Reflex and sensation

 

Referring to previous chats on being sensate, experiencing existence, I noted a comment from you that even very primitive life exhibits this and that the difference is not sensate existence but intelligence. I think not quite. When I touch a hot stove, my hand withdraws more quickly than I become aware of it consciously. I touch the gecko on the wall with a feather, and he just vanishes off. I think there are reflexes and there are sensate experiences, and they play different roles. The first is not much different, although better and more complex, from a thermostat. These are maintained for quick survival. Sensate experience happens more slowly (although we barely notice the difference) and appears later in evolution, more as a learning mechanism (at least that is what natural selection uses it for; it pre-evolves into sensate existence).

Yes — I think your distinction is important, and I would revise what I said earlier. I collapsed responsiveness, sensation, and intelligence into one evolutionary continuum when they are better treated as different things.

The hot-stove example is especially good because it exposes something that happens inside us:

1. Reflex: receptors detect damaging heat → spinal circuitry withdraws the hand. This can happen before conscious awareness.

2. Sensation: the information reaches whatever neural machinery produces the felt experience of “hot!” or pain. That is something quite different from merely executing the withdrawal.

3. Intelligence/learning: you subsequently know that the stove is hot, can remember it, predict consequences, deliberately avoid it, and perhaps tell somebody else.

Those three capacities can be separated.

And your gecko makes the point nicely. The feather touches it and — whoosh — it is gone. There is no reason to assume that the gecko first has a little conscious thought saying “Something is touching my skin; I shall now flee.” A highly effective sensorimotor circuit can accomplish the whole thing extremely rapidly.

But that doesn't settle whether there was any experience whatsoever accompanying the stimulus. That's the difficult philosophical boundary you're getting at.

The thermostat analogy is useful, with one qualification

A thermostat is responsive but we have no particular reason to attribute sensation to it. Temperature crosses a threshold, a circuit changes state, and the furnace switches.

An animal's withdrawal reflex can be enormously more complicated than that — thousands or millions of neurons, chemical modulation, competing reflexes, sensory filtering, etc. — while still being essentially information → appropriate action, without requiring a conscious experience at every stage.

So complexity by itself doesn't establish sentience.

And evolution gives us a plausible reason for eventually adding something else. Once an organism has a sufficiently rich internal representation of what's happening to it, having that information available as an integrated experience can make it useful for more than one immediate response.

Pain is a particularly obvious example. A simple withdrawal mechanism says:

Hot → withdraw.

A more sophisticated organism can have something more like:

This particular thing hurts me → remember where it happened → alter my future behavior → investigate what caused it → perhaps avoid similar circumstances.

That makes sensation potentially useful as a general-purpose learning and behavioral-control mechanism, rather than merely another reflex.

And I particularly like your "pre-evolves" point

I wouldn't say that natural selection necessarily selected for consciousness itself at first. It could select for increasingly elaborate systems of:

sensation → internal representation → learning → prediction → flexible behavior.

At some point, perhaps somewhere in that continuum, there is what we would call experiencing.

And then intelligence can come considerably later.

That gives us an interesting three-dimensional evolutionary picture rather than the simple ladder I gave you before:

reactivity → sensation → learning/flexible behavior → intelligence

with substantial overlap and no sharp boundaries necessarily visible from the outside.

The really fascinating question is therefore not “Is the gecko intelligent?” but “At what point does information processing become something that is experienced?”

And I think your original interest in being sensate is actually aimed at that deeper question. Intelligence is almost beside the point. A creature could conceivably be very unintelligent but have experiences, while an arbitrarily elaborate information-processing machine might be intelligent in some functional sense without there being anything it is like to be that machine.

That's a much more interesting distinction than simply putting bacteria, geckos, humans, and computers on an intelligence scale.

Linking reflex with sensation would be an argument for panpsychism, and I would reject it.

 

Yes. And I think that is exactly why it is useful to keep reflex and sensation conceptually separate.

If we say, “The gecko responds to the feather, therefore it experiences the feather,” we've quietly made the step that panpsychism needs: causal responsiveness implies some degree of experience. Push that principle far enough and the thermostat, a photodiode, or even a molecule begins to acquire a tiny interior point of view.

I don't see any necessity for that.

A reflex can be understood entirely in functional terms:

stimulus → neural processing → motor response

without inserting:

stimulus → experience → motor response.

Indeed, your hot-stove example gives us direct evidence that those processes can be separated within a conscious organism. Your hand can withdraw before you consciously experience the pain. So the existence of the later sensation doesn't establish that the earlier reflex was itself a primitive sensation.

That gives us a much more modest evolutionary hypothesis:

Reflexes are ancient mechanisms for keeping an organism alive. Sensation is a later development that makes information available in a different, more flexible way.

And that doesn't require saying that the earlier mechanism possessed some dim precursor of consciousness.

The interesting philosophical problem then moves to why sensation appeared at all. Natural selection can readily explain why increasingly sophisticated information processing and learning are advantageous. What it doesn't straightforwardly explain is why some of that processing should be felt.

That's the hard problem, and I think your distinction actually makes it harder in an interesting way: we can't dissolve consciousness simply by pointing to increasingly complicated reflexes. Somewhere between “the organism reacts” and “the organism experiences” there appears to be a genuine additional phenomenon.

 

All I can say is that natural selection "found" it. No need to understand (which it wouldn't do anyway) to use.

 

Exactly. And that's a nice Darwinian way of putting it: natural selection doesn't need to understand a mechanism in order to exploit it.

Evolution doesn't have to answer the question “Why does this processing produce an experience?” It only needs a variant in which whatever machinery produces experience happens to improve survival or reproduction. If it does, that variant leaves more descendants, and the machinery gets retained.

In that sense, consciousness could be something evolution discovered rather than designed.

There is an amusing asymmetry here. We humans are then in the peculiar position of having inherited a mechanism that natural selection had been using successfully for a very long time without knowing what it was doing, and then eventually one of its products became capable of asking what the mechanism was doing.

Natural selection itself doesn't care whether the organism understands pain. It cares whether the organism behaves differently because of what happened.

And perhaps that is why your distinction between reflex and sensation matters so much. The evolutionary innovation needn't have been “make the reflex conscious.” It may have been something more like:

Make the organism's condition available to the organism as experience, and suddenly the same information can influence a much wider range of future behavior.

Evolution doesn't need to know why that works. If it works, it keeps it.

A thumbprint is biometric information

 

In the previous message you stated a sort-of warning that a thumbprint is biometric information. I suppose, but I don't understand danger here.

Yes. The warning was more ominous than the situation warrants.

A thumbprint is biometric information in the technical sense: it is a physical characteristic that can be used to identify you. But that does not mean that putting a thumbprint on your will creates some important new practical danger.

The distinction I'd make is:

• A password can be changed. If somebody gets your password, you replace it.

• A fingerprint can't be changed. That's why fingerprints are treated as especially sensitive data by privacy people.

• But somebody possessing an ink thumbprint on a legal document doesn't thereby gain the ability to unlock your phone, access your bank account, or impersonate you biometrically. Modern fingerprint authentication generally involves a digital representation and matching process, not simply presenting an ink impression.

• And fingerprints are hardly secret information. You leave them on glasses, door handles, cups, papers, etc. An ordinary thumbprint isn't a cryptographic secret.

There is a more mundane concern with a fingerprint on a legal document: identity/authenticity disputes. If someone later challenged the document, the print can provide evidence that you actually participated in signing it. In that respect, it is arguably helpful rather than dangerous.

So in the context of your Cambodian will-signing situation, I wouldn't regard the thumbprint itself as something you need to worry about. My earlier wording made the biometric aspect sound more consequential than it really is.

Personally I think it better than signatures, as it is harder to forge.

I agree, particularly for the purpose you're describing.

A handwritten signature is essentially a stylized assertion of identity, and a determined person can practice or copy it surprisingly well. A thumbprint has a much stronger connection to the actual individual. Even if someone tried to imitate it, reproducing the ridge detail convincingly is considerably harder.

There is also a nice legal-evidentiary distinction: the print doesn't merely say “this looks like Frank's signature.” It can say “this physical characteristic belongs to Frank.” That can make a disputed execution substantially easier to investigate.

The one qualification is that a fingerprint isn't automatically proof that the person voluntarily signed the document. Someone could theoretically obtain a print and transfer it, or apply someone's finger without consent. That's why witnesses, proper execution procedures, and—where appropriate—video or other evidence can still matter.

But as between signature alone and signature plus thumbprint, I'd regard the thumbprint as an additional authentication measure, not a liability. In your situation, I wouldn't hesitate over the biometric aspect merely because it is technically biometric data.

Is a thumbprint valid as a signature

 

Is a thumbprint valid as a signature? I ask because I have essential tremor, and my signature is almost impossible.

Yes — a thumbprint can be a legally valid signature, but the important qualification is where and on what document. It is generally treated as a “signature by mark”, rather than being automatically equivalent in every circumstance.

For your particular problem, there is actually a useful distinction:

• Ordinary documents: a thumbprint can often serve as your signature if the person receiving it accepts it.

• Notarized documents: many jurisdictions have explicit procedures for a signature by mark, sometimes requiring witnesses or a notary to record that you made the mark.

• Important legal documents: wills, deeds, powers of attorney, bank documents, etc. can have special execution requirements, so the document's particular rules control.

• Cambodia: this is especially interesting in your case. Cambodian document practice commonly uses a handwritten signature plus a right-thumbprint, and Cambodian legal documents can explicitly provide for a party to “sign or fingerprint.”

So if your signature has deteriorated to the point where it is essentially an illegible tremor-produced squiggle, I would not assume that you have to struggle with it simply because tradition says “signature.” A thumbprint is a perfectly recognizable means of authenticating a person's assent, and in some circumstances it is arguably better evidence of identity than an increasingly shaky signature.

There is one wrinkle I'd want to keep in mind: a thumbprint is also biometric information, so I wouldn't casually put one on every document. Notaries themselves have become more cautious about collecting fingerprints because of the privacy implications.

If what you're really wondering is “Could I arrange with my lawyer/notary that my thumbprint is my standard signature from now on, because of my tremor?”, that's a much more specific—and quite practical—question. The answer may be particularly favorable in Cambodia.

It has to do with my will and related documents, so US law and practice are significant as many of the beneficiaries are in the States.

Ah — that makes the question much more important, because a will isn't merely an ordinary document where the recipient can say, "Sure, a thumbprint is fine."

The good news is that U.S. law does not generally require a recognizable handwritten signature. The rules are state-specific, and several states expressly accommodate a person who cannot sign normally. For example, Pennsylvania expressly permits a testator who cannot sign to make a mark, with specified witnessing requirements. Arkansas does likewise.

And Washington is particularly relevant if your estate documents are being prepared under Washington law. Washington's statute expressly contemplates a signature by mark: a person may make a mark on the will to evidence approval of a signature made for him at his direction. More generally, Washington requires the will to be signed by the testator or by another person at the testator's direction and in the testator's presence, with two competent witnesses. It also recognizes a will executed according to the law of the place where it was executed or the testator's domicile.

So I would not make the thumbprint itself the central issue when talking to your lawyer. I'd put the problem this way:

My essential tremor has made my handwritten signature increasingly unreliable. I want the will, trust, powers of attorney, medical directives, and related documents executed in a manner that will remain unquestionably valid despite my inability to produce a conventional signature. Can we use a signature by mark/thumbprint, or have someone sign at my direction, with whatever witnessing/notarial language is required?

That gives the lawyer several legally recognized routes rather than asking him to bless one particular fingerprint procedure.

One thing I'd particularly want your lawyer to solve

Since you're in Cambodia but have U.S. beneficiaries and U.S. estate planning, I would want the lawyer to distinguish between:

1. Where the document is executed — Cambodia;

2. What law governs your estate — potentially Washington or another jurisdiction;

3. Where the asset is located — U.S., Cambodia, etc.; and

4. What the document is — will, revocable trust, durable POA, health-care directive, deed, beneficiary designation, and so forth.

Those can have different execution rules. A procedure that's perfectly adequate for a will may not be the right procedure for a deed or financial power of attorney.

And there's an interesting practical advantage to your situation: you don't necessarily need to make your thumbprint your permanent substitute for your signature. Your lawyer could establish a formal execution procedure specifically because of the tremor. In some circumstances, having another person write your name at your direction, followed by your mark and witnesses, may actually be cleaner legally than trying to persuade every institution that a thumbprint constitutes your signature.

So, given that this concerns your actual estate plan, I'd have the lawyer design the procedure rather than experimenting with a thumbprint on the documents yourself. The tremor is a perfectly legitimate reason to use an alternative execution method.

If your estate lawyer is the Washington lawyer you've mentioned before, Washington law looks considerably more accommodating than my initial general answer suggested.

The lawyer wants to observe me, along with witnesses, both sign and press my thumb on the document while they watch via Zoom. I have doubts about this as I could be signing anything.

Yes. Your objection is quite sensible, although there is an important distinction between “they watched me sign” and “they know exactly what I was signing.”

For a Washington will, the law expressly allows the testator either to sign personally or to have another person sign in the testator's presence or electronic presence at the testator's direction; two witnesses must also attest. Washington also expressly recognizes a signature by mark.

So your lawyer's proposed procedure is not inherently strange. In fact, Washington law specifically recognizes electronic presence for will execution.

But I think you've identified a real practical weakness in the proposed ceremony:

If the lawyer and witnesses are sitting in Seattle looking at you through Zoom while you sign a piece of paper in Cambodia, how do they know that the piece of paper you're signing is the actual will they reviewed?

They may be able to establish that you signed something, but that is not quite the same proposition as establishing you knowingly signed this particular document.

There is a fairly obvious way to remove that doubt

I would ask the lawyer whether, during the Zoom session, you can hold the actual document up to the camera and turn through it page by page, with the lawyer and witnesses able to see that it is the complete will they have approved, before you sign.

Even better, the lawyer could have you:

1. Display the entire document to the camera.

2. Identify it verbally — e.g. “This is my Last Will and Testament dated September 14, 2026.”

3. Turn through the pages so the lawyer can verify that it is the intended document.

4. Sign (or make your mark/thumbprint).

5. Have the witnesses watch the actual signing.

6. Have the witnesses sign/execute their attestations while you remain present electronically.

7. Preserve the video recording if appropriate.

That creates a considerably better evidentiary record.

And there is an even more interesting possibility. Washington now has an electronic-will statute under which the will can be signed electronically and witnessed in physical or electronic presence. It also has a mechanism for making an electronic will self-proving, with a qualified custodian maintaining it.

I'm not suggesting you switch to an electronic will — particularly since you are in Cambodia and have a lawyer who presumably has a carefully constructed estate plan. But I'd ask why they are using a physical-paper execution ceremony over Zoom rather than using one of the statutory electronic procedures.

And your thumbprint raises another interesting point. Washington's statute says that if somebody signs the testator's name at the testator's request, the testator can evidence approval by making a mark on the will. A thumbprint would seem like a natural candidate for that mark, but I'd want your Washington lawyer to tell you exactly how he intends to characterize it rather than relying on my interpretation.

So I think your instinct is right, but I'd phrase the concern to the lawyer differently from “I could be signing anything.” I'd say:

“If I'm signing a physical document in Cambodia while you and the witnesses are observing by Zoom, what procedure establishes that the document I actually sign is the exact will you have reviewed and intend to witness?”

That's a lawyer's question, and a rather good one. It puts the burden where it belongs: on the execution procedure, not on your increasingly recalcitrant handwriting.

One other thing: Washington's remote-notarization law is quite explicit about the notary being able to confirm that the record before the notary is the same record on which the remotely located person executed the signature, and it requires audiovisual recording for the remote act. That reinforces your concern: identity of the signer and identity of the document are separate things worth establishing.

Oh I think I would just do it. She hasn't mentioned recording it all. By the way, I think this is gross overkill even though a lot of money is involved as I don't see any possible scenario of it being contested.

 

I think that's a perfectly reasonable attitude. At this point I'd probably let the lawyer have her ceremony rather than trying to optimize it.

There is a certain irony to estate planning: the probability of anyone contesting your will may be tiny, while the consequences of having an execution defect are potentially enormous. Lawyers therefore tend to optimize for “Could a hostile lawyer find an argument?”, rather than “Is there any remotely plausible reason these people would fight?”

And in your case, the elaborate Zoom procedure probably isn't because she expects your beneficiaries to become warring factions. It's because she wants, if somebody did raise an objection years later, to have a very boring answer:

Here are the witnesses. Here is the execution procedure. Frank was present. Frank deliberately executed the document. The statutory requirements were followed.

Boring is exactly what you want a will to be.

I also wouldn't worry much about her not recording the Zoom session unless she thinks a recording is required. A lawyer preparing your estate documents presumably has a reason for the particular procedure she's prescribing. The witnesses' testimony and the properly executed document are the important things; recording everything isn't automatically necessary.

And your observation about the lack of any realistic contest is probably right. The best estate plan is often not the one designed for the family you have, but the one designed to survive the hypothetical family from hell. Lawyers are paid to think about the latter. 😄

Oh the will is to benefit beneficiaries by avoiding Washington inheritance tax.

Ah. That changes the practical picture considerably. You're not primarily trying to prevent a family fight over who gets what; you're trying to make sure the estate is structured and executed correctly enough that Washington can't collect a substantial tax that you intend the beneficiaries to avoid.

In that context, I withdraw a little of my “gross overkill” skepticism. 😄

The lawyer is probably thinking less about “Will anybody contest Frank's wishes?” and more about:

“If Washington ever examines this estate, can I demonstrate that every relevant legal requirement was satisfied?”

That's exactly where a meticulous execution ceremony earns its keep. A technically defective will could create a tax problem even though every beneficiary completely agrees with it. Nobody needs to contest anything for the government's position to become relevant.

And that also makes your lawyer's insistence on personally observing the execution rather more understandable. She's creating evidence that you were competent, acting voluntarily, and deliberately executing the document—useful facts if the estate's tax treatment is subsequently scrutinized.

So I think your original reaction and the lawyer's approach can both be right:

• You: “Nobody is going to contest this.”
• Lawyer: “That's not the only thing I have to protect against.”
• You: “Fine. I'll make the mark and thumbprint.” 😄

One thing I would be particularly interested in, though, is exactly what Washington inheritance/estate-tax structure your lawyer is using, because Washington's estate tax is an estate tax rather than the more familiar beneficiary-paid “inheritance tax,” and domicile, asset ownership, trusts, and the location/type of assets can matter enormously. Given the amount involved, that's one place where the details are worth getting exactly right.

 

 The thing is, I am not a Washington resident. I own property there but haven't been there for several years. I have been voting there by mail, but intend to stop. Also, the will says Doug gets everything, which we already have jointly anyway. The will is mainly for if he dies before I do or we die together.

 

Yes — that makes the structure much clearer. And there is one important wrinkle in what you just said.

Washington's estate tax is based heavily on domicile, not simply on whether you happen to own Washington property. Washington's Department of Revenue says that a nonresident who owns Washington real estate or tangible personal property can still have a Washington estate-tax filing obligation, but the tax is apportioned to the Washington property. Intangible assets—stocks, bank accounts, etc.—belong outside Washington for this purpose if the decedent is domiciled outside Washington.

So your situation is materially different from that of a Washington resident with a $10-million estate.

And the voting issue is worth taking seriously. Washington's DOR specifically lists voter registration among the factors it considers when determining domicile, along with tax-return address, property ownership, citizenship, length of residence, and community ties. It also says that intent is the determining factor.

That doesn't mean that having voted absentee automatically makes you a Washington resident. But if you're trying to establish that Cambodia—not Washington—is your permanent domicile, continuing to vote in Washington is an unnecessary piece of evidence pointing the other way. So your intention to stop doing it seems quite sensible.

The particularly interesting part is what you say about the will:

Doug gets everything.

If you're both already joint owners of most of the property, then the will isn't really doing the heavy lifting in the ordinary circumstance. Joint ownership with survivorship may take property outside the probate estate altogether, depending on how particular assets are titled. The will becomes important for the things that don't pass automatically, and especially for your two contingencies:

1. Doug dies first, or
2. you both die in circumstances where survivorship can't be established.

That's a perfectly ordinary reason to have a will even when most of the estate is jointly owned.

And there is another tax point that makes your lawyer's carefulness understandable: Washington's current estate-tax exclusion is $3 million for deaths on or after July 1, 2026, while rates can reach 20%. A nonresident's Washington estate-tax calculation is then apportioned according to the Washington property versus the entire gross estate.

So I now see why your lawyer is being fussy about execution. The will may be quite simple substantively, but the domicile and tax consequences are not.

And I'd still stop short of worrying about the Zoom recording. If she has established a procedure she is satisfied meets Washington's execution requirements, I'd probably do exactly what you suggested earlier: sit down, make the mark, put your thumbprint on it, let the witnesses watch, and get on with life. The essential tremor is not a good reason to turn the signing of a will into an Olympic event.