Consciousness and Automata (a letter to myself with philosophical jargin)

This recent concern about consciousness and automata started this summer when I looked back over that 2007 issue of TIME (Mind and Body Issue), and was reading my notes I took on my first impressions of the hard problem of consciousness, which partly concerned itself with why consciousness arose at all. The answer I wrote was "creativity" and earlier I put a word "instinct" to define a word used by Pinker in the article.

This contrast between instinct and creativity is interesting when considering consciousness and is spoke of by Descartes, who I'm reading now in Chalmers textbook in an article by Thomas Huxley. Descartes talks about how we have instincts as humans, and perhaps we're different from animals because they only have instinct and we have reason.

But I'm thinking about this word volition, the power to use one's will, and wondering when it would be necessary, and realized only upon making choices. The ribosome (biological "machine" for translating DNA) always has a best answer, there is one anti-codon that codes for the codon and it will produce a specific protein based upon the mRNA sequence. But with people, there isn't always a best answer. We have choices. What fraternity to join, major to pick... and what I think may be evolutionarily significant; what mate we choose. A flower has no choice in it's mate. Animals do to a degree, and certainly we do. The creative power of choice seems to build this imaginative aspect of consciousness, this frontal lobe function of planning. Yet at the same time, I believe consciousness can still exist at a level of instinct. We're still aware of the choices that are being made for us when our instinct comes into play. I still wonder what it would be like to be a tree. Maybe it's something to be a planet, or a galaxy, or the universe. I guess that makes me a proponent of ontological anti-reductionism.. but I'm not a fan of isms... I'd rather just figure it out scientifically.