Editor's pick: Consciousness and intelligence are different
I agree with Quentin Macilray that the brain constructs predictive models of everything, and that consciousness is a consequence of building a model of one's self (Letters, 1 July). This allows planning, which can benefit survival more than moment-by-moment reactions, even if the “plan” is for just a few seconds into the future.
Many creatures, including apes, corvids, dolphins and elephants, show signs of consciousness and an ability to solve novel problems – in the short term. My dog is clearly conscious of himself, but he isn't intelligent enough to use a stick as a weapon, though he can hold one quite firmly. It is an error to conflate consciousness with intelligence.
Humans seem to be unique in their ability to consider abstractions of abstractions to nearly any level. This gives the ability to solve problems requiring thousands of steps and create plans spanning decades. It has apparently evolved only once. Alien life may be common in the galaxy, but with intelligence limited to levels analogous to non-human earthly animals.
Mixed responses to kidney donation
Clare Wilson describes clearly the situation in the UK for altruistic kidney donation (24 June, p 36). I donated my left kidney six months ago. Some prefer to call this non-directed donation (as opposed to an act directed to a family member).
In one of the many interviews in the screening and assessment process I was described as “typical” of kidney donors. What factors affected my decision? I know someone who had been on dialysis and had a transplant, so I know the life-changing result for the recipient, family and friends. And I am aware that I can function perfectly well with one kidney.
A life in a caring profession, involvement in volunteering and being fit and active with no history of significant illness made me a more likely candidate. Other relevant factors were being retired and having time to go through the lengthy process, and living within easy access of one of the 24 UK transplant centres.
And the consequences? The first two days after surgery were, admittedly, rather uncomfortable. But I was climbing a Scottish peak with my walking club in less than four weeks. An unexpected, anonymous letter from “your grateful recipient” confirmed that this “miracle” of modern medicine was achieved. We donors all say the same: it's the best thing we have ever done.
Mixed responses to kidney donation
I've changed my mind about donating a kidney after discovering that rapists and murderers are on the organ waiting lists.
Also, the UK's National Health Service Blood and Transplant organisation promotes kidney donation with examples of recipients with type 1 diabetes and other “not-your-fault” conditions. Yet most kidneys are needed for type 2 diabetes, linked to lifestyle choices. However you feel about conditions linked to lifestyle, this is an advertising-type appeal by the NHSBT.
Mixed responses to kidney donation
You focused on purely altruistic transplants. Another scheme, in use in Australia and at Johns Hopkins hospital in the US, involves people who would like to donate to a family member or friend but are incompatible.
These donors are “pooled” so that a donor can give to a compatible person, not just to the recipient with whom they have a connection.
First class post
No, the solution is empowering women to fully own their reproductive agency
– Zola of whether we should impose population controls in the face of our impact on Earth (8 July, p 28)
Brains automatically make consciousness
Anil Ananthaswamy seems to dismiss Thomas Henry Huxley's view that consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” – a mere side effect of the brain's workings (1 July, p 8). He accepts the assumption of cognitive psychologist that a brain process accompanied by consciousness must be caused by that conscious experience.
However, the experiments he describes don't seem to distinguish between simultaneous neural and experiential processes. Were the neural events of no consequence, then, while the conscious events were present? Isn't it more likely that the “rapid learning” so admired by Thomas Metzinger was due to the evolved brain processes themselves?
Consciousness surely evolved as an automatic consequence of novel, large-scale brain activity. It is only we humans who may choose to affirm its supreme value and give it a point – and who strive to diminish its all-too-often unpleasant manifestations in the human world.
Relational reasoning in other animals
Freddy Jackson Brown and Nic Hooper say chimps can't do relational reasoning (3 June, p 38), and artificial intelligence struggles with it (17 June p 12). It is probably the basis for human language. But surely seeing and using a thing as a tool would count as relational reasoning. Are we meant to believe that no animal recognises bigger or riper fruits? What about a chimp cuddling a log as a “doll”?
I would like to see more tests devised for chimps, dolphins, elephants, crows, octopuses and other species.
Geoengineering, forests and power engineering
Thank you for your excellent update on climate change (24 June, p 28). On the question of geoengineering, I would suggest considering bioengineering.
This would involve planting billions more trees globally and preserving the trees we already have in endangered forests. Communities are already doing this, for example in the in Kenya. Planting trees empowers communities.
Geoengineering, forests and power engineering
You show installed fossil fuel and renewable generating capacity on one graph as if they are interchangeable. But fossil-fuelled capacity can generate at any time demand requires it. The output of renewable capacity, in particular wind and solar, depends on the weather rather than demand.
So how should government work?
I am a little surprised that no one seems to have mentioned that for several hundred years we in the UK have been applying sortition to an important feature of our way of life – the selection of juries. It seems to work OK.
So how should government work?
Pam Manfield doesn't mention the majority of Athenian residents who were unable to participate in democracy: slaves. The so-called source of Western democracy was based on slavery.
We need sound fisheries management and data
In her interesting article on seeding oceans with iron to boost fish stocks, Olive Heffernan says that “fisheries… could be exhausted by 2048” (10 June, p 24). This is based on a simplistic extrapolation of catch reductions recorded in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization “” database.
As executive secretary of the for six years, I support the view that although some fisheries are overexploited, many are well managed. I was previously responsible for the FAO database and maintain that these data cannot be used in this way.
Sound fisheries management is obviously extremely important, in particular for populations for which fish is the only source of animal protein. Please don't devalue the efforts of the many scientists and managers working to ensure that we will have fish to eat in the future.
We need sound fisheries management and data
Heffernan says that “there was no firm evidence of benefits to the salmon population” from the iron addition made with funding from the Haida community. Definitive proof may be lacking, but the run of Fraser river sockeye salmon was reported to be at least 10 million in the three-year period following the addition – a large increase.
Gongs all round again
快猫短视频 Live continues to collect prestigious awards, winning the Association of Exhibition Organisers' Best Consumer Show Launch and Marketing Campaign of the Year (Consumer), and then polishing off the awards season with the coveted Professional Publishers Association Event of the Year (Consumer Media). Congratulations also to event sales executive Laura Giddings, who was named as one of Exhibition News's Thirty Under 30 for 2017.
For the record
• The spokesperson for the who we quoted is Mark Salter (8 July, p 28).