing values’ towards
animal suffenmg have been

become the basic premise
from which most of them

, change reports and for- dismissed as “unscientific”. work.
has a limited degree of mulate new directions forin- Well, sorry, rationalists, but The question is no longer
focused consciousness, or vestigation. it is now rational — officially “whether animals have in-

awareness, or self, which
even if it doesn't have any in-

The significance of the
most recent gathering — titl-

so — to consider the ant and
her mental ways. To say

telligence, or language, or
emotions,” writes Solomon,

tellectual ego identity, ed Animal Mind - Human nothing of the octopus, the ‘but rather what in-
nevertheless exists every bit Mind — is that the view that owl and the pussy-cat. telligence, what kind of
as much so as the self of the

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