Consciousness, New Thinking About

[tony.jeffs]

Does "responding discriminatively" mean
making a decision based on an act of free will?

If so, the reply to the unasked question
"humans make choices and are therefore conscious
rocks & wolves make choices but are not conscious
- - why ?"

could be
"Humans make their choices based upon free will
Rocks & wolves make their choices based on chance occurrences."

But I see no evidence for  free will
I cant see a difference other than a difference of degree.


Tony





"Dog" <animal8881 at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:482aa48.0205272256.13589dc0 at posting.google.com...
> "JGC9" <jgcasey at hotkey.net.au> wrote in message
news:<3cf2bdcc$1_1 at news.iprimus.com.au>...
>
> > The only behaviour I know of, that flags the existence
> > of consciousness in others, is that they talk about it.
> > They pose the same questions about their subjective
> > world as I do.
> >
> > What kind of program would pose such questions?
> >
> > Really all we have is subjective experiences.
>
> I read somewhere that grasshoppers supposedly sometimes
> continue to eat while being eaten themselves. This is
> an indication [to me] of possible non-consciousness-type
> -robotic-behavior. The arthropod line [grasshoppers, other
> insects, spiders, butterflies, centipedes, lobsters, crab,
> shrimp]...
>
> http://www.biosis.org/free_resources/classifn/classifn.html
>
> ...seem suspect to me in that they might not have a
> consciousness type of sentience [ability to perceive things
> in the universe -- like a thermostat does -- according to my
> definition a thermostat has sentience, but not consciousness].
>
> Other weird things in the arthropod line:
> Black widow sometimes eat their lovers after sex.
> Ditto with preying mantis's [I think].
>
> If arthropods understood pain and suffering they might be more
> leery of being eaten.
>
> Also, the whole arthropod line -- other than houseflies and
> and other flying insects -- seems sort of slow-witted.
>
> At any rate, I hypothesize that the arthropod line does not
> have consciousness.