[HN Gopher] Review of the evidence of sentience in molluscs and ...
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Review of the evidence of sentience in molluscs and crustaceans
[pdf]
Author : rntn
Score : 92 points
Date : 2022-02-18 10:34 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lse.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lse.ac.uk)
| causi wrote:
| To be clear, this is regarding sentience, not sapience.
| robinduckett wrote:
| How sapient is your dog? This is calling for more humane
| treatment when slaughtering these creatures. I'd prefer it
| didn't happen at all.
| causi wrote:
| My dog isn't sapient at all. He's quite sentient, though.
| Judging by the paper we shouldn't be killing octopuses at
| all, let alone inhumanely.
| utexaspunk wrote:
| I'm not sure that's salient to this conversation
| causi wrote:
| It isn't, but he asked.
| utexaspunk wrote:
| I just wanted to add salient to sentience and sapience ;)
| bitwize wrote:
| I've stopped eating octopus-containing foods, including
| takoyaki, after learning how smart those little creatures
| are. They've only got one or two short, brilliant years on
| Earth... I don't need to be making things worse for them.
| pygy_ wrote:
| > Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to
| contemplate and act using knowledge, experience,
| understanding, common sense and insight.
|
| Dogs are more than sentient. Part of their behavior is
| learned, they have knowledge, experience, understanding,
| common sense (with both dogs and humans). No idea if
| insight has been studied in dogs specifically, but it isn't
| a human exclusive either
| (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23231629/).
| taneq wrote:
| By that definition any sentient creature is sapient.
|
| Which, I mean, they are. Here's a litmus test: Is that
| creature so simple that you (or a suitably skilled
| technologist) could build one? If so then it's not
| sentient/sapient/a person/something we shouldn't be mean
| to. If not then maybe we should pay it a little more
| respect.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Name any creature in the world, and I'll name a human who
| can make you more of them, for a price.
|
| It's especially ironic because the very dogs in question
| were engineered by humans over vast generations, with a
| genetic engineering technique called selective breeding.
|
| Dogs aren't just built, they're designed.
| taneq wrote:
| Breeding creatures using those creatures doesn't count
| and you know it.
| pygy_ wrote:
| That argument is pretty weak, technological advances may
| allow people to create pretty complex beings in the near
| future (assuming we can't already).
|
| Sapience was probably defined hoping to make it a human
| exclusive, but recent science has eroded the idea of a
| qualitative singularity in humans. We are merely
| quantitatively different.
|
| Even single cells can be conditioned using the Pavlovian
| paradigm, which is a basic form of learning.
|
| I'd expect an entity with complex and immutable
| information processing ability (no writable memory) to be
| purely sentient.
| taneq wrote:
| Yeah, it wasn't meant to be an abiding definition, just a
| right-now thumb-suck feasibility test. "If I can code
| you, you're probably not a person."
|
| You're bang on the money with sapience being originally
| intended to be a merit badge for being human.
|
| I'm guessing your last line was just riffing on
| functional purity but if not, my definition of sentience
| (which is a superset of consciousness) includes
| perception of current and past self-states which means
| (by my definitions, at least) an immutable construct
| isn't sentient by itself. I guess if you always pass in a
| self-state-vector then the system of (construct, self-
| state) could be conscious?
| taneq wrote:
| What does this distinction mean to you, and which of the two is
| more significant and why?
| causi wrote:
| "Sophontic" would be a more accurate term for my meaning but
| almost nobody would know what I'm talking about.
|
| _which of the two is more significant and why?_
|
| Neither is more significant. I was pointing out that the
| study was regarding body-awareness and basic emotional
| response in the animals, not trying to demonstrate, for
| example, that octopuses are as intelligent as a (insert age)
| human child. It's about squids noticing when you hurt them,
| not octopuses appreciating music.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Where is _sophontic_ used?
| layer8 wrote:
| It originated in SF novels, apparently:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sophont
| wolverine876 wrote:
| If anyone wants an excellent dictionary of sci-fi /
| fantasy terms, look at the (free, online) _Historical
| Dictionary of Science Fiction_ by Jesse Sheidlower, a
| lexicographer who has had a career with the Oxford
| English Dictionary (OED) and others. It started as an OED
| project to record sci-fi words and IIRC still has access
| to their internal databases.
|
| * https://sfdictionary.com/
|
| * https://sfdictionary.com/view/298/sophont
|
| They have other interesting features, like a list of
| words coined by author:
|
| * https://sfdictionary.com/most_first_cites_authors
|
| And they want help, if anyone on HN happens to be
| familiar with sci-fi or related literature: "It is hoped
| that the site will grow to include subfields or related
| areas, such as gaming, comics, or anime/manga."
|
| https://sfdictionary.com/how_to_help
| mLuby wrote:
| That word is so rare that your comment is the 4th search
| result hit on DDG: https://imgur.com/xSyGRT1
| posterboy wrote:
| > This report is commissioned via LSE Consulting which was set up
| by The London School of Economics and Political Science to enable
| and facilitate the application of its academic expertise and
| intellectual resources.
|
| The foreword is "By Professor Nicola S. Clayton FRS FSB FSPS
| CPsychol FBPsS _Professor of Comparative Cognition, Department of
| Psychology, University of Cambridge_ " and the focus seems to be
| on "welfare". Makes sense?
|
| > In reviewing the relevant evidence, there are inevitably
| challenges, especially juxtaposing evidence from the field of
| comparative cognition, where the emphasis lies in ruling out
| simpler explanations for a given behaviour, response or
| performance on various problem-solving tasks with evidence from
| animal welfare, where the question revolves around potential
| capacities (such as the potential to experience pain).
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I was going to post that first part, so thank you. Clayton is
| not listed as one of the authors of the report; they are
| (p.85):
|
| _Dr Jonathan Birch is an Associate Professor at the LSE's
| Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science and the
| Principal Investigator on the Foundations of Animal Sentience
| project, a five-year Horizon 2020 project investigating animal
| sentience.
|
| Dr Charlotte Burn is an Associate Professor of Animal Welfare
| and Behaviour Science at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) and
| Deputy Head of the RVC's Animal Welfare Science and Ethics
| Group. Burn's research interests include the mechanisms and
| motivations behind animal behaviour, animal perceptual
| abilities, and how to make concrete improvements to animal
| welfare.
|
| Dr Alexandra Schnell is a Royal Society Newton International
| Fellow in the Department of Psychology, University of
| Cambridge, and a Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge.
| As a member of the Comparative Cognition Lab, Schnell
| specializes in investigating the cognitive abilities of
| cephalopods and corvids.
|
| Dr Heather Browning is a Research Officer on the Foundations of
| Animal Sentience project. Before joining the project, Heather
| completed a PhD on the measurement of animal welfare at the
| Australian National University. Alongside her academic work,
| Browning has also worked as a zookeeper and animal welfare
| officer.
|
| Dr Andrew Crump is a Research Officer on the Foundations of
| Animal Sentience project. Before joining the project, Crump
| completed a PhD in Animal Behaviour and Welfare at Queen's
| University Belfast, exploring how human activity impacts animal
| cognition and emotion._
| agomez314 wrote:
| love how they take 1 page defining sentience beginning with this
| jewel: "the capacity to have feelings". begs the question no?
| dash2 wrote:
| They list 8 separate empirical criteria for sentience, and
| evaluate them each in detail for the different species
| involved.
| rsiqueira wrote:
| "We have developed a rigorous framework for evaluating
| scientific evidence of sentience based on eight criteria."
| 1) possession of nociceptors; 2) possession of
| integrative brain regions; 3) connections between
| nociceptors and integrative brain regions; 4) responses
| affected by potential local anaesthetics or analgesics;
| 5) motivational trade-offs that show a balancing of threat
| against opportunity for reward; 6) flexible self-
| protective behaviours in response to injury and threat;
| 7) associative learning that goes beyond habituation and
| sensitisation; 8) behaviour that shows the animal
| values local anaesthetics or analgesics when injured.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| Here's a nice video[1] of somebody adopting a supermarket lobster
| and nurturing it back to health. clear demonstration to me that
| they are sentient and have personalities and mood (of a sort).
| after watching that, the grocery store lobsters are kinda
| heartbreaking, but i'm also a long time vegetarian so already
| predisposed to that.
|
| i think aquarium keepers can be especially attuned to the
| personality types of marine animals. i've only been keeping
| freshwater fish and snails for under a year but they are super
| personable!
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sI7WveN7vk
| riffraff wrote:
| Please take this as an honest question: as a vegetarian and
| someone with likely above average empathy for animals, don't
| you feel uneasy about keeping fish in acquariums?
|
| I eat meat so I'm not claiming any moral ground, on the
| contrary I very much keep in high esteem people who avoid
| animal products, but the idea of keeping a living creature in a
| tiny living space feels incredibly sad to me, and it seems
| surprising that someone like you would do it.
| garren wrote:
| I've inherited a canary someone didn't want, and I feel very
| much the same. I've considered letting it go, but it's not a
| strong flier and the climate where I am isn't exactly canary
| friendly. The idea that anyone would /buy/ a bird just to
| keep them in a cage is depressing.
|
| The same thought applies to mice and other little mammals
| like sugar fliers, reptiles and amphibians, etc. I've cats
| and dogs that I adore, so I'm not anti-pet exactly, but if
| you take a step back and really look, the whole idea of pets
| is...not right.
| lindsaywaterman wrote:
| Konrad Lorenz discusses this in Solomon's Ring. He says that
| it's fine to cage animals that have limited territory in
| nature. Thankfully, many reef fish, like clown fish, have
| limited ranges in nature, so thrive in tanks.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| haha yeah, i've been conflicted about it since starting, and
| still am.
|
| partly i have moved past the black and white moralization of
| it, into something that's more of a heuristic of minimization
| in order to guide me through the more grey parts of life.
| pets is a really really hard one for me, because i share your
| intuition, it's not kind to restrict their freedom, but i
| also enjoy that bond with them.
|
| ultimately, i don't have a reason more than it's just one of
| the places in my life that brings me a lot of joy. my family
| and i can't have kids or a dog or anything, but i love having
| animals around. the bird feeders are another daily enjoyment
| of mine. the fish are really beautiful and i take the best
| care of them i can. there are very few of them in a quite
| large tank, but yes i also get a weird sad feeling while
| watching them pretty frequently...
|
| thanks for asking though, it's a good thing to continually
| re-evaluate. i don't know if it's something that i can
| indulge in long term.
| ahevia wrote:
| My partner works at an aquarium and the amount of personality
| that fish & marine animals have is incredible!
|
| A lot of fish love sand/gravel baths. So when they spot a diver
| in the tank they'll either look for food or wait for when to
| sprinkle sand/gravel overhead.
|
| If you own an aquarium at home you can also begin to learn the
| personality of your tank critters. (I also define personality
| in animals as "different" from personality in humans. They are
| not equivalent, but individual animals still have unique
| behaviors that separate them from others in their species)
|
| If you use Instagram, try and follow your local ZAA/AZA
| accredited aquarium or zoo. They often share clips of unique
| behavior & can often be pretty educational.
| mchusma wrote:
| I think being rigorous about definitions of things is good, kudos
| to the authors for that. I do think this is important for
| defining how we treat animals and AIs.
|
| However, they seemed to pick something that obviously matches the
| criteria? This is a 100 page paper that comes to conclusions like
| "octopuses feel something like pain" and "declawing crabs is not
| fun for them".
|
| I think this framework would have been more interesting to apply
| to creatures where this is less obvious like tardigrades. I
| actually don't know if they meet criteria for sentience.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| the reason for them doing this is we process a lot of these
| animals industrially for food.
|
| they are providing a scientific justification for humane
| practices in treatment and processing of these animals.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Yes. This is very much about practical ethics rather than
| just theoretical philosophy of mind.
| vanilla-almond wrote:
| Extracts from the LSE report summary below:
|
| _Recommendations relating to specific commercial practices_
|
| _Declawing_ : We have high confidence that declawing (removing
| one or both of the claws from a crab before returning it back to
| the water) causes suffering in crabs.
|
| _Nicking_ : We also have high confidence that the practice of
| nicking (cutting the tendon of a crab's claw) causes suffering
| and is a health risk to the animals.
|
| _Wholesale and retail_ : We recommend a ban on the sale of live
| decapod crustaceans to untrained, non-expert handlers.
|
| _Stunning_ : Current evidence indicates that electrical
| stunning...can induce a seizure-like state in relatively large
| decapods, and that stunning diminishes, without wholly
| abolishing, the nervous system's response to boiling water. We
| interpret this as evidence that electrical stunning is better
| than nothing.
|
| _Slaughter (decapods)_ We recommend that the following slaughter
| methods are banned in all cases in which a more humane slaughter
| method is available, unless preceded by effective electrical
| stunning:
|
| - boiling alive,
|
| - slowly raising the temperature of water,
|
| - tailing (separation of the abdomen from the thorax, or
| separation of the head from the thorax), any other form of live
| dismemberment,
|
| - and freshwater immersion (osmotic shock).
|
| On current evidence, the most reasonable slaughter methods are
| double spiking (crabs), whole-body splitting (lobsters), and
| electrocution using a specialist device on a setting that is
| designed and validated to kill the animal quickly after initially
| stunning it.
|
| _Slaughter (cephalopods)_ : Various different slaughter methods
| are currently used on fishing vessels in European waters,
| including clubbing, slicing the brain, reversing the mantle and
| asphyxiation in a suspended net bag.
|
| We are not able to recommend any of these methods as humane. On
| current evidence, there is no slaughter method for cephalopods
| that is both humane and commercially viable on a large scale.
| nefitty wrote:
| Thank you. Peter Singer's advice to drop all animal-based
| products from one's life, to be on the safe side, continues to
| be prescient.
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