Quote:
Originally Posted by BioSci
While a rigorous definition of consciousness may be difficult to provide I think that simple dictionary definitions will suffice - especially to differentiate between plants and higher animals.
How about this one::
"Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscious "
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Which shifts the problem of definition to "subjectivity," "self-awareness," "sentience," "sapience," and "perception." Personally, I think "consciousness" is a term that is used far too freely and is given far more importance than is warranted.
Quote:
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The ability of neural tissues to compute and brains to think is not an unsolved problem in physiology. We do have a basic understanding of how neural tissues work and this understanding allows one to conclude that since plants do not have nerves, brains, or any other tissues capable of similar activity that they would have the same mental ability of rocks (which have the same lack of such computational tissues).
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Again, it's clear that humans (and other species with complex nervous systems) have functions and are capable of doing things that plants (or other living and non-living things without nervous systems) are not. I don't see much point in getting into an argument about
zlork (or other objectively useless terms). Let someone who claims plants have
zlork provide the objective definition and evidence for it.