On 5/27/2013 2:18 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno:
do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious? or - having a logic
on their own level? Or any other trait we assign (identify?) for humans - in our terms?
A question about plants (rather: about being conscious):
you may feel free to define 'being conscious' in human terms, or mammal (etc.) terms,
but the "response" plants exude to information (circumstances, impact. etc.) shows
reactivity we may appropriate to us humans.
So do not deny consciousness from fellow DNA-bearing plants.
How about the DNA-not-bearing other creatures? (crystals, stones, water, impact you may
call energy, - whatever?)
Anthropocentric? zoocentric? phitocentric? what-CENTRIC?
I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property. You have to ask "Consciousness
of what?" There's consciousness of surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical
concentrations.... There's consciousness of internal states. Consciousness of sex.
Consciousness of one's location. Consciousness of one's status in a tribe. I think
human-like consciousness requires language of some kind.
Brent
JM
On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 26 May 2013, at 13:29, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from
experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that
non-human
animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological
substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit
intentional
behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans
are not
unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate
consciousness.
Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other
creatures,
including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."
http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
Always a pleasure, if not some relief, to hear that.
My opinion, for what is worth, is that all animals are conscious, and the
one
described above are already self-conscious, and "potentially Löbian"
(meaning: like
you, me, and Peano Arithmetic).
Are plants conscious? I don't know.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/>
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