Kharisym
Member
So I'm vegetarian out of concern for killing 'intelligent' animals where intelligence is defined as having an awareness and understanding of their sensory experience. This has also been termed 'having an inner world', 'an understanding of what its like to be itself', and for some definitions of sentience. Think of it in terms of a computer--a computer receives input and processes it, but the computer doesn't have an inner understanding of what it is its processing. If AI existed, that AI would understand what its processing. This is the difference I'm considering: Are fish more like that computer, or that AI?
I'd love to be pescatarian, so its important to me to establish if fish are sufficiently intelligent to fall into my protected group of animals.
Arguments I remember looking into:
1) Fish feel pain. This is technically called nociception, and even though they have the peripheral nervous system to let them experience pain, this does not mean they feel pain.
2) Fish lack the cortical structures for consciousness. While it is true that fish lack a neocortex, we know from bird studies that a neocortex is not necessary for consciousness. We also don't know what the minimal neural criteria for consciousness is. The bird pallium (structure the neocortex is evolutionarily derived from) is more complex than the fish pallium, and we know that the bird pallium contains complexity reminiscent to the mammalian neocortex in that it contains long axial structures and regionalization equivalent to mammalian neocortical columns. Fish do not (to my knowledge) exhibit regionalization or long axial interconnectedness. The fish pallium is primarily composed of a bilobial occipital structure (Or structures for more specialized senses)--the fact that sensory-dedicated structures primarily compose the fish pallium is less damning that you might think, its reasonable to consider that the occipital structures in goldfish could be a source of consciousness for them, a proposition that has tenuous evidence based on the degree of visual field mapping from the eyes to the lobes in goldfish.
3) Fish exhibit reactive behavior and a capacity for learning and memory. Experiments with unconscious human subjects, de-cerebrated mammals, as well as creatures that lack a nervous system at all (ie, plants) have shown that reactionary behavior, learning, and memory are not indicators of consciousness.
4) Fish have passed the mirror test for self-awareness. This is probably the most compelling argument since in land mammals seeing their reflection in a natural setting is unusual, and therefore recognizing that a reflection in a mirror is themselves shows a capacity for thinking beyond basal reactiveness. That said, fish exist in a unique environment where the surface of the water can act as a mirrored surface, and therefore the mirror test can reasonably exist without self awareness as a means of removing parasitism or agitants.
5) Fish have shown emotional thermal regulation. I may not be describing this quite correct, but its essentially the capacity for emotional beings (mammals) to exhibit thermal variation beyond baseline in reaction to emotional stressors. It can be an indicator of a capacity for emotion. The experiment for this was not convincing to me and, in my opinion, contains too many conflationary variables to make the purported claim.
6) A capacity for social learning. Its been shown in archerfish that they can learn by observing conspecifics. A solitary animal doing this is definitive proof of cognition because there probably isn't sufficient evolutionary pressure for this behavior to evolve without awareness, but archerfish are social creatures so there could be reasonable evolutionary pressure for this behavior to evolve itself as opposed to being a byproduct of cognition.
There's probably more I've looked into, but I've been reading research articles on this topic for a year now. (and still haven't come to a conclusion). Fish are complicated.
So how about y'all? What are your arguments for and against awareness and understanding?
I'd love to be pescatarian, so its important to me to establish if fish are sufficiently intelligent to fall into my protected group of animals.
Arguments I remember looking into:
1) Fish feel pain. This is technically called nociception, and even though they have the peripheral nervous system to let them experience pain, this does not mean they feel pain.
2) Fish lack the cortical structures for consciousness. While it is true that fish lack a neocortex, we know from bird studies that a neocortex is not necessary for consciousness. We also don't know what the minimal neural criteria for consciousness is. The bird pallium (structure the neocortex is evolutionarily derived from) is more complex than the fish pallium, and we know that the bird pallium contains complexity reminiscent to the mammalian neocortex in that it contains long axial structures and regionalization equivalent to mammalian neocortical columns. Fish do not (to my knowledge) exhibit regionalization or long axial interconnectedness. The fish pallium is primarily composed of a bilobial occipital structure (Or structures for more specialized senses)--the fact that sensory-dedicated structures primarily compose the fish pallium is less damning that you might think, its reasonable to consider that the occipital structures in goldfish could be a source of consciousness for them, a proposition that has tenuous evidence based on the degree of visual field mapping from the eyes to the lobes in goldfish.
3) Fish exhibit reactive behavior and a capacity for learning and memory. Experiments with unconscious human subjects, de-cerebrated mammals, as well as creatures that lack a nervous system at all (ie, plants) have shown that reactionary behavior, learning, and memory are not indicators of consciousness.
4) Fish have passed the mirror test for self-awareness. This is probably the most compelling argument since in land mammals seeing their reflection in a natural setting is unusual, and therefore recognizing that a reflection in a mirror is themselves shows a capacity for thinking beyond basal reactiveness. That said, fish exist in a unique environment where the surface of the water can act as a mirrored surface, and therefore the mirror test can reasonably exist without self awareness as a means of removing parasitism or agitants.
5) Fish have shown emotional thermal regulation. I may not be describing this quite correct, but its essentially the capacity for emotional beings (mammals) to exhibit thermal variation beyond baseline in reaction to emotional stressors. It can be an indicator of a capacity for emotion. The experiment for this was not convincing to me and, in my opinion, contains too many conflationary variables to make the purported claim.
6) A capacity for social learning. Its been shown in archerfish that they can learn by observing conspecifics. A solitary animal doing this is definitive proof of cognition because there probably isn't sufficient evolutionary pressure for this behavior to evolve without awareness, but archerfish are social creatures so there could be reasonable evolutionary pressure for this behavior to evolve itself as opposed to being a byproduct of cognition.
There's probably more I've looked into, but I've been reading research articles on this topic for a year now. (and still haven't come to a conclusion). Fish are complicated.
So how about y'all? What are your arguments for and against awareness and understanding?
