We experience ourselves and our surroundings through our consciousness, and yet it is such a mysterious thing. Since we know consciousness only through our own experiences, we find it natural and easy to point out at things that make us special - like our ability to use language and our complex reasoning patterns - and then somehow extrapolate that these things that make us special are intimately connected to our ability of experiencing consciousness.
But, unless I am very mistaken, there is literally no evidence to support this hypothesis. It is a conjecture that we’ve made up because it is easy to believe it. We start from the position that we agree that we humans are conscious - and then other systems have to somehow prove their consciousness… Despite our inability of proving that humans experience consciousness!
Personally, I am of the view that the phenomenon of consciousness is a lot more widespread than we currently imagine. It find it hard to believe that that we are so special, and that it was necessary for humans to evolve until this magical phenomenon of “consciousness” began to take shape.
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That is true, the whole field is difficult to define using language.
Usually I interpret "consciousness’ to mean ‘qualia’, but even this word is strongly debated by philosophers, so that doesn’t help us much.
When talking about what is conscious and what isn’t, I am usually talking about the notions of consciousness that are discussed when we look at the ‘hard problem of consciousness’.
The definition of ‘ability to react to the surroundings’ is one that can be tested using scientific methods. When one applies a definition that is directly correlated to well-defined neural dynamics (brain activity in a specific region) or behavior (self-recognition when looking at a mirror), then those are usually referred to as the ‘easy problems’ of consciousness, because we can test these experimentally.
The hard problem deals with the actual subjective experience. Whether a ‘movie’ is being played for something or someone to experience.
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This is why I’ve been increasingly depressed that I love meat so much. I’ve even started feeling bad swatting at flies. Humans are egotistical in our assumption that only our way of experiencing reality is special or meaningful. Just because what we call consciousness doesn’t appear to exist in certain living beings doesn’t mean they don’t experience reality and memory in their own meaningful way we don’t understand yet.
Imagine if we discovered blades of grass experienceed pain when cut - I’ve had some existential anxiety over shit like this ☠️
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Go vegan
