On Wed, Jan 08, 2014 at 11:07:29AM -0700, Nick Thompson wrote: > > > 5. I wonder how Nagel comes down on the mental life of animals. There is > no doubt in my mind that every animal has a point of view. (In fact, I > guess I think every system has a point of view.) But I suspect, in order to > achieve the dignity and specialness of the human individual, he is going to > deny mind to animals (except, perhaps, to special creations, such as his own > cat) and this move I cannot tolerate. If "mind" is "in" humans, it's pretty > much in any living creature. >
I don't see how it can be. See my paper "Ants are not conscious" for an anthropic/bayesian argument against the proposition that all animals are conscious, let alone plants, fungi and bacteria even. If you think that is wrong, I welcome your criticisms. To be clear I do not deny nonhuman consciousness - the fact that we can have conversations with a gorilla call Koko in sign language or with an African Grey Parrot called Alex indicates to me that those animals do possess a mind, but it is still a long stretch to extrapolate from that to saying all animals are conscious. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
