Animal Mind

When I write "animal mind", my first reaction is to yell out, oxymoron. They simply do not go together. Descartes was right. Look at an animal, say a housefly. Who could possibly declare that it has a mind? If they do, we can holler, well prove it, through observation and experimentation. Show me the critter's mind! They could easily counter with, if you think you are so clever, can you prove that you have a mind! Now, that is not very easy to do, is it? A mind is one of those abstract entities that nominalists tell you are really nominal, belonging to the physical world, an abstraction of neurphysical processes. So, I could map out all the sites and processes to do with consciousness, language and the like, and then tell the other party, voila! But consciousness? Nobody has a handle on that. Language however we can work with. We can locate the various areas connected with its propagation - isolate genes needed for its development. Yes, here we are on surer ground. We can get our little fly's brain and then place it alongside ours, and compare. The fly lacks a hell of a lot of things we have. Why it doesn't even have emotions. You do not have angry flies. Flies can be aggressive, but not angry. Flies can be sex fixated, but not in love. To have the latter affects you need a lot of hardware and software houseflies lack. It is not mind we are talking about, but communication. Mind might be defined as the communicating of awareness of affective dispositions. A real mouthful. The requirement then is not complexity of the neural network, but the richness of the neurochemistry.

saliency relations iii

saliency relations and values

saliency relations

saliency ii

I am going to use as the engine of my saliency modelling, a multi-tiered affective structure based on Panksepp above and others.

Saliency

Now working on a saliency model based on animal affective neuroscience.

Semiotic Equation 2

In the diagram above one sees the relations between semiotic components. After the Big Bang, one can talk of primodial signals - later the structures and processes were organized physically into growing forms like crystals which predate the bubbles and life forms. The rules and codes of organization anticipate the building blocks of life (in a dynamic environmental context). Those rules and codes are unread from an organism's point of view. Later we find the development of secondary signalling. The sign is after the code in terms of evolution, but of course to "understand" or interpret a code one needs signs and symbols. The symbol is the last development - all of these are needed to interpret the communication phenomena. This is just a quick thought on relations. Note the divide between quantity and quality. Although one can talk of coding for quality at the level of perception even initial reception, the organism as a central organized entity is not aware of this - it occurs without awareness or sentience.