Do plants have minds?

No - I'm not keen on that idea - particularly since QM demands that each type of particle (electrons, protons, etc) must be identical.

I am trying to account for a real phenomenon - all the things that small creatures achieve. I can't see any way of dividing these creatures from those we know are conscious - so consciousness must be a continuum, probably along the lines I have described. I can't understand why physicists talk in that way without at the very least discussing the problem.

David

Well Penrose was being purely speculative, trying to grasp the causality involved with indeterministic QM.

Regarding the continnum, for me it goes down to at least bees. But there have been questions of cellular consciousness, as noted in the last lecture of Nobel biologist George Wald, Life & Mind in the Universe:

I used to show students a film made by the French zoologist Faure‑Fremiet on the feeding behavior of protozoa. Many of our sturdiest concepts of the apparatus required for animal behavior are mocked by these animalcules, par­ticularly by the ciliates; for in one cell they do everything: move about, react to stimuli, feed, digest, excrete, on occasion copulate and reproduce. In this film one saw them encountering problems and solving them, much as would a mam­mal. I remember best a carnivorous protozoon tackling a microscopic bit of muscle. It took hold of the end of a fibril, and backed off at an angle, as though to tear it loose. When the fibril would not give, the protozoon came in again, then backed away at a new angle, worrying the fibril loose, much as a dog might have done, worrying loose a chunk of meat. It was hard, watching that single cell at work, not to anthropomorphize. Did it know what it was doing?

But then, ciliate protozoa are the most complex cells we know. How about a cell highly specialized to perform a single function in a higher organism, a nerve cell for example, that can only transmit an impulse? Once, years ago, I was visiting the invertebrate physiologist, Ladd Prosser, at the University of Illinois in Urbana. He took me into his laboratory, where he was recording the electrical responses from a single nerve cell in the ventral nerve cord (which takes the place of our spinal cord) of a cockroach. It was set up to display the electrical potentials on an oscilloscope screen, and simultaneously to let them sound through a loudspeaker. I was hearing a slow, rhythmic reverberation, coming to a peak, then falling off to silence, then starting again, each cycle a few seconds, like a breathing rhythm. Prosser remarked, “That kind of response is typical of a dying nerve cell.”

“My God!” I said, “It’s groaning! You’ve given it a voice, and it’s groaning!”

Was that nerve cell expressing a conscious distress? Is something like that the source of a person’s groaning? There is no way whatever of knowing.

That said, I am not currently sold on atomic/particle consciousness, even if I think all causation is mental causation...

Regarding the continnum, for me it goes down to at least bees. But there have been questions of cellular consciousness, as noted in the last lecture of Nobel biologist George Wald, Life & Mind in the Universe

Well yes, and there is also this item complete with videos - though I have posted it before.

http://www.basic.northwestern.edu/g-buehler/FRAME.HTM

The problem is,of course, that the smaller you go, the more difficult it is to see how any plausible computations can be taking place inside the organism. That is why I was looking for a way to obtain a continuum without there being a point where consciousness is suddenly not possible.

Maybe bees can hold enough consciousness 'on board' but tiny ants (for example) only exist because they manage to cooperate so well.

I suppose Rupert Sheldrake appeals to me as a scientist. He had a conventional career at Cambridge before his study of small organisms lead to his idea of morphic fields.

David

Maybe bees can hold enough consciousness 'on board' but tiny ants (for example) only exist because they manage to cooperate so well.

I suppose Rupert Sheldrake appeals to me as a scientist. He had a conventional career at Cambridge before his study of small organisms lead to his idea of morphic fields.

Well I said it goes down to bees b/c they seem to be able to grasp some mathematical concepts and I think there is something to Plato's Affinity Argument that the soul is immortal b/c it can grasp the Eternal Mathematical forms. 

(This isn't the only a priori argument for Survival, but it goes together with the other irreducible aspects of Mind).

Well I said it goes down to bees b/c they seem to be able to grasp some mathematical concepts and I think there is something to Plato's Affinity Argument that the soul is immortal b/c it can grasp the Eternal Mathematical forms. 

(This isn't the only a priori argument for Survival, but it goes together with the other irreducible aspects of Mind).

Do you have any references for this? I would be surprised if bees have been shown to somehow actually be able to intellectually grasp mathematical concepts, as opposed to just learning by experience or having hereditary genetic memory of certain simple principles or facts, such as 2x2=4, or 4 is > 2, 2 is < 4, etc.

Do you have any references for this? I would be surprised if bees have been shown to somehow actually be able to intellectually grasp mathematical concepts, as opposed to just learning by experience or having hereditary genetic memory of certain simple principles or facts, such as 2x2=4, or 4 is > 2, 2 is < 4, etc.

Well IIRC we discussed the studies before and you weren't convinced?

Bees understand the concept of zero

Honey Bees Can Do Simple Math, After a Little Schooling

However it isn't clear to me what it means to say "genetic memory of certain simple principles or facts". That still requires some logic?

I suppose if one wanted they could say the bees were designed in the same way a computer is designed, and they have no actually understand[ing] just as Turing Machine has no understanding. But I think this assumes more than simply accepting bees can grasp some mathematical concepts?

Well IIRC we discussed the studies before and you weren't convinced?

Bees understand the concept of zero

Honey Bees Can Do Simple Math, After a Little Schooling

However it isn't clear to me what it means to say "genetic memory of certain simple principles or facts". That still requires some logic?

I suppose if one wanted they could say the bees were designed in the same way a computer is designed, and they have no actually understand[ing] just as Turing Machine has no understanding. But I think this assumes more than simply accepting bees can grasp some mathematical concepts?

This was my underlying thought. I think Occam's razor doesn't apply because we are comparing the supposition of true conscious thought and conceptualizing (with how this actually works simple or complex being a total mystery), versus assuming a mechanical process however complicated. The only data is observed behavior, which in this case I think could be execution of complicated algorithms.

This was my underlying thought. I think Occam's razor doesn't apply because we are comparing the supposition of true conscious thought and conceptualizing (with how this actually works simple or complex being a total mystery), versus assuming a mechanical process however complicated. The only data is observed behavior, which in this case I think could be execution of complicated algorithms.

I think trying to figure out where consciousness is present in biological life just becomes odd then, because besides myself the Designer(s) could have made the rest of you as philosophical zombies?

Or if we accept that humans aren't simply programmed machines, we still have the rest of the animal kingdom.

The data also suggests bees are able to learn something about mathematics, which seems to be more than just prior programming.

Now whether bees have souls is an extrapolation from the Affinity Argument, but just positing bee consciousness I think has more going for it because it's a stricter reading of the data.

I think trying to figure out where consciousness is present in biological life just becomes odd then, because besides myself the Designer(s) could have made the rest of you as philosophical zombies?

Or if we accept that humans aren't simply programmed machines, we still have the rest of the animal kingdom.

The data also suggests bees are able to learn something about mathematics, which seems to be more than just prior programming.

Now whether bees have souls is an extrapolation from the Affinity Argument, but just positing bee consciousness I think has more going for it because it's a stricter reading of the data.

Just positing bee consciousness turns out to have a lot of deep and problematical consequences, and also looks to be a potentially vastly more complicated an explanation of bee behavior than the complex automoton theory, since the nature of consciousness is a mystery that is almost certainly exceedingly complex, far more so than the computer-model of bee behavior. The problematical consequences include the logical extrapolation of this concept to the simplest living organisms, single-celled protosts and even simpler, bacteria. We would be led to believe that such relatively simple organisms actually have some sort of consciousness, which means having some sort of subjective sense of self - what it is like being the protist or bacterium. This logically arrived at extrapolation seems quite untenable.

Just positing bee consciousness turns out to have a lot of deep and problematical consequences, and also looks to be a potentially vastly more complicated an explanation of bee behavior than the complex automoton theory, since the nature of consciousness is a mystery that is almost certainly exceedingly complex, far more so than the computer-model of bee behavior. The problematical consequences include the logical extrapolation of this concept to the simplest living organisms, single-celled protosts and even simpler, bacteria. We would be led to believe that such relatively simple organisms actually have some sort of consciousness, which means having some sort of subjective sense of self - what it is like being the protist or bacterium. This logically arrived at extrapolation seems quite untenable.

Why is it untenable to posit bacteria consciousness?

And it isn't clear why bees having consciousness means bacteria has to have consciousness. At least not to me....

I have one additional thought regarding food. I have always had an exrtgemely strong dislike of seeing food wantonly wasted. I expect that is because I was born a few years after WWII and my parents knew the value of food.

Some people will do into a restaurant and order food just to be social and then hardly touch it.
For a while this was thought of as a US phenomenon, but gradually it has spread over here and elsewhere too.

Restaurants with a buffet are particularly incredible - people will stack their plates and then leave much of it - yet they could decide exactly how much food they want.

This habit seems particularly disrespectful towards food.

David