Animal Conscious

I began discussing my argument in class today about animal's ability to think and be conscious.

In Bermond's stance on animal experience he states:

We cannot imagine emotional experiences accompanying cognition's: for instance feeling of fear is unthinkable with out thoughts like, 'how can I escape?', 'what should I do', Should I defend myself or should I run,' etc. All of these are part of our emotional experience.

The last sentence of this selected passage sticks out the most "...are a part of OUR emotional experience." Just because it's a part of our emotional experience, doesn't mean it necessarily has to be a part of theirs. We are unable to think of fear without words because that is what have had all our lives. How could we feel emotion without the words we readily have at our disposal? And if this is so, than must it follow that deaf-mutes also cannot have emotional experiences?

I for one have experienced fear without words. It's called shocked. Haven't you ever been scared speechless? When you are scared you do not think before hand, "I am going to scream." When someone startles you, do you tell your sympathetic somatic response to activate? These seem to be ways of feeling fear without words. Instead of thinking, "I think someone is behind me, I should walk faster", an animal just walks faster. It's only after you scream, that you say that you were scared. It's only after your heart starts to slow back down that you say you were startled. My point is that we can imagine what it's like to experience fear in words, but also what it is like without them.

Some may say that animals consciousness is like driving on a faimiliar road or like having "blindsightedness." Yet in responce to the blindsighted argument, like Lynch stated, we are able to do these things on autopilot because we are intelligent creatures. Less intelligent creatures have to think fully about difficult tasks because they are harder for them to achieve.

Words are a powerful things and in some aspects our words help us suffer less than animals. Mind over matter is one argument to prove this statement. We are able to tell ourselves that we are not in pain and convince ourselves to the point that we do not feel pain anymore. Like when we are at the dentist we can think about something completly different and virtually block the pain receptors. Another argument is that words help us have less fear because our rationale tells us that everything is going to be okay. When put in a fearful situation we have the capability to control our breathing, and reasure ourselves. This of course is not an ability that non-human animals posses. Words are our coping mechanism. We are able to stop and think about the possibilities and what may happen instead of jumping to conclusions or resorting to ancestral instincts. Lastly, words can have therapeutic effects. Like when someone makes you feel better by talking to you. I'm sure that we have all been in situations when we felt upset or angry and a friend talked us through.

In class, I spoke about being able to think without words. That split second before you say your response, you have the vital emotions that create those words that make up your rebuttal. This leads me to my question: Is there considered no thought in the thought process? Is a thought only a thought if it is spoken or translated into a language?