Consciousness through the eyes of bees... (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, May 01, 2011, 03:09 (4752 days ago) @ David Turell

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=exploring-consciousness
&#... 
> Read the article. Don't remember it, thank God, and don't want to. I've read sciam for many years. This probably comes during the recent ultra-liberal politically correct phase, which is now, glory be, reverting to the stellar mag it used to be. What a lot of yuck. Bees are conscious. Bees can be taught. Bees have a species-wide type of mind-web where the whole hive, a' la ants, thinks as one. Simple standard question: are bees aware they are aware? Do they approach the taste of their honey aesthetically, best vintage yet?
> 
> Why did you point this article out? For fun or seriousness?-A good friend started stirring the pot with me about free will on Facebook... started looking for "emergent" in relation to "consciousness" to demonstrate that the standard reductionist approach was insufficient to explain consciousness--ie the mind is more than the sum of its parts. -That article came up in the search and I figured I'd cross-post it. -Approached holistically, it makes much sense that a hive of bees' activity corresponds to that of a single organism. The general idea is that a complex pattern emerges from many simpler elements--to understand bees, you need to understand the whole, not just the individual workers. Ant colonies are also considered "Superorganisms." I'm actually kinda shocked you seem revolted at the idea...-Though, I will point out that neuroscience is definitely moving towards the hive concept; as I said before, a research group at UNO is trying to answer the question computationally, "how big of a network do you need for the network to be "aware of itself?" Chaos theory explains many systems that otherwise have eluded reductionist explanations; I applaud any attempt that tries to apply it towards consciousness.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"