[FullMtlAlcoholc]

> What lets you determine when a composite object or pattern in an automata has crossed that threshold?

There isn't really a threshold beyond that pattern or object somehow communicating to you that it does indeed possess a will or some form of consciousness. The default assumption is to assume it doesn't until it shows it does instead of invoking an animist world view that imbues a spirit to every complex phenomenon (weather, death, etc.)

I'm in agreement with you though in general. It is arrogant to think that humans are at the terminal end of emergent complexity. Maybe our minds are too limited to conceive of something arising from a global or galactic scale.

Are our individual cells aware of the person?

[SomeStupidPoint]

Why is the animist view not the default assumption?

That seems a strictly more complicated model (with equivalent or even lesser predictive power), in that it supposes two classes of objects rather than a single class (in some sort of distribution), and supposes there must be some special quality to things, wherein they gain an extra trait.

The simpler assumption (at least to me) would seem to be the animist one, albeit that most wills don't look much like ours (since most things don't look like us).

I mean, I could see if you were arguing that humans don't have a will, but evolution doesn't either -- but to divide them in to categories based on feelings (which seems to be the case) seems to needlessly complexify the model.

[FullMtlAlcoholc]

> Why is the animist view not the default assumption? That seems a strictly more complicated model (with equivalent or even lesser predictive power), in that it supposes two classes of objects rather than a single class (in some sort of distribution), and supposes there must be some special quality to things, wherein they gain an extra trait.

Although you raise an interesting point, that was the default view of many, if not most, societies until modern times. Once that threshold is crossed, we reflexively imbue it with other superstitious traits. In theory it makes sense, in practice, it'll lead to shit like human sacrifice.

[smhost]

In what theory would that make even remote sense?

If there's no selective pressure for a will to emerge, a will will not emerge (barring some infinitely improbable random event).

[vectorpush]

> There isn't really a threshold beyond that pattern or object somehow communicating to you that it does indeed possess a will or some form of consciousness

I agree. It is a further anthropomorphism to even assume that the integrated sensory and memory perception phenomenon that we apparently experience as consciousness is inherently "human" in its quality rather than something more qualitatively similar to the bending of space-time by matter. An incidental consequence of homeostasis is that arbitrary pieces of matter are somehow a "self" and a cluster of sensory signals are somehow an "experience". The animist view isn't even necessary if we do not insist that "consciousness" be "a state of existence" for thinking creatures to "have" or not.

[adrianratnapala]

We don't have to get caught up in definitions of consciousness.

What we see in the case of microbe cell division is goal-directed behaviour. The physical details of how it happens are very important to cell biologists, but the bigger point is that one way or another the thing will behave in ways that help it grow and divide.

In that light it seems perfectly fine to say that the cell wants to divide. Indeed it is the most correct explanation I can think of -- and then I can invoke evolution as an explanation of how it came to want this.