Growing And Thinking Ahead

I was never the type of person to wake refreshed. When I saw the commercials on TV as a kid about adults struggling to get up in the morning, then bragging about how they woke up alert, refreshed, and the like when they got a new mattress, pill, pillow, or candle, I thought it was something out of the ordinary. Only this past week have I been able to wake up refreshed but even so. At no point have I been able to wake up feeling like I could run my usual three miles. (To be technical, yes it was when I was late to a class, but that's a tangent.)

Awakening

So what would an animal feel or think? I realize in the last post I made there was a definite decision on the matter of modifying from birth versus adolescent or late life, but let's still play around here. What sort of awakening would it be?

Let's be realistic for a second and not take a cue from the movies. The recent 2011 movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes, contained a scene, where SPOILERS, the lead protagonist, Caesar, uses the viral agent produced in the movie to give a dose to all the chimpanzees in the sanctuary he's kept in. They fall asleep  normal functioning chimpanzees, then wake up sober-minded sentient animals. This would not be the case. Like I detailed before, who wakes up fully refreshed and alert.

Chances are the opposite is true; the animal receives gradual modifications and medicines to augment their thinking. I'm reminded of a short science fiction story exploring a life of a family dog in a loving home who's gradually being augmented to gain the gift of consciousness and speech. It is by no means an inexpensive procedure as the family routinely takes the dog to surgeries to change the throat and voice box, and install medicine to refine the brain. Of course, in the beginning, the main character's speech is highly warped by an unconventional anatomy and the low levels of development mean he speaks with basic sentence structure, "I play outside?" "Have human food?" and the like. You'll see this blog updated soon with the name of that story, and where to find it.

The story progresses where of course, the brain grows, more cohesive sentences can be dictated, and a greater understanding of the world comes into play. Leaving the TV on, the family dog discovers that halfway around the world, dog-eating festivals in Korea exist, and isn't quite troubled by it. A lot of things can be learned as fact, but it requires intelligence and reasoning to understand that those of your species are consumed in other places. You can tell an animal "food is poisonous," but will it grasp the concept it is a threat to its well-being? And that as a threat to one's well-being, can it think of alerting someone else? Of course animals can recognize a threat and share the information of that threat, but there is an added dimension of recognizing the word 'poison,' what it means, how to pronounce it, where it applies. Normally, an animal, say a bird, only think orange wing monarch with throwing up, unpleasant. I purposefully simplified the sentence. Because that's what the process is. Stream of consciousness of images, somewhat relating to the bird and episodic memory I talked about earlier.

So moving away from that. The animal gains consciousness and is somewhat able to make reasons like a child. Restrain yourself from performing an action if that action give you pain. But delayed consequence is still a thing to be grasped. Most children, without supervision, will eat a bag full of candy before feeling the negative consequence of becoming sick. Same with a dog or cat who will eat the remaining leftovers off a plate, regardless of whether the food is bad for them or not.

One could see here where the benefit of giving consciousness to our pet lies. Too often harm comes because a pet does something contrary to their best interests. 

Full Consciousness

Would theoretical treatment of animals ever give them the full scope of sentience that human adults have? That's another big question. If no, it implies we have animals who are mostly able to communicate their stories, emotions, and thoughts with us in a scope never before thought possible. If yes, the implications are much greater. Try thinking of animals in academia, earning degrees, creating their own innovations. Imagine the intelligent wolf, running for congress. A Nobel Prize for the lion. A movie directed by a pig. The ramifications are huge.

Am I jumping ahead? Yes. Indeed, I will cover more of this later on. And these decisions are weighed on the scientists and researchers who are hovering over a infant animal, showing brightly coloured shapes while repeating their names, in the hopes the animal begins to learn in the same pathway as a human infant.

As for my choice of animals, well, that's a later post to put up.

Happy thinking!