Do some animals feel empathy?

Read the following article.

Throughout her career as a neurobiologist, Peggy Mason has been told over and over that the rats she experiments on are not capable of empathy.

Don't people just love to make bald assertions! It would seem strange to me if we're the only animal capable of feeling empathy. 

Alex Kacelnik, a behavioral ecologist, argued that Mason was simply projecting humanlike feelings and emotions onto these rat "rescues" — a tendency known as anthropomorphism.

What is the purpose of adding "humanlike"? And why is it "project" rather than "infer"?

To be accurate the sentence should be rewritten:


"Alex Kacelnik, a behavioral ecologist, argued that Mason was simply inferring feelings and emotions onto these rat "rescues" — a tendency known as anthropomorphism".

The question here is why such an inference is unreasonable? If they behave like us when we're showing empathy, then the most straightforward explanation for this is that the animals too are experiencing empathy.

We don’t have evidence that there is an internal first-person experience that leads the animal to do it," Kacelnik tells me on a Skype call from his office in Oxford.

The evidence would be that they behave as if they have an internal first-person experience. Would I question whether other people have a first person experience? Surely, if animals behave as if they have a first person experience, then our default assumption should be that they indeed have an internal first-person experience? If one wants to doubt this, then they have to advance reasons to doubt it, not simply presuppose they are correct!

The definition of the material is not this

I've heard a number of people on the net, typically those with a scientific background, assert that something is material or physical if it can affect anything else. Or, in other words, if it has causal powers.


This is of course a ridiculous definition. It rules out interactive dualism by definition. If the soul or self can move the body, they assert it is material. That's despite the fact the self/soul might not have any location, isn't made out of atoms or anything else, and indeed doesn't have any physical properties whatsoever.

But it gets even worse. Consider Berkeley's metaphysic (subjective idealism). In his metaphysic the only things that have causal powers are finite spirits (i.e us), and the infinite spirit (God). The "external" world of trees, rocks, and stars, are equated with our sensory perceptions (qualia) and of course this "external world" has no causal powers at all. It is God that does everything.


But this then means that spirits -- whether finite or infinite -- are material, but that what we call the physical world is non-material!


Needless to say this is ludicrous. It might be helpful if these people with a scientific background actually thought a little about this.

Woody Allen and the meaninglessness of Life

Woody Allen has said:

I firmly believe ... that life is meaningless. I’m not alone in thinking this — there have been many great minds far, far superior to mine, that have come to that conclusion. And unless somebody can come up with some proof or some example where it’s not, I think it is. I think it’s a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, and that’s just the way I feel about it.

If many great minds have come to that conclusion, then this implies there are reasons why they hold this belief. So what are those reasons? I highly doubt if these are reasons I haven't heard of before! And I'm afraid I don't hold such reasons in high regard as I explain in my blogs and elsewhere on the net.

Nor do I see why the hypothesis that life is meaningless should be the default position. However, I would point to altered states of consciousness such as mystical states and so on, which imply that life has an ultimate meaning. Indeed, we would have to conclude we are being deceived whilst in such states if we are to suppose life is meaningless. With what reason do we have to suppose we are being deceived?

Also see another relevant blog entry by me in my other blog.

Sean Carroll and the philosophy of mind and science

I recently read the following article by Sean Carroll who is a theoretical physicist.  In it he says:

 

If these
mental properties affected the behavior of particles in the same way
that physical properties like mass and electric charge do, then they
would simply be another kind of physical property. You are free to
postulate new properties that affect the behavior of electrons and
photons, but you’re not simply adding new ideas to the Core Theory (the
enormously successful model of the particles and forces that make up
you, me, the sun, the moon, the stars, and everything you have ever
seen, touched, or tasted in all your life). Instead, you are saying that
it is wrong. If mental properties affect the evolution of quantum
fields, there will be ways to measure that effect experimentally, at
least in principle, not to mention all of the theoretical difficulties
with regard to conservation of energy and so on that such a modification
would entail. It’s reasonable to assign very low credence to such a
complete overhaul of the very successful structure of known physics.

 

There are 2 points to be made here.



First of all, science as currently conceived cannot in principle explain consciousness (see my essay Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness ).
The "Core Theory", as he labels it, therefore we know is false. Or, as I would prefer to say, at least it cannot be a complete description of reality. Hence, to say that any
modification has little credence simply fails to understand this point. Necessarily the "core theory", is incorrect, or at least it is not wholly correct.



Secondly, there's this persistent misunderstanding, and one that Carroll seems to share, that scientific
theories describe reality in their totality. But that's not what we learn from
the history of science. The history of science teaches us that our
theories give approximations only, even if those approximations might
be very close approximations. Generally, our old scientific theories are often perfectly adequate to
describe a given domain, but break down when attempting to describe that
which resides outside that domain. Thus, the science prior to
relativity and quantum mechanics is "wrong", however, that does
nothing to prevent the Newtonian mechanical description of reality being able to be
used to get us to the moon and back.  In addition, the classical mechanics espoused before the advent of Quantum Mechanics is perfectly
adequate to describe the macroscopic realm, even though it might be "wrong".  Quantum Mechanics is only needed when we describe the microscopic realm.



Now, consciousness has only existed for a
vanishingly medium part of the history of the Universe and is confined to
planets which presumably will be very few and far between. I suggest
the "core theory" describes non-conscious reality -- that is to say the overwhelming majority of the physical realm -- to a very close
approximation, just as classical mechanics describes
the macroscopic realm to a very close approximation. But that it breaks
downs when it comes to consciousness, just as classical mechanics breaks
down with the physics of the very medium.

Stephen Hawking continues to demonstrate his philosophical cluelessness

God did not create the universe, says Stephen Hawking

Article says:

"God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was the inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, says eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking".

Either physical laws:

a) Merely describe what happens.
b) They make things happen.

If "a" then the Big Bang wasn't caused by physical laws. For that would be like saying sleep is caused by sleeping pills via their soporific effect. So in this case we have no explanation for why the Big Bang occurred, nor indeed anything after the Big Bang.

If "b" then why do physical laws exist? Did they somehow acausally spring into being? Or perhaps they were brought into being by something else, some conscious agent? If that's not possible then why isn't it? What's the alternative explanation?

It would be helpful if physicist tried to understand that science merely describes reality.  See my own:
Do scientific explanations actually explain?

The God helmet

Just watched this video about mystical experiences and the God helmet.  The speaker implicitly supposes, but doesn't argue, that the God helmet produces such experiences.

But such a conclusion is simply not warranted.  The fact that "the God helmet" triggers such experiences does not entail that the brain is the origin of such experiences. For example, one could be blind due to damage to the brain rather than the eyes. One could thereby restore vision if that part of the brain were altered to make it fully functional again. It wouldn't thereby entail the things we see are not out there.
The brain might prohibit such mystical experiences in its normal functional state. Altering a certain area might allow us glimpses of a reality normally inaccessible to us as the brain filters out such experiences.

See other essays by me on this topic in my other blog: e.g

Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness

The War on Stupid People

Just read this article.  It says:

Those who consider themselves bright openly mock others for being less so. Even in this age of rampant concern over microaggressions and victimization, we maintain open season on the nonsmart. People who’d swerve off a cliff rather than use a pejorative for race, religion, physical appearance, or disability are all too happy to drop the s‑bomb: Indeed, degrading others for being “stupid” has become nearly automatic in all forms of disagreement.

Don't they just! At least they do on the Internet. Do they say to their pet dogs and cats "God you are so so stupid, I despise you"? We are what we are.


On the other hand I do object to people making definitive assertions which they cannot back up, and thinking you're stupid because you question their assertion, or -- heaven forbid -- even disagree with it! And this is precisely what many people tend to do on the Internet. And these people presumably tend to think of themselves as bright.

In my opinion there also seems to often be a misunderstanding about what intelligence is. Knowledge is distinct from intelligence, even though there may be an imperfect correlation. Intelligence is more like the innate capacity to understand issues, the ability to think something through rationally, to have an awareness of other possibilities and not necessarily think along pre-defined channels. I don't think one is stupid merely because they haven't heard of Kardishion (or whatever she's called). If intelligence or IQ was considered to be a reflection of how knowledgeable you are about popular culture, I would have a lower IQ than literally 99% of the population. And when I say literally, I mean literally.