Perspectivity

Dear FIS members,

I have found the recent interventions about consciousness quite excellent
in their eloquence and multidisciplinarity and I would like to join Michael
Conrad in thanking Pedro for all the time and effort he has put into this
forum. I think that it cannot be overemphasised how much of an effort (a
difficult one at that) needs to be made to join scientific and even
artistic forces to tackle neuroscience, and this list seems quite
exemplary.

As an ethologist I want to bring up the subject of animal consciousness
which seems partly taboo or uninteresting to many. Do levels of
consciousness exist (with their corresponding biochemical-structural
hierarchies) that are similar to clade patterns? Many animals are capable
of what we consider a cornerstone of the definition of consciousness-
selfrecognition. At the last International Conference in Ethology in
Vienna, animal neuroscience was the big item but it continues to be
(almost) ignored by the more famous (physics oriented) writers, i.e.
Penrose, Edelman, Chalmers, Dennet who center their arguements on humans.

Following up on Michael Conrad's intriguing piece, I think we can handle
the problems of objectivity and subjectivity ("perspectivity") much more
easily with animal models (as opposed to computer-human-steered ones) and
then perhaps we can advance at a faster pace. Maybe we need to step off
our human-consciousness pedestal a bit and consider a more global approach
with the other animals that surround us?

Morris Villarroel
Received on Mon Jun 15 16:15:19 1998