Is animal consciousness dualist or nondualist?

[Nak Khid]

For instance, a chimpanzee, a lion or a snake

are they dualist or nondualist? 

 

 

 

[LovingYou]

The larger the brain, the more capable the mind becomes in creating its own reality separate from the reality itself. Humans have reached a stage where they’re capable of overcoming that and becoming congruent with the reality. Other animals do not have that capability at this time. Evolution still has a lot of work to do with them before they reach the point humans have in terms of overcoming their dualism :)) 

Edited July 12, 2020 by LovingYou

[Nak Khid]

3 hours ago, LovingYou said:

The larger the brain, the more capable the mind becomes in creating its own reality separate from the reality itself. Humans have reached a stage where they’re capable of overcoming that and becoming congruent with the reality. Other animals do not have that capability at this time. Evolution still has a lot of work to do with them before they reach the point humans have in terms of overcoming their dualism :)) 

If a larger the brain is more capable of creating its own reality separate from the reality itself, that means a smaller brain would be less separate from the reality itself.   

[JayG84]

18 minutes ago, Nak Khid said:

If a larger the brain is more capable of creating its own reality separate from the reality itself, that means a smaller brain would be less separate from the reality itself.   

I think that our brains are in the goldie-lock zone where it just powerful enough to develop an awareness of ourselves, to know that we know, but at the same time we are also in a relatively low state of conscious awareness to the infinite amounts that it could be. Animals are in a lower state of consciousness than us due to their fearful nature and there instinctual survival stategy. Some animals are at a similar state of consciousness that humans were in stage Beige/Purple of spiral development. Just think about when a human gets fearful, selfish, and in a 'survival and all cost' paradigm. You could say they become more animal like in nature.

Edited July 13, 2020 by JayG84

[JayG84]

I was thinking of what fear does to us the other day, specifically anxiety. When we are anxious, we tend to get into one of 4 states. Flight, fight, freeze, or you pass out (faint). I would say that these 4 states are the lowest possible states of consciousness either humans or animals can be in, and most animals tend to be in these states most of the time. Flight is the highest state of these because you are still conscious enough to make the decision to run, fight is a lower state because you can only instinctually lash out and protect your life. Freeze is even lower than that because you are completely overwhelmed with fear that you can't even make a conscious decision to save your life and your survival strategy goes out the window. And then obviously passing out is the end of the extreme and God Consciousness at that point pretty much says "Well, this ego can't cope, so I'll take it from here" lol

Fear really is the greatest limiter to our states of consciousness. A fearful being cannot raise their state to self-awareness. Have you ever noticed that when we get fearful or angry be get a sort of 'tunnel vision' and we go into an auto-pilot mode? We come out of it and say "man, I lost it there. I don't know what came over me." We completely lose our "self" in that moment, but not in a meditative state, which is post-ego. This is a pre-ego state. I think that animals live in this state permanently. Except for domestic animals. I think there starting to develop some low-level self-awareness. Probably stage purple/red awareness.

[Nak Khid]

 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/

Dualism

This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil—or God and the Devil—are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.

____________________________________________________

Nondualism

A nondual philosophical or religious perspective or theory maintains that there is no fundamental distinction between mind and matter, or that the entire phenomenological world is an illusion

 

[JayG84]

@Nak Khid

I was hoping to have a more broad conversation about the nature of animals, but you don't seem to be interested. So I refer you to Pookie's post.

5 hours ago, Pookie said:

Yes

 

[Nak Khid]

this is more specifically about separation and oneness, does it apply to animals 

[JayG84]

5 minutes ago, Nak Khid said:

this is more specifically about separation and oneness, does it apply to animals 

Well animals have no concept of dualist and nondualist, or seperation and oneness, so what I was getting at was that from our perspective they seem to experience a sort of pre self awareness consciousness state of survivalism. Which I guess could be considered dualistic, but they do not have a sense of seperation of self from consciousness itself, so it could also be seen as nondualist. Ultimately, the those terms are human terms made inside human states of consciousness to describe the human experience of self-awareness vs conscious awareness, so they don't apply to animals.

[Carl-Richard]

What is interesting is that people living in tribal-like conditions outside modern civilization naturally experience a lesser amount of thoughts throughout the day (around 1000), but people in modern societies experience around 30000-90000 thoughts a day. You could argue their experience is less dualistic on average, but true nonduality only really occurs when thoughts are consistenly absent for an extended period of time. To be able to gauge what an animal's experience is like in this regard, we could assume that the higher the capacity you have for engaging in symbolic thought, the more dualistic your perception becomes on average, and this correlates to brain size relative to body weight. Relatively highly dualistic animals would then be things like dolphins and great apes, but more nondual animals would be things like earthworms and fish. Then the question becomes whether nonduality in animals is in some way less impressive because they have a lower capacity for duality in the first place

[JayG84]

5 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

What is interesting is that people living in tribal-like conditions outside modern civilization naturally experience a lesser amount of thoughts throughout the day (around 1000), but people in modern societies experience around 30000-90000 thoughts a day. You could argue their experience is less dualistic on average, but true nonduality only really occurs when thoughts are consistenly absent for an extended period of time.

Interesting ?  I wonder if they accounted for 'how' the tribes people might think. Like they might think in symbols that mean larger concepts than our random thoughts. Their thoughts might be more efficient than ours. The english language seems very messy if you think about it. I always think that there must be a better ways to communicate ideas to people. Like in the movie Arrival or something...lol 

23 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

To be able to gauge what an animal's experience is like in this regard, we could assume that the higher the capacity you have for engaging in symbolic thought, the more dualistic your perception becomes on average, and this correlates to brain size relative to body weight. Relatively highly dualistic animals would then be things like dolphins and great apes, but more nondual animals would be things like earthworms and fish. Then the question becomes whether nonduality in animals is in some way less impressive because they have a lower capacity for duality in the first place

The problem is that what we call nonduality only occurs post-rationally or post-self awareness. So animals and humans would have to go through a progression like (pre self nondual - dual self - post self nondual) from very low consciousness states with no self-awareness to low conscious self-awareness state to high concious self-awareness state to nondual state. I think most animals are in the first 2 of these states. 

[An young being]

3 hours ago, JayG84 said:

Interesting ?  I wonder if they accounted for 'how' the tribes people might think. Like they might think in symbols that mean larger concepts than our random thoughts. Their thoughts might be more efficient than ours. The english language seems very messy if you think about it. I always think that there must be a better ways to communicate ideas to people. Like in the movie Arrival or something...lol 

The problem is that what we call nonduality only occurs post-rationally or post-self awareness. So animals and humans would have to go through a progression like (pre self nondual - dual self - post self nondual) from very low consciousness states with no self-awareness to low conscious self-awareness state to high concious self-awareness state to nondual state. I think most animals are in the first 2 of these states. 

What makes human unique seems to be to be able to go in cycles from dual to non dual states and remember both of them consciously. Some animals might also be able to do that, but only they can answer! ( Unless we discover some device to check if we are in dual or non dual state, of course! )

[Member]

Animal consciousness is purely instinctual so they are dualist since their primary drives are survival and reproduction. The more self-aware an animal is (such as humans), the more it is able to recognize the outer-inner dualism and consciously create reality. Because reality is a product of the self-mind and there's no difference between reality and yourself.

[Cosmin_Visan]

I think that if we were able to somehow experience an animal consciousness we would find it strangely familiar. Even the thinking process would seem familiar to us. There are people that have no inner voice or no inner imagery, yet they still function normally. So they still think, just not like the majority of people. I think is the same with animals. They still have thoughts, and from their perspective their thoughts might even seem profound.

Edited July 13, 2020 by Cosmin_Visan

[Gesundheit]

Dualism and non-dualism are man-made concepts. They're thoughts about reality, not reality itself. It's like asking whether or not a flower is a living thing. Well, you'd have to define what "a living thing" means in advance, and even then it's still not reality but your thoughts of it.

All categories are man-made and therefore arbitrary, Mr. Joe.

[Nak Khid]

6 hours ago, Member said:

Animal consciousness is purely instinctual so they are dualist since their primary drives are survival and reproduction.

what are other drives? 

 

[An young being]

9 minutes ago, Nak Khid said:

what are other drives? 

 

Having fun

Edited July 13, 2020 by An young being

[Member]

18 minutes ago, Nak Khid said:

what are other drives?

Maybe curiosity or desire for knowledge but not sure if these can be considered as being instinctual traits.

[AlwaysBeNice]

Regarding fight-flight or freeze. There's also, relaxing out of fear or transcendance, or speech/arguing.

But as far as animals go, I had some experiences (in dream and on ayahuasca) which seem to indicate they are actually enlightened, very harmonious.

And they don't worry, they don't hate, they are 100% raw and pure, no drama. Sounds like liberation.

[LovingYou]

On 7/12/2020 at 6:05 PM, Nak Khid said:

If a larger the brain is more capable of creating its own reality separate from the reality itself, that means a smaller brain would be less separate from the reality itself.   

Less separate yes, but still separate. If you don’t want to be separate at all, you have to go over the top through a conscious effort. We call that enlightenment :))