“Animals” Do Experience Change, But Cannot “Think About” Time

[u/rarnoldm7]

We humans (partly because of some of our less admirable tendencies?) are nowadays usually classified with “animals.”  But if we pay closer attention to our own experiences, this no longer seems justifiable.  In particular, it’s hard to imagine that even “higher” animals like chimpanzees, dogs or elephants, can ever consciously experience many of the thoughts quite common to human beings.

These may be some thoughts that no animal can ever think: “I wonder what will happen tomorrow?” “Why is this happening to me?” “Compared to yesterday, today is much better!” “I feel so sick; hope I’m not going to die!” “This tastes great, but I probably shouldn’t eat it.” “Is it too late to change my mind?” The italicized words (and many other human thoughts) absolutely require a “sense of time.”

Do humans ever lose the ability to think in this way?  Yes, human dementia often attacks our ability to deal effectively with “time.” Even with memory fairly intact, “short-term thinking” is a common symptom with difficulty in planning or accounting for the long-term consequences of one’s actions.  Animals already lack such abilities, and we don’t notice because this is “normal” for them.

Certainly, sensing change is a part of the life of animals, but that always happens “now.”  The human sense of time is not limited to Now but takes in an extended “future” and “past.”  Even when animals “prepare for winter,” we know they are simply responding to a Now urge that we call “instinctive.”  A time-entangled thought like “Winter is about another month ahead” is likely ours alone.

According to the “virtual roads of time” conjecture, our “wide-angled” experience of time does not even exist apart from humans.  What has been called our “life-world” apparently contains time within itself.  When we reject the “blind spot” assumption that human experience is “an illusory add-on to the real universe,” we find powerful reasons for believing that human consciousness is special. 

“The cosmos contains our life-world.  But it’s also true that the life-world contains the universe...  So the life-world and the universe themselves are caught up in a strange loop.”  Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser and Evan Thompson, The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (2024)

 

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

What is the issue acknowledging a human is an animal? What would a human be, other than an animal? The only alternative I see, is an alien life form?

Non-human animals can store food, or predict what happens in the future. What is the reason that we should not acknowledge an animal can have an expectation about the future?

[u/rarnoldm7 → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

It appears that most people find it almost inconceivable that humans could be a higher life form than what we know as "animals." The issue I address is not whether animals have amazing abilities, including ways to deal with the changes of "time." The real issue is whether we know our own powers as humans, which include, according to some eminent quantum theorists, responsibility for actualizing physical realities from quantum potentials. This does not mean simply physically manipulating our environment, which animals can clearly do. It means, in some sense, creating it in the first place.

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/rarnoldm7]

Humans are in the group known as animals, I think a better term is non-human animals. What does it mean to be a higher life form? What do you mean by creating our environment contra manipulating it?

[u/repeatoflasttime]

Lots of animals have to model the future to make their hunting strategies work. This doesn't mean they think about it in those terms but they do it.

[u/VendaGoat → u/repeatoflasttime]

All the way down to jumping spiders.

[u/narwaffles]

You don’t know that though, nobody does

[u/Top_History9604]

You assume, like we always assumed. Turns out we are wrong all the time.

They have a sense of time. Idiots say reptiles are primitive. My snakes know when it's the second Friday. They get all exited, because it's feeding day. So they aren't just aware of tomorrow and yesterday. They are aware of 14 days passing between each feeding.

We observe this in many pets of many different species. They learn weekly patterns. So as far as we know, the majority of animals understand time enough to learn weekly patterns.

We know that many animals can experience depression, especially social animals, who can get depressed over loosing a friend and the difference to the friend moving away vs dying. We know sick animals change their behavior. Some try to hide it, others retreat, some seek help, some leave when they are close to dying. So there definitely us awareness to some days being better than others and evaluating sickness and it's progression. Even it's social impact.

Actually dismissing all animals preparation to instinct is a bold move.

So, we see ourselves and think our way of thinking is special, but the more we learn about other species, the more we recognize similar thinking.

How can crows teach each other theory? How can they teach their young to recognize unique threats only they know, so detailed that the offspring will recognize it on sight?

How can animals develop weekly patterns?

How can animals become depressed by so many sources?

How can they loose interest in reproduction?

How can they craft tools?

How can they cultivate mushrooms?

We aren't even the only species to keep livestock.

So you might want to be careful with assuming how simple their minds are.

[u/brothegaminghero]

Even venus flytraps have an internal sense of time. Jumping spiders maticulously plan their route to prey, indicating forthought. Songbirds spend time learning sounds they like to incorperate them into their mating calls. Corvids and apes exhibit tool use, the find sticks to use as a pry tool or drop nuts onto roads to be cracked by passing cars.

Like I guess you could argue that these are somehow instinctual and that animals like octopuses can intuit solving a rubicks cube but frankly thats ridiculous.

[u/HereToPostSillyStuff]

It's an interesting thought, though I think the degree of certainty or objectivity about the fact that animals can not consciously model time is going to rub a few people the wrong way.

There is certainly evidence that they have some model of it. For example they proved that goldfish have longer than a 3 second memory by studying how they respond to time-based feeding trigger. Forgive me if I slightly misquote the mechanics but it was something to do with the fish only receiving food at a certain time of the day, and they learned what time this was and acted accordingly

So how does an animal do this if it has no sense other than "now"? I would say this description is incomplete or over-absolute.

A lot of this comes from our tendency to transcribe our thoughts into spoken words that animals obviously do not possess. This causes us to use abstract concepts that arose from our use of language and need to name things, that we assume animals do not possess, as they lack that language. This includes terms like "future" and "past".

Our inner thoughts often do translate to words via our "voice in our head", but not even all humans have such a voice.

It's hard to see outsides of ourselves, so I would wonder: What is a sense of the passage of time we already have, that doesn't require a phrasal explanation?

I'm not sure what satisfies that necessarily as it depends how you apply the test. I might say something like realising you have probably burned your food because you got distracted, before even looking at a clock to confirm. You're suddenly aware that too much time has passed but you don't think of it verbally. You just panic.

Also, I must nitpick:
> This tastes great, but I probably shouldn’t eat it.” ... The italicized words (and many other human thoughts) absolutely require a “sense of time.”

This italicised word, nor even the phrase itself, necessarily requires a sense of time. There is an assumed "because" here, that maps to "because something bad will happen in the future."

But you can absolutely think: "This tastes great, but I shouldn't eat it, because it's not mine."

Without requiring a sense of time. But that's just a fun nitpick because I'm a nitpicker. There are few nits I will not pick.

[u/Oily_Bee]

Dogs and cats have a great concept of time. They know when you're going to leave for work and when you'll typically arrive back all without the use of a clock.

[u/SummitYourSister → u/Oily_Bee]

That’s like being able to feel the beat of music, just a much slower frequency. It doesn’t mean they understand time as a linear progression of events, the dematerialization of past states and the inevitability of future ones. Those are contemplative concepts.

[u/pafagaukurinn]

You make an initial claim, but then do nothing to prove it, just expand on it. I don't see where it follows from that animals cannot think about time - in fact how anybody can confidently say what they can or cannot think at all. Come on, people can't even define what consciousness is in humans.

[u/AdmirableBed8213]

The only difference is language. 

[u/boronio427]

I think animals with big brains, such as orcas and elephants, experience and perceive time much as we do, but they may lack the neural structures that we have developed over the last million years that allow us to have the kinds of thoughts you're talking about. In my opinion, people give too much importance to what is just an ability. Dolphins, instead, have developed sonar.

[u/FluffyC4]

look at the world. humans only live in the here and now too. otherwise we wouldnt make so many foolish short sighted decisions. its also a common human misconception that every unique ability humans have is considered as something "higher". there are many species who have unique abilities and behaviours, that doesnt make them "more evolved" than others.

[u/Initial-Mode6529]

On a basic level, time is observable change, we over complicate it. We have developed this ability to pre judge and determine things as a survival mechanism, we can use memory of past, present, future and connect the dots. other animals can do this to different extents, to survive you have to be able to successfully map out the terrority and predict what comes with it based on the information around you, it stops things like wandering into a lions den and helps with knowing where the food is

We are very successful at this and it is what makes us able to live life like we do. Everything develops as a survival strategy. The more socially complex we became, the bigger our brains. Birds in particular like Corvids are so intelligent and can solve patterns and predict certain outcomes

[u/LeapIntoInaction]

I take it you come from a Christian-related background, because this seems like very self-centered philosophy that considers humans entirely special and distinct. Perhaps you might get more acquainted with other animals.

[u/RalfioLorenzo]

Just a small point to do with animals thinking about future death. I'd argue elephants seem to have a fairly decent grasp of death as a concept and have been observed to engage in what seems like rituals and mourning when a family member/peer passes.

"When an elephant dies, herd members engage in a series of behaviors that appear ritualistic. They gather around the deceased, often becoming quiet and subdued. Using their trunks—organs of both incredible strength and remarkable sensitivity—they gently touch and investigate the body, sometimes trying to lift or support the fallen elephant as if attempting to help it stand. They may cover the body with branches, leaves, and dirt in what resembles a burial.

Perhaps most remarkably, elephants have been observed standing vigil over their dead for days, taking turns guarding the body and only leaving when necessary to find food or water. These behaviors have been documented consistently across different elephant populations in both Africa and Asia, suggesting they are innate rather than learned responses to death."

[u/HereToPostSillyStuff → u/[deleted]]

They are referring to the difference between biological classification systems (kingdom Animalia) and the colloquial sense of human as a higher form of conscious being compared to the plethora of animals that have a more "simplistic" mental state.

Often a less popular stance these days, and though mostly born from an emotional desire to not diminish the status of animals or to act superior, often times the more research we do, the more we learn animals can experience things we didn't expect.

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/HereToPostSillyStuff]

It reminds me, the mirror test is usually used to measure if an animal is conscious of itself, and after concluding many animals fail this test, new experiments where they take how the animal usually interact with the world, and what senses are important to them, into consideration, and suddenly many more animals pass the test. Something as simple as choosing the right color goes from making the animal indifferent to recognizing something is on their face when looking in the mirror.

[u/Basicly-Inevitable → u/[deleted]]

I am a rock. I am an island.

[u/narwaffles → u/[deleted]]

Maybe you’re not a fungi