Walter Bright:
Except that we have no idea how brains actually work.
Are fruit flies self-aware? Probably not. Are dogs? Definitely.
So at what point between fruit flies and dogs does
self-awareness start?
We have no idea. None at all.
There are many things that are not yet known in neurobiology and
in the higher organizational patterns of the brains, both in
their computational structure and the dynamic interactions
between their parts.
But we are not totally ignorant. Neurobiology and other brain
sciences have discovered many things. This old guy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Edelman has proposed several
theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism ), done
simulations; and generally all kind of researchers are increasing
our knowledge of such topics every day, so currently we are not
in the full dark as you say.
The differences in the brains of different animals are slowly
getting understood, including what's the difference between the
consciousness of dogs, self-consciousness of humans, simpler
brains of reptiles, and cabled aggregates of bodies inside tiny
insect brains (as it often happens in biological sciences, what
we discover is that even the 'simplest brains' are quite more
complex than previously believed. Today we know how a fruit flies
learns and remembers scents, how its tiny brain copes with the
needs of a complex body able to fly in a very complex
environment, etc).
Bye,
bearophile
