
Originally Posted by
arthur
Hi Greg,and Graham,
I don't want to appear as giving a lecture but I would like to comment using my Universal Law.
The only access to 'the recording of experience' (memory) part of a brain is via its extensions i.e. its Environmental Monitoring System, the senses. Memory and knowledge per se are not relative, the quantity and quality etc. are relative.
Any one who understands microbes, fruit flies and maggots recognises and understands that they do have memory and that they use that memory in their endeavours to maintain their integrity's.
'Short', as in life span is relative, the skill they use in relationship to the success they achieve in their endeavours whilst responding to surrounding stimuli is a measure of intelligence. Of course, to be able to grade the intelligence one must understand, from the creatures point of view, what its endeavour is and why it is endeavouring.
When all creatures experience, the magnitude of it will be interpreted by its brain, if what appears to be an experience is not registered by its brain it will not, to it, be an experience.
Many of the creatures which breed in hundreds or thousands do so as an Evolutionary response to mass predation or because the opportunity to do so is there. I suggest that few will die as a direct result of no memory of experience, but many will die as a result of no experience. This applied and applies to N.A bison, one calf, caribou, one calf, the passenger pigeon, two egg, the wildebeest, one calf etc etc.
The only way that knowledge can be manifested is in physical activity whether it be in the activating of the muscles to vibrate the vocal cords or the finger to tap the keys or the act of just doing, that is the way it is done.
Greg, your, rationale re. 'moth burning its wings' is analogues to humans, No matter how many time they suffer the carnage of war etc, but does it mean, no memory=no experience?
Finally, I also agree that we have no claim to superiority over any other creature, and I also feel that we have no right to have a sense of superiority per se.
regards arthur