Dear Giff:
That's starting somewhere, but I think we need to go a lot further. Shrews have brains -- are they conscious? Bees do too, but they seem even less conscious than shrews. Any definition of consciousness which doesn't advance a distinction between reportable/nonreportable mental events, between objective and subjective criteria, between pre-event and post-event awareness, etc., isn't a workable definition for the purposes of a discussion about evidence.
Which is a long way of asking: what is it that a plant can't do, by virtue of its lack of a brain?
All best,
Zachary
That's starting somewhere, but I think we need to go a lot further. Shrews have brains -- are they conscious? Bees do too, but they seem even less conscious than shrews. Any definition of consciousness which doesn't advance a distinction between reportable/nonreportable mental events, between objective and subjective criteria, between pre-event and post-event awareness, etc., isn't a workable definition for the purposes of a discussion about evidence.
Which is a long way of asking: what is it that a plant can't do, by virtue of its lack of a brain?
All best,
Zachary
