Do Humans Have a Soul? My argument follows:

[emprworm]

Emp, in your post you had projected that the self-preservation instinct is stronger than the herd instinct

hmmmm...if i did, it is entirely not what I meant. I only meant to say that when an animal has differing impulses, it simply obeys the stronger. My illustration of the lion was to show that sometimes, self-preservation is dominant, other times it is not.

dogs are not self-aware, Ace. Dolphins and chimps are. dogs have intelligence, but that is not self-awareness.

[Acriku]

I would agree that for some animals, they would kill their children before starving, and some would give the last food to their children and then starve to death. Unlocking the animal mind would be very interesting.

[neonext]

I guess dogs are fairly intelligent, as far as animals go, but I don't find them very interesting. To me, they have no personalities. They just all run and bark at things, and wag their tail after you come home or whatever. Really the only intersting thing I see about dogs is their loyalty.

Cats, however, are very intersting IMO. I've lived with about the same number of dogs and cats my whole life (one at a time though), and I see definite personality traits in each of the cats, barely any, if any, in the dogs. The cats seem to build unique identities based on their childhood, similar to how humans do. Cats are also very intelligent animals, you can even easily train them to poop in the toilet!

I think all these types of traits can be explained, and they are all likely to be part of the structure of the brain, including chemical balances and society instincts. Take ants for example, they leave a trail of a chemical they produce that leads from the ant hill to the food, so that all the ants can follow the route to the food and take it back. Also, if they sense danger, they will leave a different chemical that tells all the ants to freak out and run run run. Are these ants tought to behave and react this way? Probably not. They're just programmed that way. The question is: How did they become this way, through evolution, or through an act of god?

I agree that studying animals would reveal much about who we really are, afterall there is lots of evidence that we came from monkies who lived near water, and it all makes sense.

[emprworm]

but neither a cat nor a dog is aware that they exist. don't get me wrong, I am very fond of those animals, but so much of what we think they know, we simply project onto them because of our fondness for them.

[Anathema]

They have been known to communicate with eachother. And what qualifies you to say dolphins and chimps are self aware? Did they tell you? lol. I'm not aware of any chimp philosophers in the past. I'm not saying they aren't self aware, but there is no more proof of that then of whales.

If whales were so intelligent you are talking about, why they can't fly and why they senselessly die on beaches? Intelligent creature would find out how to prevent itself from i.e. dangerous steam. I think creative mind is something, what cannot be just "evolved".

Flying? Can you fly? Lol. As for why they don't build cities or tools, one word: dexterity. We have hands wich allowed us to build instruments and use our creativity, whales do not. As for the stream thing, I could point out examples where human individuals did things much more stupid (like when a bank robber actually fills in a withdrawl paper with his name when he demands money lol).

[emprworm]

because dolphins and chimps are the only creatures (that I know of) that can recognize themselves in a mirror. To any other creature- including dogs and cats, they think their reflection is another animal.

If you put a mark on a dolphins fin and had him swim in front of a giant mirror, he would see the mark in the mirror, and then try to find the mark on his own body. (this is actual experiments, btw).

Dolphins are so amazing, they will actually play in front of the mirror like a child playing on a television, where other animals would be frightened. they know themselves. this is the very definition of self-awareness.

dogs and cats are just too simple to be able to identify themselves. whales also

[Anathema]

Actually, cats and dogs realise it's a fake image pretty quickly. Parrots could stare at it for hours and not realise it's themselves.

And has this experiment of yours been carried out on whales as well?

[emprworm]

i'm not sure what cats and dogs conclude about it, but they do not think they see themselves.

[Anathema]

Did you ask them? I'm not certain about cats and dogs, but I don't think it would be easy to catch their interest in cooperating in such a test (especially cats)

[emprworm]

from sciencenet.org

Cats see their reflection just as we do. Their eyes are similar to ours so there's no reason to expect them to see anything other than a reflection. However, how they interpret what they see is up for discussion. From their behaviour it would appear that they don't recognise the image as a reflection of themselves. Any animal that sees themselves in a mirror or window will approach their reflection as if it were another animal. Cats tend to approach and touch the nose of the reflection. They are clearly confused by the resulting movement of the reflection, but they never seem to work out that it is their reflection.

there are numerous expirements for this. its pretty empirical that cats cannot recognize themselves.

[Anathema]

I'm not sure what they conclude, but I do know cats ignore the mirror image quickly enough (my cats do, anyway). Maybe they don't realise it's them, but they do realise it's fake.

But about whales, were they included in such tests?

[emprworm]

yes i see you are right, the cat does not think its another cat after the initial look. i have been researching it for the last 30 minutes. a cat gets confused and quickly loses interest, unable to "process" what it is seeing, never realizing it sees itself.

whales....not sure but i thought I read that they dont either.

thats why I asked if anyone could 'add' to the list of dolphins and chimps.

[Anathema]

Problem is, no whale ever lived in captivity except smaller ones like killer whales (though I believe those are technicly related to dolphins)

[emprworm]

here is your answer!

only dolphins and apes (i guess i was wrong about chimps)

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/101086398v1

this is pretty current, too. 2001

here is the full article. a fascinating read:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101086398v1

[Anathema]

I read through it swiftly (not much time right now), but I don't see whales mentioned anywhere (or maybe I just missed it)...and they do say to date.

[emprworm]

the dolphins were marked

and when they saw this mark in the mirror, they would freak out trying to find it.

heh!

[Anathema]

Did they find it? ;D[/colro]

[emprworm]

this is really amazing. i love dolphins

"In the series of late sham-markings that occurred after the first genuine marking, the dolphin began to respond differently by engaging in substantially more sham-directed behaviors at reflective surfaces than during the early sham-markings (4.4% vs. 0.3%, respectively). These late sham-markings were thus differentiated from the early sham-markings. Only after repeated exposure to being marked did the animal begin to use the mirror to investigate its body after being sham-marked. In the late sham-marking sessions, the dolphin oriented to make the appropriate area visible substantially more often than when early sham-marking had occurred. These results, therefore, suggest that, in the late sham-marking trials, the dolphin used the mirror to investigate the touched area to determine whether it was marked and, upon discovering no mark, abandoned further self-directed behaviors. This pattern of behavior made it difficult to interpret the subjects' responses to late sham-markings as "true shams" and, as a result, only one sham-marking was conducted in Phase 2. "