On Mon, Apr 02, 2018 at 10:22:57PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: > > > On 3/31/2018 1:30 AM, Russell Standish wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 05:14:21PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > Now, is a jellyfish conscious? > > > > > > I bet they are, but not far away from the dissociative and constant > > > arithmetical consciousness (of the universal machines). > > As I'm sure you're aware, I disagree with this. Jellyfish appear to be > > quite simple automatons, with a distributed neural network, not any > > brain as such. However, my main reason for disagreeing is that > > anthropic reasoning leads us to conclude that most species of animal > > are not conscious. Our most typical animal is a nematode (for instance > > your favourite - the planarians), but even most insects cannot be > > conscious either. > > > > In these discussions I always wonder what kind of consciousness is meant? > > 1. Perception. light/dark acid/base touch... > 2. Self location relative to things. Prey/predators > 3. Self relative to others. Sex and territory and rivals > 4. Abstractions. Number geometries > 5. Self reflection. Theory of minds. Language > > Brent
For my anthropic ant argument, I would have said 2 and above. Mere perception would not be enough to apply the anthropic argument. A thermostat is probably 1) above. Of course, others have argued that 5 is necessary for anthropic reasoning - I just remain unconvinced by that. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected] Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
