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.