Reddit mentions of The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society

There is no way of exactly knowing if an animal has theory of mind yet we can try to find out by using carefully constructed behavioural tests as well as including observational data on day to day behaviours of individuals. One example might be the mirror test: "to determine whether an animal possesses the ability to recognize itself in a mirror. It is the primary indicator of self-awareness in non-human animals and marks entrance to the mirror stage by human children in developmental psychology." However, the mirror test is biased in that it really only works for animals whose primary sense is vision. The previous wiki page provides a good starting point but I would also recommend other books by a number of scientists such as Age of Empathy or "Our Inner Ape" by Frans de Waal, "The Moral Lives of Animals" by Peterson. More specifically books like Primate origins of human cognition and behaviour or Animal Wise: where the author "explores how this rapidly evolving, controversial field has only recently overturned old notions about why animals behave as they do. She probes the moral and ethical dilemmas of recognizing that even “lesser animals” have cognitive abilities such as memory, feelings, personality, and self-awareness–traits that many in the twentieth century felt were unique to human beings.
By standing behaviorism on its head, Morell brings the world of nature brilliantly alive in a nuanced, deeply felt appreciation of the human-animal bond, and she shares her admiration for the men and women who have simultaneously chipped away at what we think makes us distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities come from."

First, it may be highly controversial to say this even here on r/askscience but humans are not the only animal on this planet to have theory of mind. Other animals can approximate the mental states of other individuals within their groups and can also understand the difference between the self and others. This effects how we view animals in a profound way, no longer is there a clear and defining "us" vs. "them". I can go into more detail but these previous books do a way better job of thoroughly exploring the subject from a laymans point of view. Consequently, humans seem to acquire these abilities sometime around 18 months of age. I also know that there is extensive literature on theory of mind in humans with autism, although I am not familiar with the details of this literature.

>What are the prerequisites for sentience, for example clothing or hunting techniques?

There is no one single "recipe" for having or acquiring theory of mind. I can tell you it has little to nothing to do with anything you see that is modern around you (i.e. cars, clothing, tools or hunting). This is because people (or groups of people) and other animals without these things still have theory of mind. Even oral or written language as we know it today is not likely a necessary precursor to theory of mind. We can still have complex thought or processing without the need for complex language. Does oral or written language enable us to communicate in a more efficient way? Yes. I still don't think you can equate the two - perhaps (human) language requires complex thought, but complex thought does not require language. Many scientists hypothesize that "theory of mind must have preceded language use, based on evidence of use of the following characteristics: intentional communication, repairing failed communication, teaching, intentional persuasion, intentional deception, building shared plans and goals, intentional sharing of focus or topic, and pretending." - all of these precede language and we see many of them expressed in animals, especially within the primate order. So first cognition then language.

However, animals that do have theory of mind tend to be highly social. Being social requires a lot of brain power in the sense that you have to be able to keep track of a number of individuals and your relationship to them. Long lived species need to keep track of these relationships through time. You also need to keep track of others relationship to other members of your group and you need to keep track of "outsiders" and "insiders". This stuff gets pretty complex. In order to navigate a complex social environment being able to tell yourself apart from others and even one individual from another is pretty critical.

> What differentiates homo sapiens from homo neanderthalensis in terms of intelligence?

First I would ask you to define intelligence. It's not so easy, so what I can do is explain the differences in behaviour based on what we have found in the archeolgical record:

• Neanderthals were able to use tools, well tools had been used by Hominins for millions of years by the time Neanderthals evolved and tool use isn't even unique to our lineage. But I digress, the tools used by neanderthals remained relatively consistent in design and use for their entire existence (from about 600,000 years ago to 24,000 years ago). On the other hand, human tool cultures were much more varied and were adapted to new environments. So humans have been described as better [tool] innovators than neanderthals.
  
  
• We lived in many different kinds of habitats and moved around a lot where as Neanderthals stuck to Europe. Therefore we have come to the conclusion that humans were better able to change our behaviour in order to survive in a variety of environments (tropics to temperate, deserts to alpine). We also had long-distance trade whereas neanderthal populations seemed pretty isolated from one another. Another indication that human oral communication may have been fast out-pacing the oral communication abilities of neanderthals (if they had them at all - some think that gestures played an important role in pre-language hominids, including early humans, in that they used gestures rather than words to communicate.)
  
  
• Neanderthals had jewellery, buried their dead, and probably made cave art etc. So they had some pretty complex cultures. But around 50,000 years ago human cultural activities exploded. There are statues, symbolic art, more complex burials etc. indicating a shift in our collective behaviour. This is known as behavioural modernity: "It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate an ability to use complex symbolic thought and express cultural creativity. These developments are often thought to be associated with the origin of [modern] language...One theory holds that behavioral modernity occurred as a sudden event some 50 kya possibly as a result of a major genetic mutation or as a result of a biological reorganization of the brain that led to the emergence of modern human natural languages".
  
  
• The control of fire and cooking date back between 500,000 and 1.2 million years with H. erectus. Fire is not unique to humans (Homo sapiens) or neanderthals.

We have a very good understanding of their intelligence. They are probably some of the most well studied species in terms of behaviour and cognitive abilities on this planet. In ELI5/TLDR* most researchers would characterize their intelligence of being equivalent to a 2-3 year old human child. Just a short list of things that characterize these species:

• They form long-term social bonds and remember individuals
  
  
• They are able to recognize self from other
  
  
• They are able to lie
  
  
• They are able to understand fairness
  
  
• They are able to make, modify and use tools
  
  
• They have culture and tradition
  
  
• They are able to demonstrate empathy
  
  
• They feel the same or similar emotions to humans
  
  
• They have morals
  
  
• They mourn the dead
  
  
• They are able to solve multi-step problems
  
  ...
  
  I suppose another way of looking at this is what do we have that they lack. What makes humans unique?
  
  We know of some factors that contributed to our awareness and unique intelligence as compared to other living species. It is important to know that this is a very active area of study in many different disciplines (psychology, biology, animal behaviour, psychiatry, physiology, anthropology, neurology, linguistics, genetics, archeology...).
  
  
• Traits we inherited from our distant ancestors. Obviously all species are a cumulation of inherited traits. Who we are today is largely due to who "we" were in the distant past. We inherited a strong tendency to be a very social species from our mammalian ancestry. Mammals are social beings, humans included. We inherited opposable thumbs from our early primate ancestors. Humans are not the only species with opposable thumbs so it is not a trait that is unique to our species. However, the inheritance of thumbs enabled us and the other primates to develop fine motor skills like precision grip. This enables us to manipulate objects, and make/modify tools. Humans also inherited an upright bipedal posture from our early ancestors. Humans are not the only bipedal species (after all, all birds are bipedal!) but our upright posture has given us many advantages, namely that it frees our hands to do other tasks.
  
  
• Brain/body size ratio & exceptional brain gyrification is a somewhat useful indicator of how intelligence a species is. The correlation is decent among related mammal species, but it breaks down when applied to distantly related animals. It underestimates intelligence in heavy animals like horses and overestimates small animals like mice and birds. You also have to consider what the animal's brain has evolved for. Bird's typically have very large brains for their body but may not be exceptionally smart. A lot of that large bird brain is used for flight calculations and isn't available for higher level processing. Fruit flies have enormous brains compared to their mass, but that brain is simply too small to have any real thought processes. Humans are highly intelligent because they have an extremely large brain for their normal body mass and that brain has evolved specifically to perform complex thought. Size isn't the only factor, scientists also consider the degree of specialization, complexity of neural connections, and degree of brain gyrification. Humans score high on all these physical qualifiers associated with increased intelligence.
  
  
• Two cognitive traits thought to be unique to humans - shared intentionality and cumulative culture. Shared intentionality goes one step further than being able to solve problems as a group, it involves anticipating the needs of others and the situation in order to solve a common goal. This requires incredible foresight, flexibility, and problem solving skills. It requires an almost hyper-sociality group structure. We couldn't stick 100 chimpanzees on a plane and expect it to land in one piece...but you can stick 100 human strangers and all, for the most part, get along just fine. This level of cooperation is rarely seen among other animals (save for the Eusocial insects, naked mole rats, and perhaps Callitrichid monkeys)...my point is we have a shared intentionality that allows us to be hyper-social and cooperative. Cumulative culture goes beyond the cultures exhibited by other animals. Other animals have culture where [non-essential] traditions are passed on from one generation to the next and can be modified slowly over many generations. Humans also have traditions, but these are past on much more easily between individuals. Moreover, these traditions are quickly modified, almost unlimited times within a generation. We are able to rapidly build upon the ideas of others and modify these ideas to suit new problems. Moreover, our adults, as compared to the adults of other species, are much better at learning and retaining new skills or traditions. Generally speaking, the age old adage "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" applies well to the non-human animal kingdom.
  
  These two traits, shared intentionality and cumulative culture, led to the development of other aspects of our being which are unique (e.g language). Everything else that we can do is just a happy by-product of these two traits: being able to go to the moon, or build a super dam, or create art, or think in the abstract, maths, industrial agriculture...Those things are by-products of our level of cognition. Our uniqueness is derived from shared intentionality and cumulative culture plus a couple of random physical traits that we were lucky enough to inherit from our distant ancestors - a big brain, bipedalism, and opposable thumbs. We are not the only species with a large brain-to-body ratio, we are not the only bipedal species, and we are certainly not the only species with opposable thumbs - these are physical characteristics that we inherited from our distant primate ancestors. These traits built the foundation for what was to come.
  
  Whatever the pressure around 40,000-50,000 years ago we notice a significant shift in the archeological record. All of a sudden humans are making cave art, our hunting tools are changing rapidly, we began to engage in long distant trade, we made jewellery and we even had symbolic figures - perhaps the seeds of language. This is known as the period of behavioural modernity. Not only did these humans look like us, they acted like us too. Its hypothesized that an infant from this time could be raised in a modern context with little to no intellectual deficit...we wouldn't be able to pick them out of a crowd. Humans haven't gotten more intelligent over time. It is hypothesized that a human from 50,000 years ago is anatomically and behaviourally modern.
  
  So, if we aren't any smarter - why do we have cell phones and galaxy print jeggings and people didn't way back then? Increasing complexity - we know more than people in the past because we've built upon what they've learned. Humans have always been smart, and our great benefit is that we build on other people's discoveries. Someone figured out how to domesticate plants, someone figured out how to sew cloth, someone figured out how to weave materials, someone figured out synthetic materials and dyes, someone put it all together in those jeggings. We just build on what other people have found out. This is cumulative culture in action. Humans today are not more intelligent than humans living 50,000 years ago - we both have the same potential. The difference between us and them is we have a wealth of shared knowledge to draw upon, and they did not. Humans 5000 years from now could be asking the very same question..."Why didn't they invent warp travel, its so easy!"...well we don't have the wealth of another 5000 years of experience and scientific study to draw upon. We only have what our ancestors gave us. As more and more knowledge is accumulated we should in theory progress faster and faster.
  
  Some interesting books on the subject:
  
  Age of Empathy
  
  Our inner ape
  
  Moral lives of animals
  
  Affective neuroscience
  
  Mothers and others
  
  

> What is consciousness?

"Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind... In the majority of experiments that are specifically about consciousness, the subjects are human, and the criterion that is used is verbal report: in other words, subjects are asked to describe their experiences, and their descriptions are treated as observations of the contents of consciousness." These methods are obviously heavily biased towards humans, we can't just ask a chimpanzee if it self aware, we must infer it from their behaviours and how they interact with their physical and social worlds. Easier said than done.

> Are single celled organisms like bacteria, conscious?

No.

> How much up the evolutionary ladder do we have to go to start finding consciousness?

Evolution is not a ladder, there is no best species at the top of this ladder. Its more like a tree. In evolution, there can be many solutions to one problem. Take flight for example, insects, birds, and bats have all solved the problem of flight in different ways, with different combinations of traits, with different kinds of genes. The same is very likely true for consciousness and higher cognitive intelligence. We may very well find the exact gene(s) that make use conscious that does not mean that other species need those exact genes in order to be conscious too. Other species may solve the problem of consciousness in a different way than we have. If we look for species with characteristics that are exactly our own, well its like just looking for species with feathers and assuming they are the only ones that fly - you miss the bats and insects.

> How are humans able to make another conscious being?

We are not born conscious, it is a series of skills, traits, and abilities that develop during infancy and early childhood that lead to our conscious abilities. For example, children learn between the ages of 3-5 how to lie. Before this time period their brains are not developed enough to make the connection that their thoughts are distinct and different from other individuals thoughts. They think everyone knows what they are thinking, they can't lie. Some humans never develop the ability to be fully conscious, like severely autistic individuals. "Deficits occur in people with autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as neurotoxicity due to alcohol abuse."

Other animals can lie, and deceive if they want to. Are they conscious? its really hard to say. We have a couple of tests that give us a pretty good idea that other species exhibit consciousness. For example, the mirror test. You place an individual in front of a mirror with a dot on their body that they can only see looking through the mirror. If they touch the dot or look for the dot on their own bodies then they are making the link that the image in the mirror is themselves. Infants older than 18 months usually pass the mirror test, infants under 18 months don't. Other higher cognitive skills that have been observed in some species include object manipulation, tool making, multi-step problem solving, lying, sense of fairness, morals, ethics, and mourning the dead.

These animals in no particular order are: elephants, dolphins, birds like crows, ravens, or pigeons, pigs, all of the great apes, and some monkeys. Obviously we are talking about a really diverse group of species, species from many different and distinct evolutionary paths that are able to solve complex problems, communicate in complex ways, form complex social bonds, and importantly show signs of theory of mind, or consciousness. Generally speaking these animals function at a cognitive level similar to a 3-5 year old child.

The ethical question then becomes, if a chimpanzee can pass a mirror test, can be shown to have higher cognitive functions why do we deny them the basic rights we give to humans, when some humans including infants lack these skills? Should we keep these animals for our own amusement or instrument, we don't with ourselves but why is it ok with them? I won't comment on my opinion, but these are important ethical questions worth thinking about.

I recommend:

• The bonobo and the atheist.
  
  
• Age of empathy
  
  
• Beyond the brain.

I disagree that empathy is inadequate. Furthermore I would argue that empathy is the driving factor for human values. Empathy was not designed by human beings and had its start long before anything resembling humans walked this earth. Given the importance of empathy to the continued existence our species we can treat it as a meta-value system and derive other values and ethics from it. This argument is made more forcefully and in more detail can I ever hope to by Frans de wall. I would recommend you to read his short article The Evolution of Empathy and if your interest is piqued enough by his arguments to peruse his longer tome The Age of Empathy.

>As of yet, we have not pinpointed exactly what morality is nor have we been able to provide definitive answers to some basic questions of morality

Sure about that?


https://www.amazon.com/Age-Empathy-Natures-Lessons-Society/dp/0307407772

Current hypotheses suggest altruism (ethics, morality) being a development originating from the maternal instinct.

Lots of non-human animals have morality. So either non-human animals have "abritrary vague social constructs" or morality is in-part biological. This isn't to suggest reductionism. There is a clear social aspect, and a clear social evolution in the development of ethics, but underneath those dynamic, evolving, constructs is biology.

There is so much wrong with this statement You should read a fucking science book about animal behaviour.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Empathy-Natures-Lessons/dp/0307407772