Is Your Parrot Self Aware or Not

[Pajarita]

I eat all kinds of meats, but I do not kid myself one bit about how self aware they may be. I used to do a fair amount of hunting and grew up with a profound respect for all other forms of life. I believe that the planet itself is alive and self aware and try to show my respect for it everyday. I even believe that the rocks are alive and have some form of awareness. Well... I don't believe that all of the rocks are alive, but in my present state, I can't tell which ones are and which ones are not, so I just don't take the chance and try to respect them all. But that is my world view.

Science is a wonderful thing and holds a major place in my world, but like everything else, science does not know everything.

Yours is a spiritual position, Wolf. And it's not only perfectly acceptable, it's a wonderful way of looking at the world. But, when we talk about self-awareness, we are not talking about spirit - if we did, one would have to conclude that mankind, as a whole, has no self-awareness.

[seagoatdeb]

I eat all kinds of meats, but I do not kid myself one bit about how self aware they may be. I used to do a fair amount of hunting and grew up with a profound respect for all other forms of life. I believe that the planet itself is alive and self aware and try to show my respect for it everyday. I even believe that the rocks are alive and have some form of awareness. Well... I don't believe that all of the rocks are alive, but in my present state, I can't tell which ones are and which ones are not, so I just don't take the chance and try to respect them all. But that is my world view.

Science is a wonderful thing and holds a major place in my world, but like everything else, science does not know everything.

There are many of us that see the planet as alive, and all parts of it containing that life force and some form of consiousness. I saw that since I was a child and never saw any reason to change my view on what i could see. I see my parrots as litlle feathered beings, manifesting the life force through them, and I just try to put as much quality as I can into their lives. Self awarness definitions needs to change in science to respect more species of life. This planet is not all about what we can use, it should be about what we give back too if we want to survive and not use up everything. Respect and kindness are two very important words. Science is based on what we know now and is always changing, so there is never a point where it has all the answers.

Groups of people, like the Maori, who killed their meat by staring at the animal untill they got eye contact and then would take the animals life as they felt the animal "gave" itself to them get my highest respect, because the animal died without fear. i really do not like putting suffering and scared slaughtered animals in my body, because it supports that in the world, and i also believe it has a bad effect on me when i consume it. But that is each persons choice to make. A Hunter can be as noble as a Maori too, it puts you very close to the whole process, instead of very removed as most people are. So if self awarness is looked at that way, then the closer you are to the process and more aware you are of the process, the closer you are to self awarness for each activity. Parrots are right there, with processes they recognize, they are not removed from processes, like we can be.

[seagoatdeb]

I eat all kinds of meats, but I do not kid myself one bit about how self aware they may be. I used to do a fair amount of hunting and grew up with a profound respect for all other forms of life. I believe that the planet itself is alive and self aware and try to show my respect for it everyday. I even believe that the rocks are alive and have some form of awareness. Well... I don't believe that all of the rocks are alive, but in my present state, I can't tell which ones are and which ones are not, so I just don't take the chance and try to respect them all. But that is my world view.

Science is a wonderful thing and holds a major place in my world, but like everything else, science does not know everything.

Yours is a spiritual position, Wolf. And it's not only perfectly acceptable, it's a wonderful way of looking at the world. But, when we talk about self-awareness, we are not talking about spirit - if we did, one would have to conclude that mankind, as a whole, has no self-awareness.

Even saying what Wolf says is a spiritual position, is open to different interpretaions by different people. Seeing life deeply, seems to me practical and realistic. if self awarness is a part of life, then it doesnt matter if you put spirit in it or not, its only your interpretation, reality still exists regardless, and self awarness is not owned by science or its defintion. Everything can have a kind of self awarness, depending how we define it. Mankind could have various levels of self awarness, as could parrots. Since man is the one who is destroying the planet it could be said that man has the least self awarness of all. We cant live without the rest of the earth, we are on top of the food chain. So if we are aware, see we are seperate, and can contemplate who and what we are , then why do we not see that we are hurting ourselves by hurting the planet. If that is our group self awarness, then it is very shallow if it cant overcome greed. Maybe self awarness should be defined as realizing you are seperate but that you are connected to all life and so you live in enough harmony, that the earth is flourishing. That kind of awarness most animals already have.

[galeriagila]

I really enjoyed that article! Thanks.
I think I can make a case of his bodily awareness and social awareness (as defined in the article), but I don't think he has any introspective awareness (again, as defined).
And hey, most parrots have the mimicking down, so that demonstrates a sustained social learning awareness.
My favorite part was the "deception" section. It's discussed as an element of problem-solving. Pre-schoolers, for example, try to hide evidence of their misbehavior. The RB doesn't... he leaves the damage/whatever right out there; so he has less problem-solving ability than say, a 4 yearn old. He does, however, try to hide HIMSELF (for long periods of time) when trying to escape consequences, or maybe just for fun, so that shows the sustained planfulness and sequential thinking of a 3 year old. The funniest example is when he hides silently behind the drapes' hem, on the floor, long Patagonian tailfeathers giving him away. I call him and you can see the tail jump and then hold verrrrry still. He'll play that game for ten minutes before revealing himself. And that's about the only time he's quiet!
That was a fun read!!!!!

[Wolf]

To your way of thinking, Pajarita, I am taking a spiritual position, and I can not deny that this is true as far as it goes, but while you can't remove the spiritual part of it without everything being dead, it is not just a spiritual position. This often shows up in science when science verifies what ancient cultures have been saying about the world, the universe and everything in it for centuries. There are areas that are called spiritual ( and they are) by science simply because science has not yet caught up.

I use and accept science in my everyday life and have a deep respect for it, but it is not all that there is as our scientists are still learning. I consider that my position is scientific, but with acknowledgement of the spiritual as well as they can't really be separated.

[Pajarita]

Even saying what Wolf says is a spiritual position, is open to different interpretaions by different people. Seeing life deeply, seems to me practical and realistic. if self awarness is a part of life, then it doesnt matter if you put spirit in it or not, its only your interpretation, reality still exists regardless, and self awarness is not owned by science or its defintion. Everything can have a kind of self awarness, depending how we define it. Mankind could have various levels of self awarness, as could parrots. Since man is the one who is destroying the planet it could be said that man has the least self awarness of all. We cant live without the rest of the earth, we are on top of the food chain. So if we are aware, see we are seperate, and can contemplate who and what we are , then why do we not see that we are hurting ourselves by hurting the planet. If that is our group self awarness, then it is very shallow if it cant overcome greed. Maybe self awarness should be defined as realizing you are seperate but that you are connected to all life and so you live in enough harmony, that the earth is flourishing. That kind of awarness most animals already have.[/quote]

Yes, of course that spirituality is open to all kinds of different interpretations - as a matter of fact, I don't think there is anything that is more open to personal interpretation than this subject because, after all, there is no tangible proof, nothing to prove it or disprove it so everything about it is 100% subjective and, taking into consideration the number of individuals on earth, one could very well say that there are as many interpretations as there are people. I also think that man's destruction of the environment does not translate into a lack of self-awareness. It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care. It's a choice they make -a selfish choice, granted- but not a lack of function.

But we are not talking about spirituality, we are talking about science and science says that, in order for you to have self-awareness, you need a brain - and just not any old little brain, either! You not only need a brain that has the parts needed for it, these parts need also to be sufficiently developed (there is a reason why self-awareness is also called megacognition). Granted that they are still studying exactly in which parts and how it occurs because they found one patient that had all three areas identified with it damaged and he still has self-awareness but they have also found many others who lack it after they had these parts damaged. But when you define self-awareness as "realizing that you are separate" you are defining self-knowledge or consciousness (I am not going to go into the 'living in harmony' part because that is the spiritual side of it). Self-awareness goes one step further because it doesn't only involve the knowledge of a self separate from the rest of the Universe (something all animals have) but also represents the ability to create interaction between thoughts and feelings and been able to project the realizations this would bring - it's the knowing that you know and why and how you know it and using this insight to affect your future state or goals. It implies not only cognitive abilities but also physical, social, and communicative functions as well, all intermeshed so as to achieve introspection that changes you and your future. This cannot be done without a brain or even with a brain that has only basic functions - l ike a worm, for example.

Now, is self-awareness 'written' into new cells as they reproduce so even when one part of the brain needed for it is damaged later in life, its 'work' is already done and 'registered'? Is it a function that covers the entire brain instead of just the three zones we had originally identified?
Is the 'switching off' of it a survival trait?
Can it be taught to adults with brain damage as children are taught and develop it as they grow up?

These are all questions that have not been yet answered to anybody's satisfaction but they are trying. But, regardless of the answers, it would still remain a function of a higher brain and not something that every single thing on earth would have.

Here are some links that deal with these questions:

http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/encyclopedia/en/article/109/
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... -self.html
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... awareness/
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bra ... lex-brain/

[seagoatdeb]

I have seen all those links before, and it is facinating reading. i am the most interested in the lines of though that have theorized that self awarness is written into the cells of humans. This means we may find ways to see how consiousness and awarness can be this way in other animals too. Science sure has a long way to go to even understand self awarness in humans. I think you missed my point completely, I never said you can define spirituality many ways, although you can.
I said that Wolfs view point is not necessarily defined as spirituality. I said it may also be defined as close observation of how the world operates and can be viewed as deep realism. Seeing an awarness or life force in things of the earth is not necessarily spiritual, since science also looks at that. Many cultures in the past, had a world view that we would not want to define as so quickly spiritual, since they lived that view and it was not seen as spiritual. In many cases, Science is just catching up to what many past cultures already believed.

If there is a life force running through all things, that makes them self aware.....there are many ways to look at this. it can be seen as simply an animating force all the way to a force that is the force that runs through all things and everything is that force looking back at you manifesting in that form. Science, Religion, and common people look at concepts like this all the time. Reality exists and is what it is, and we all look at it through our own eyes. Most of what we will learn about parrots self awarness with come through us, observing our parrots, until Science finds its way to make the breakthroughs that will lead it that way. untill then we can only look ourselves, but the more ways we see animals the same as ouselves, or as special, the better we usually treat them.

For now I just accept parrots as very intelligent beings, i believe they are self aware, in my definition of what it is. I dont have a strictly scientific viewpoint, i dont have a stricly spiritual view point, I look at things in as many ways as I can. My parrots "show"me if i really look at them.

[Pajarita]

I think that what you, guys (Wolf and Seagoatdeb) are talking about is called 'Quantum Mysticism' (the idea that all things are made out of the same energy and connected to the point of a common consciousness) but, again, this has nothing to do with scientific self-awareness which is what I thought we were talking about. Quantum Mysticism is what "The Force" of Star Wars is all about (I am not trying to put down or make light of the belief by mentioning the sci-fi movie, I am just trying to make it easy for people to identify what the concept actually means).

[seagoatdeb]

You cant pin down, the beliefs of many cultures through history and many today, by saying their beliefs are all quantum mysticism if they look at things as being connected. Just in the realm of a force running through all things, there are many, many many ways of seeing that. Wolf made it clear we are not just talking about science here to define self awarness. he also made a point that spirituality is what science has not discovered yet, although the science of quantum mechanics is looking at forces that run through all things and how they are connected. I will never only look at science for my answers, that limits the resources available to have a balanced approach. It is the application of using certain concepts to look at the self awarness in parrots, and not just the belief.

[Wolf]

It is interesting how some of these topics grow and develop through the various inputs of all of the different people and how it can sometimes require even the person who first asked a bout the topic to step back and reevaluate their own question.

For the most part, for me spirit is the basic life force that permeates all things living and as such can not be separated as without it there is no life. We talk often about the interconnectedness of all life and in many cases we are not actually speaking of the spiritual but we are speaking of entire ecosystems and very often from a scientific point of view. We see it in the effects of deforestation and the destruction of whole habitats and the resulting extinction of parrots and other forms of life. We see it in the effects of climate change and thus the changing of the sea levels, increased strength of weather patterns and the effects on the whole ocean conveyer thing that controls much of the temperature of the planet as well as the oxygenation of the different levels of our lakes and oceans.

In many ways it does not matter how it is that we view and interpret this connectedness of all living things as it does not change the fact that everything is connected in one or more ways. There are even scientific theories suggesting that the interconnectedness extends into the area of thought and that this may be what gives rise to the idea of a planetary consciousness and awareness of sorts, but I am not sure how that works or if the ideas that science has put forth in this area are valid or not. It is possible that this interconnectness gives rise to a level of awareness in lifeforms that would otherwise not possess it, but again I don't know.

When I first asked this question, I was mostly considering the various scientific theories related to the idea of self awareness, but I did not want to try to confine it to just what science had to say. I was actually more interested in just the personal opinions of our members in regards to their relationship with their birds as to whether they though that their parrots were self aware regardless of why they thought their parrots were self aware or not. It is in this context that I asked my question and as such there can be no right or wrong answers although I did think that it might also show us which way most members were looking at the matter of self awareness be it scientific or otherwise.