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From: laura@hoptoad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: the Goal of evolution
Message-ID: <815@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Sun, 25-May-86 08:39:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.815
Posted: Sun May 25 08:39:59 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 26-May-86 02:41:31 EDT
References: <487@bcsaic.UUCP> <1002@cybvax0.UUCP> <1494@umcp-cs.UUCP> <324@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <269@spar.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@hoptoad.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
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In article <324@parcvax.Xerox.COM> bane@parcvax.Xerox.COM (John R. Bane) writes:
>Anyone who has worked with insects would never say they had a mind.
>As far as I can tell, they are nothing more than stimulus-response
>machines; the response can be complicated, true, but nothing that
>requires a mind.
>
>Cockroaches, for instance, have no "brain" as we know it, but rather
>SMALL clumps of neurons along their back.  

I think what we have here is a disagreement as to what constitutes a mind. I
think that you have demonstrated that cockroaches don't have a brain, but I
am not sure that all minds are found in brains.  A cockroach has a pretty
boring mind, 'tis true, but it is better than a rock gets.  I am still wondering
if it is better than what a complicated plant gets, though.  (If you think of a
plant as a green rock, go see Stevie Wonder's *The Secret Lives of Plants*
someday.  Yes, I know that the book was real hokey and bogus -- the movie is
beautiful.  Slow motion photography of little sprouts growing tiny tendrils
and waving them in the wind until they find a post they can creep up.  Plants
move as gracefully as cats -- but so slowly that we do not see them!)
-- 
Laura Creighton		
ihnp4!hoptoad!laura  utzoo!hoptoad!laura  sun!hoptoad!laura
toad@lll-crg.arpa