I have been stuck with this question for a month or so now since our cursory discussion earlier.  Here is a workable, if not acceptable, definition of consciousness: Consciousness: the way in which a physical brain underwrites the extra physical properties of phenomenal experience (sensations), adopted from the lecture cited below.

If honeybees feel pain, are they conscious? or how can we tell it is their instinct, rather?  All these interesting questions are difficult to answer.  Arrogantly, however, the presenter of  the following lecture assumes that only warm-blooded animals own consciousness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QWaZp_2I1k

Such sweeping generalization, however convincing the evidence may be, to me, stinks with warm-blooded mammals prejudice.  To know if honeybees have consciousness, limited it may be, is a difficult question to even ponder, indeed: why would they stop bearding when I replace the wooden bottom board with a screened one under a triple digit heat?  Then again there is this *emergence* business: "each atom of physical body possesses an inherent attribute of consciousness.  If each atom emanates its own consciousness, then the “self” must actually consist of amalgam of all this tiny units of awareness. " (A good example of this is the light bug blinking in harmony with others in the dark although they started randomly in the beginning)

As we gather around to celebrate the New Years Eve, I would like to suggest the members on this list to do a simple experiment.  Gather around in a circle on the floor or around the table.  And then start drumming the floor or the table with your hands.  (Perhaps a few drinks of your choice might enhance this experiment!)  Initially, there will be a cacophony of banging, a den of din.  But eventually the cacophonous drumming gets synchronized, creating rhythm of a pattern, although *no body told them to do so*.  In this crude experiment, no individual was told to sync his/her drumming but combined together they become a synchronized super organism, or so they appear.  Is this not an emergence phenomenon?

Wishing  everyone a warm winter; so glad the Winter Solstice has come and gone on the 21st already.

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