I’d like to share with you an interesting insight from a course about mind I’m doing via FutureLearn.
The question we were asked to answer was whether we think that things or animals have a mind and how to prove or disprove it.
First, I would start with considering whether a mobile phone or a computer has a mind as it sometimes might seem. It gives pop-ups of the "perfect" advertisements that seem to fit what we are looking for at that moment or that we are even only thinking about. The carefully selected reels or shorts to keep us entertained. It might seem like the gadget is having a mind capable of reading our minds. And yet it's only a very well-designed algorithm created by humans' minds. So it is an artificially made "mind" created and controlled by humans. At least for now. So, in my opinion, objects do not have a mind. However, they are so well designed, again by humans, to control and influence our minds.
I believe the human mind is an endless ocean of possibilities capable of unimaginable.
When it comes to animals, I have a dog and I wonder often whether she has a mind. Sometimes she seems so "lost" in her own world that she forgets about her surroundings and is just minding her own business. But when she sees me or the house in danger she does react. Would that mean that she has awareness? I've always understood that animals are driven by their instincts and emotions, feelings, rather than rational behaviour. For instance, when driving on the main road here in South Patagonia, rabbits as if they were waiting for the car to pass by as they decide to cross the road at the moment of car crossing, unfortunately, lots of them lose their life this way. So I think animals don't react rationally, if they are trained they learn discipline but they connect patterns together, they don't necessarily come up with their own ideas. What I believe though is that each animal has its own personality and they don't mind what others think about them. Something lots of us could learn from.
But then later in the course they mention different levels of mind. What about dolphins or elephants who are actually said to be very intelligent animals? Or one fellow student even mentioned an article about two gay penguins. Penguins are know to choose a partner for life. This case was about two male penguins who were stealing eggs from other penguins trying to hatch them. And today when walking my dog, I was observing her very closely. We were walking a new path, unknown to us and on the way back I almost turned the wrong direction if she had not indicated me the correct way. Yes, she followed her smell.
But as I was lost in my thoughts, I almost got lost on the walk.
What do you think about a mind? Do animals or things have a mind? How can we know?