Paul Brandon wrote "Pigeons have been taught to report internal states, such as whether they are being affected by a psychoactive drug. Can we say that they are 'conscious' of being in that state? If not, what is missing beyond the tautological observation that they are not human?"
I don't believe you need to invoke conscious ness for that. The perceptions are simply being used a discriminative stimulus. It's no different than asking the pigeon to peck a key when it sees a red light. Then Michael Scoles asked "Is consciousness about being aware, or aware of me, or aware of what's me and what's not me? If it is the latter, is it anything more than a figure-ground discrimination problem?" First off, to the extent that awareness = consciousness, the issue becomes tautological. But I would argue that consciousness involves thinking about the fact that something is either me or not me. Merely reacting to "me" and "not me" differently does not imply consciousness, only stimulus discrimination. The Peter Harzem Peter wrote about his cats: "Here is another interesting observation--Lying: If I come home, feed them and go out, when my wife comes home they ask her for food; if I stay at home after feeding, when she comes home they do not ask for food!" Skinner would, of course, say that this is merely discrimination learning. The cats learn that meowing will get them fed but only in the absence of the person who previously fed them. Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Department of Psychology West Chester University of Pennsylvania http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/home.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, bluegrass fiddler and herpetoculturist...... in approximate order of importance. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
