In an attempt to deny a bee's mechanical ability to hear airborne sound,
where the very common insect sensor, the Johnston's Organ at the base of the
antennae, has been shown to be the exact sensory organ used, an additional
argument was raised about "consciousness" as somehow being a requirement to
be able to "hear sound". (Using this logic, my wife would conclude that I
was deaf, simply because I was not paying attention to her.)

But the relevant question is not "Which species are conscious?", but "Does
consciousness even matter to any of them?".  It does not seem to matter to
us.

C. S. Soon and colleagues ran a study where participants were asked to
simply choose which of two buttons to press while being monitored by
functional MRI, which tracks brain activity by measuring blood oxygenation.


The brain activity that predicted which button was chosen started seven
seconds before the test subject was conscious of the decision to press the
left or right button. The MRI takes 3 second to detect neural activity, so
the brain of the test subject betrayed the choice 10 seconds before the test
subject would indicate that "a conscious decision" had been made.  (Soon, et
al were carrying on the 1980s work of Libet, using better technology.  Libet
had used EEGs.)

To rebut those who would nay-say fMRI as an inaccurate tool, we have the
work of Itzhak Fried and associates, who put electrodes into the brains of
study subjects.  Monitoring individual neurons yields a far more precise
metric of brain activity than s fMRI or EEG, as one detects the actual
electrical impulse of the neuron firing. Fried found activity in individual
neurons about a second and a half before the subject made a conscious
decision to press a button. With about 700 milliseconds to go, the
researchers could predict the timing of that decision with more than 80%
accuracy. "At some point, things that are predetermined are admitted into
consciousness," was the conclusion. "The conscious will might be added on to
a decision at a later stage".

So, how is "consciousness" relevant in insects when, even in ourselves, it
appears that one's consciousness only makes up rationalizations to justify
what has already been decided on a purely instinctive/stimulus-response
basis by a brain that has not even informed the conscious mind of its
decision until a fraction of a second before the action?  (Brings new
profound meaning to the phrase "post hoc rationalization", eh?)
  	
There has been lots of drivel on these studies and the concept of "free
will", but I think it is more accurate to describe them as findings that
push at least the early steps in a lot of decision-making into the
"unconscious" rather than "conscious" realm.    

Baseball fans will be additionally amused by Jennie Finch, a women's
softball pitcher that strikes out every major-league baseball player she has
faced, as they cannot "read" her windup in the same way that they can read a
baseball pitcher's windup.  So, her 65mph fastball is harder to hit than a
major league baseball pitcher's 95mph fastball.  The lesson is that a lot of
sports is visual, and recognition of familiar patterns can drive "reflex"
action, like hitting a fastball, or a lunge, parry of the riposte, and
redouble with a counter-riposte in fencing, which is ironically named a
"Second-Intention".

Even in chess, the difference between Grand Masters and local club players
is not "how many moves ahead" they strategize, as they will explain their
thinking, move by move, with similar narratives, one no more complex than
the other.  What Grand Masters CAN do is reconstruct the positions of all
the pieces on the board after a 3-second glance at a photo of a chessboard.
Lower-ranked chess players cannot do this nearly as well.  But even Grand
Masters cannot reconstruct the placement of the pieces on the board well
when they are placed in nonsensical positions that would not occur in actual
chess games, proving that this is not "mental prowess", but task-specific
(and learned) pattern-recognition. 

So, are bees "conscious beings"?  I don't see how it matters much, as I can
hit a fastball even though it gets from the pitcher to the plate faster than
I can hope to decide if it is a ball or a strike.  I suddenly feel MUCH
better about my batting average!



Soon, C. S., M. Brass, H.-J. Heinze, and J.-D. Haynes. 2008.  "Unconscious
determinants of free decisions in the human brain." Nature Neuroscience
11:543-545.

Libet, Benjamin.  1985.  "Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of
conscious will in voluntary action."  Behavior. Brain Science 8:529-566.

Fried, Itzhak; Mukamel, Roy; Kreiman, Gabriel (2011). "Internally Generated
Preactivation of Single Neurons in Human Medial Frontal Cortex Predicts
Volition". Neuron 69 (3): 548-62.

"The Sports Gene" David Epstein, 2013 (Current Book Publishing)

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