Citation

Author Website

academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/userhome/psych/areber/

Thread

Arthur S. Reber, Caterpillars, consciousness and the origins of mind

Abstract

The commentaries by Calvo (2018) and Mallatt & Feinberg (2017) on my 2016 target branch out from a common conceptual node like forks in a road. Calvo criticizes me for not acknowledging that plants too are likely to be sentient and claims I have fallen into the kind of category error of which I accuse others ─ a zoocentric bias that fails to grant consciousness to flora. Mallatt & Feinberg maintain that I've gone too far in granting sentience to any species that lacks a nervous system. Calvo makes some good points but there are other issues concerning plant sentience such as metabolic cost and ethical implications. Mallatt & Feinberg take me to task for failing to provide supporting data. They are right, and a partial remedy is offered. They also imply that I have misunderstand basic principles of evolutionary biology. I think they have misunderstood my position.

Author Biography

Arthur S. Reber is Broeklundian Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, Brooklyn College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and currently Visiting Professor, Psychology, University of British Columbia. His research is on implicit learning, the process through which knowledge about the world about us is picked up largely independently of awareness of both the process and products of that learning.

academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/userhome/psych/areber/

DOI

10.51291/2377-7478.1307