11. Such symbolic communication is not unprecedented among wild
animals. Social mammals such as meerkats have vocal calls which can
indicate the type of threat that a scout has perceived. Many primates
do similar things. Different groups use different sounds; these are
not inherited actions, they are learned, or else genetically-similar
groups in varying locations would use the same noises. Wild animals
use symbolic communication to manipulate the behaviours of others,
sometimes even in an altruistic fashion - favouring kin over
themselves.

12. As previously discussed, chimps have been observed to lie, meaning
that chimps are not only able to model the behaviours of other chimps
in their troupe, they also model the mental state of those others.
This is not to say that a butterfly with eyespots on its wings is
consciously "lying" to predators, but when a more complex animal such
as a chimp gives false information to other chimps, I think that what
it's doing is certainly trying to manipulate another's mind, implying
that it knows it has a mind.

What I'm trying to demonstrate here is that there is a fairly simple,
steady, observable and demonstrable increase in the sophistication of
animal awareness of the world. Few aspects of human cognition are
unique to humans; just about everything we do except writing - a
recent human innovation, not an evolutionary one - various animals do
too. Animals can be shown to possess and perform just about every
mental trick that we do, from symbolic manipulation to abstract
thought. Cognition is not a uniquely human behaviour and neither is
self-awareness. We're just better at it. It's a difference of degree,
not of kind.

Now, this being so - and I think it is unarguable, but I welcome
attempts - and the basic aspects of stimulus/response being readily
demonstrable right down to single cells, what I want to ask is this:

Where is the step from simple reflex action to perception/thought/response?

Even in humans, functional NMRI has shown that the cerebral impulses
governing physical actions arise before the conscious mind is aware of
them. Whereas we do undoubtedly reason things out and act on them, in
much of the basic action of the human brain, the conscious mind is
merely a spectator, watching what's going on "beneath" it and then
rationalising after the event that it "decided" to do that.

Thinking is not, I submit, some special event in the brain. It's
merely a slightly more sophisticated version of the very simple
environmental modelling that even small crustaceans like woodlice do.
Right down at the level of animals that have no brain, merely a small
loop of nerve tissue around the mouth with more ganglia than
elsewhere, animals take a step back from simple direct-wired
stimulus->response, filter the incoming signals, form a model of
what's going on, and act upon it. This, I submit, is the simplest kind
of "mind", and the difference between it and us is that we have an
awful lot more neurons and much more complex neural networks in
between "in" and "out". It is a difference of degree, not of kind.
Purely quantitative, not qualitative.

A woodlouse "sees" in exactly the same way as we do. There's no deep
difference. Many insects and birds and fish see colour better than we
primates; they can see more colours, more differences over a greater
range. The bigger the brain, the more complex the pattern-analysis;
the bigger the patterns that can be identified. What happens, though,
is still the same: a sensor detects a stimulus, sends an action
potential down an axon to a ganglion, where it triggers a cascade of
other action potentials that propagate across a network of neurons
until they either elicit a response or not.

The difference is that in humans, the cascades are bigger than they
are in other animals, except whales, dolphins, elephants and the like.
In at least some of the great apes - chimps and orangs - some of the
impulses originate in some circuits whose job is to monitor the
activity of the rest of the brain; there are circuits given over to
modelling the activities of the rest of the brain, and there are
circuits given over to modelling the model. The senses include
awareness of brain activity: a feedback loop. The brain model includes
a model of the brain model.

Where, in this model, do "qualia" occur? Where is the great marvellous
miracle over which so much paper and so many innocent electrons are
expended?

To me, it all seems fairly simple and clear. I don't understand why
there is so much debate.