Adder wrote: Tree's!? Some processing is required to forage, and breed at the least, and the rest of it.
Motility alone is not enough. Things move for a few reasons without 'thinking' about it such as along a chemical gradient, temperature gradient, light gradient, magnetic field line, electric field, the direction of the gravitational force, a rigidity gradient, a gradient of cell adhesion sites, and along other cells or biopolymers.
There is no contemplation or decision by some part to do those things in stuff like bacteria, its just the function of their design to react to the environment locally where it interacts with the environment ie automatic.
The capacity to process information and make decisions really sets apart somethings freedom to choose where to move. So I tend to stick with the nervous system as the requirement for thought.
For contemplation about it, I'd first divide it into sub-conscious and conscious domains of thought.
Then I'd then define awareness as that conscious thought. I think the OP is about this specifically.
Then I'd associate modes of thought which I'd trace as relationships to levels of awareness, either directly or indirectly.
Some modes might be.... a contemplative 'engine' wielding memory 'processors' being fed by subconscious maintenance 'circuits' together producing conscious body and environment modeling which has available to it conscious motor control circuits and systems, which are all overseen by instinctual action circuits. This then would be a good foundation for the emergence of 'state' from a referential framework which can create the condition/illusion of being 'alive' - a permanence or continuity through time. The details in the memory then give rise to the rich image of identity and self.
All this is as a result of the nervous systems engineering. So anything without a nervous system would need something analogous to it for me to feel comfortable thinking it had a capacity to think in the way I interpret 'thought'.
So looking at that different degrees of function in different parts of that system would have different effects on ones state of mind and awareness, and their subsequent decision making. If your contemplative engine was on the fritz you'd be very up and down, emotional and selfish perhaps. If your subconscious maintenance systems were out of tune you might be having more illness and sleep problems. So as a result of either or both of them the modelling might create imbalances felt as strong feelings, which would create disproportionate associations into the memory processors, leading to distracting emotions. Or the other way if you've bad memories it might distort the modelling by accidentally meeting conditions to recruit the instinctual drivers, again causing imbalances.
But all this is academic, you were made as well as we could make you. The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long....
wait, I just went all Blade Runner again!!
:silly:
TLDR;
Anything simpler then animals tends to look like just biological machinery with no will. We are biological machinery as well, but the nervous system in us creates/carries a highly complex state of information, and since it's within the nervous system I'd interpret that as the location of thought. In simpler forms of life that information does not get centralized or processed, and instead is just acted upon locally depending on the functional design of those particular sites and the environmental conditions.
All just IMO.
Speaking of my fav movie;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbkV9jN0YKQ
Should anyone ever think they are in a position to really judge though? It's my best guess at the moment.
:laugh: 
