Well, in the case of the insects, all of their behavior is hardwired. There isn’t anything left over with which they could be conscious.
How did you find this out?
Where exactly would consciousness exist outside the brain?
Even the question is Woo.
I believe it can. I think as an inherently self-centered species we fit every idea we create to apply specially to us or in relation to how we function, then as we explore the idea more we realize how much it can apply to things outside of us.
Anyway, this video is interesting if you want to explore the idea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeX6ST7rexs
Turns out plants communicate amongst each other, attack predators, and store memory. Wouldn’t you argue that those are all attributes of consciousness?
If consciousness is so abstract that it has no behavioral component – if the insect is robotically rolling up dung, but inwardly is meditating on Zen koans – then it is meaningless in the scientific sense. No conceivable test could be formulated to test it.
Show me evidence, and I’ll back off immediately. But abstract possibility – “How do you know this is true?” – is not evidence. That leads to Cartesian doubt. How do you know you aren’t a butterfly dreaming you’re a person?
Active science-fiction type imagination can supply all kinds of possibilities. Maybe it exists in a cloud that migrates among all minds, like the “hundredth monkey” idea. Maybe all consciousness exists in the geologic formations of the earth, and we animals are just projections.
But, yeah, woo.
My computer is conscious?
I don’t think this is a fair comparison since when computers do those things they are set in motion by humans and not autonomous functions.
Attacking predators would seem to be evolutionary advantageous behavior. So would storing memories. Are predators attacking prey necessarily conscious?
Think for a second about your subconscious mind, the part of you which solves problems, drives (like in a Lord Buckley bit) and creates without you observing it. The non-conscious part of your mind can be quite smart. Mind does things better than the conscious part.
My old dog could plan, knew every way to his favorite park, and could solve problems all without being conscious.
A brain may be necessary for the occurrence of human consciousness, but it is not sufficient. A brain needs time and complex understanding of other brains and the real world before it is recognisable as consciousness.
Consider a new born baby treated as badly as Harlow’s monkeys. Bodily functions such as food, shelter and safety met in a non human environment for eighteen years. I would suspect that the result would be an entity with no greater consciousness than simple animals. Human Consciousness is created by complex social interaction within a complex technological and language full world.
A thought about consciousness being solely a property of human beings:
Did humans suddenly, instantly, reach some point of evolution where–BANG!–consciousness was present?
I tend to think not. Evolution is a gradual process, where “meaningful” changes (amongst the majority of members of a species) happen only over a relatively long period of time.
Looking at the situation like this it occurs to me that consciousness is not a binary, yes-or-no kind of thing. I believe it occurs in degrees, gradually, over the course of the evolution of various species. So it seems that, while humans may be at the pinnacle of consciousness among Earth organisms, there is likely a similar quality of consciousness in other “lesser” organisms–only at a lesser quantity or state of maturation.
Are we having an out-of-body experience or something?
I had always thought that this was obvious and the definition that everybody would use. But then we have people such as Voyager who apparently thinks his dog isn’t conscious.
Well, I’m not sure that consciousness is scientifically testable until we define it better, but comparing an insect to a human, I see a difference in the amount, not necessarily a difference in kind. An insect brain has much less complexity and layers of recursion (apparently), and it may not have any of what I’d call consciousness, or maybe it has a little bit. What is the difference in a beetle robotically rolling up dung, and a human’s brain doing what it does according to the laws of physics and chemsitry?
An insect would be the low end of the continuum. As you go up in complexity, insects, fish, birds, mice, dogs, chimps, humans, whatever consciousness is, it’s clear to me that the amount of what I call consciousness increases.
Recent findings seem to suggest that your dog might not have been as unconscious as you assumed.
(Why, yes - I am a dog lover. Why do you ask? ;):p)
I buy all the stuff in that article, but I don’t buy that it is consciousness. My dog now loves cheese and anticipates all opportunities for her to get some. But neither she nor my old dog could pass the mirror test. Emotions - yes - or a good simulation of them. Self consciousness - no.
Fair enough. And of course, there will be more research done in this area. But still, the idea of canine consciousness isn’t an immediate non-starter in scientific circles as it was decades ago.
As to the OP, besides the hypothetical “floating brains”, I still hold hope that consciousness can exist outside of a physical brain. Not betting on it, mind you, but it’s my hunch. And yes, I realize that’s unscientific of me, but I’m only human.
While I admit my post was a quip, in response to the low-hanging fruit of a very insufficient definition, I don’t see how being set in motion by another is a disqualification.
Much of what you and I think was “set in motion” by our parents and teachers. What language would we be speaking if we’d never been taught language by our society? Grunts and pointing…just like my brother-in-law…
If (absurdly!) it turned out that human evolution had been guided by space aliens – a la 2001 – would that mean we aren’t really conscious, since our consciousness had been set in motion by others?
(I’m not saying I disagree with you…I just don’t actually understand your point.)
Of course, if you did hold your breath long enough, you might just find the answer to the question! 
(My guess is that you wouldn’t learn anything.)
The first problem is that it’s hard to find a good definition of consciousness. I’ll take a stab at it: anything that experiences qualia. That is, anything that creates a subjective existence.
Next, I’ll say that pretty much by my definition of “brain”, anything that has consciousness by this definition has a brain. But by “brain” I don’t mean an organ with neurons, I mean something that functions as a data processor and does (some of) the things a brain does. So, that’s not particularly revealing.
But let’s think about what might have consciousness but wouldn’t exhibit what we normally think of as an organ composed of neurons? First example is trivial: a computer. I believe that a computer could be conscious, but I doubt we’re there yet.
But there’s a better example. I’m going to pat my own back and point out that I came up with this case and was explaining it to someone who thought it was completely absurd, and the very next year a guy used it in a Pulitzer-prize winning book (Hofstadter’s Goedel Escher and Bach.) Well, I used bees; he used ants.
Each ant or bee is a complex little automaton, and they all work cooperatively so that the colony “learns” where food is and other things. Hofstadter has fun with the idea, having a conversation with an ant colony, to find that she loathes ants! Ickly little things. But they do bring the food! He made it clear that the colony did not participate in the consciousness of the ants and vice versa: they were on different planes, even though the ants create the colony’s “mind”, and the colony’s “mind” drives the ants’ behavior.
Do we really think a colony might have a subjective existence, qualia, etc? It’s hard to say; quite possibly not. But consider the possibility that a sufficiently complex colony might!
Subsequently, I got the impression somewhere that Hobbes first posed this kind of idea in Leviathan. I’ve tried to read that a few times, but the archaic language kills me and I haven’t got to the point where he does (if he does) and even if he did, I might misinterpret it.
If a colony can have subjective experiences, is it a brain? By MY definition of a brain, yes, implicitly. But by the OP’s intended definition, probably not.
It’s possible that your unconscious mind has its own consciousness. It’s possible that a human has more than one locus of consciousness. The fact that YOU don’t experience it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
I doubt it, but it’s possible. What I mean is that your example doesn’t prove anything. You might as well say I’m not aware of YOUR consciousness. A different consciousness is a different consciousness and we can’t directly experience it; we can only imply it from its behavior. People with multiple-personality disorder illustrate this clearly. One brain, separate consciousnesses (or at least, separate memories and personalities … it’s a sticky wicket.)
However, your point is valid that intelligence isn’t equal to consciousness. However, I believe my dog is quite conscious. I believe that when he’s hurt, he FEELS pain. Maybe you mean something different by the word, such as a higher level of self-awareness. I’m using a low bar, where self-awareness isn’t even necessary (though I do believe dogs and cats are very self-aware, though not to the same extent that humans are.)
One of the interesting things from this thought-experiment is that it forces us to expand our definition a little. Because, in a conscious anti-colony, part of the intelligence would be stored in the little scent-paths, the little chemical trails, laid down in a complex network all up and down the hollow tree-stump.
No one would say that that network of pheromones was “a brain,” but it is a physical structure that supports the mind.
Colony-type minds are not uncommon in science fiction, although some varieties entail the “homunculus” model, wherein the Queen of the colony is the real intelligence. But others follow a more distributed model, where, just as there is no “Queen” neuron in the human brain, so there would be no keystone individual worker in the hive mind.
Yeah, well… you’re right. That was a pretty enigmatic post and I shouldn’t have taken offense at your comments.