Do you ever doubt your atheism?

[The Grand Nudger]

one major difference in favor of our superiority I think it is fair to admit, is that consciousness, specifically ours, creates meaning, for everything, even for the very distinction between the alleged importance of certain functions in the first place.

Except that "meaning" might just be more self important mental masturbation. Point to some meaning? Show me that it exists in some manner without reference to our conception of it? Perhaps to a plant, "meaning" is a chemical cocktail leveraged for effect (and perhaps, for us, it is the same) - a GLV scream "means" stress (and that's another thing we've discovered that plants are capable of, communicating and interpreting those signals - then acting upon them). Don't get me wrong, I also think meaning is important; but I -would- think that...wouldn't I. It's troublesome to describe some ability we have (or think that we have) as though it has importance beyond our having it- even the importance of meaning. Things that you and I wouldn't accept as ascribing "meaning" to things don't seem to be any worse for wear on that percieved difficiency. Meaning, to me, just seems to be another strategy, indicative of what -we- are, and how -we- operate, not indicative of whatever we ascribe "meaning" -to-. I'd say the same things for those plants as well. The GLV doesn't -actually mean- "stress" (because GLVs are just chemicals)- it's just a useful way for them to interpret the signal which would otherwise be noise.