Drafted 2010 revised Nov 2015
Row, Row, Row your Boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily
Life is but a dream
~ Star Trek: The Last Frontier
I have devoted the last three decades of my life in examining the nature of our existence. I have devised several scientific and philosophical models like the Caveman-in-the box, the Codexation Dilemma, The Scription Jump, the Guesswork Dilemma, and the Bowlingual Experiment just to prove if we really exist. I even employed the help of physics, mathematics, neuroscience, and two four-legged friends as basis for my research. And from all these works, I found out that Reality is just an illusion, that we don't even exist, that astral projection or souls are just byproducts of our imagination, and that the common factor that makes our existence real is ultimately caused by a persuasive abstract known as Consciousness.
But what is really the real nature of consciousness? Does it really arise from the chemistry and electricity in our brains? How does the physical brain create a mental conscious experience? The Law of Second Option, The Actuator-Sensor Language, and the Zizo Effect provide us with some answers to these questions. From these 3 theories of Logic, System, and Information, we can recreate consciousness. In order to test this idea, a robot, called Homodruino, who can reason out, show emotions, and experience self-consciousness will be part of this project dubbed The LoSyIn Network.
However, before we do this, let us discuss, study, identify, and evaluate some claims of some scientists and philosophers who argue that there are animals that don't have consciousness.
Humans have the capacity of consciousness because they think, decide, have feelings, and a sense of self. Zero, my four-legged best friend, does too. He brings his tray to me when he is hungry. He picks his plastic bone and shows it to me when he wants to go out. He gets his blue ball to bribe me. He interacts with squirrels, with flies, with the fire trucks, with peanutz, with kites and drones, and even with rains. He even grooms himself. Sometimes he even says the word food for food or woos for lou. From all these self-interactions, Zero just shows that he can decide, he can think, he has feelings, and he has a sense of himself. Zero processes information that creates the experience of consciousness. His surroundings programmed him. The pieces of information he gained from his environment become procedural scription. From this complexity of learned instincts, they eventually turned into consciousness.
René Descartes, in his 1637 treatise “Discourse on Method”, argued that “it is more probable that worms and flies and caterpillars move mechanically than that they all have immortal souls.” Others argue that the basis of consciousness lies in a centralized nervous system whose central organ is basically the brain. Animals like octopus, squids, insects, arachnids, and crustaceans are conscious due to this indicator. However, bacteria, archaea, protists, fungi, plants, sponges, corals, anemones, hydras, and certain animals like starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers are not conscious because they don't have brains.
BTW, a Penn State University biologist Victoria Braithwaite, who studied pain perception, fear, and suffering in fish, however, thought we shouldn’t be studying things we don’t understand.” She is absolutely right!. At the time, I was doing my I.M. experiments with my four-legged best friend, I discovered a disturbing consequence that triggered me to stop promptly teaching and humanizing Zero.
"Convergent evidence shows that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence shows that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates." ~ Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, July 7, 2012
"It is inhuman to humanize an animal; you might raise a kid in a cage."
~ Joey Lawsin==================================================================
NOTICE: Articles on this site are composed of random thoughts. The transcript may not be in its final form. It may be edited, updated, or even revised in the future based on the outcomes of the author's experiments.
Public Domain Notice: Copyright (c) 2000. All rights reserved. This article is part of a book entitled Biotronics: The Silver Species. Copies are welcome to be shared or distributed publicly as long proper citations are observed. Please cite: The Biotronics Project, Joey Lawsin, 1988, USA.
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Patent Pending. 2000 © ®
