>In this discussion we have stayed away from the concept of consciousness.

Indeed, except the authors of the paper note that they do not believe that the bee is "conscious" in an associated press release.

>In psychology we define consciousness as having an awareness. We fancy ourselves as being aware of a past, present and expecting a future.

Is past vs present not memory? And if it is, for any organism to learn requires memory. Otherwise they'd repeat the same discovery pattern over and over. Anticipation of the future is another matter. Abstract, kind of like the concept of zero.

>Considering consciousness and awareness is simply chasing ghosts.

Agreed wholeheartedly. There is no way to quantitate consciousness. You'd first have to concretely define what it isn't before you could identify markers of whether it is present.
However, I would also agree with Dick and posit further that it is the ultimate in conceit for humans to think they have a corner on consciousness. The level of complexity required to attain it--and the need for a central regulator (the claustrum argument)--is another matter.

I would point Glenn to Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow" for an exhaustive discussion of reflex vs considered activity (his System 1 vs System 2).


S

Skillman, NJ

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