Sunday, August 25, 2019

An embarrasing possibility

In reviewing how the cuttlefish might create a camouflage skin pattern to match a give environmental background, one possibility is that it is simply a display system that uses the intermediate neurons between the eyes and the skin to transfer input to output in the most direct way possible [whatever that is] or else to transfer the statistical properties of the input to the output.

Either way, the consciousness of the cuttlefish is not in question. I suppose it knows perfectly well what it is displaying on its skin. So its consciousness might be a sort of "occasionalism" that derives from it performing such a duplication process. Or perhaps it's display is more like a reflex that is not willful and has no auxiliary meaning.

All of which gives rise to the question of how my consciousness is different from a display system, as per a squid? Can I legitimately claim to be doing more? Well yes there is certainly a delay between input and output.

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