On 28 May 2013, at 01:53, meekerdb wrote:
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.
Hmm... I would have agreed some years ago. I would have even say that
consciousness always involve consciousness of time. But I am no more
sure on this. Some altered conscious state seems to be like being
conscious of literally only one thing; being conscious, and nothing
else, but such state are quasi not memorizable, and might quite
exotic. Sometimes there is consciousness of something, but which is
not related to anything temporal or spatial. My be in math some
feeling like that can occur, when understanding a proof, for example.
Many aspect of human consciousness requires languages, but humans have
still a big part of the animal consciousness. You don't need language
to feel the hotness of a fire.
Bruno
Brent
JM
On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Bruno Marchal <[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/
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