this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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Because being aware of oneself in the past, present and future all at the same time allows us to view and theorise about our impact on ourselves and our surroundings. Animals don't do this, they run on stimuli and instinct and don't stop to theorise whether they are hungry or they got stomach ache.
edit: I wanted to say humans have an internal voice, but not all humans do so while it's a symptom of consciousness, I don't think an internal voice is the cause/reason
The exact kind of information processing is not necessarily relevant to predicting whether something is conscious. And to talk about animals in general while not including humans is extremely vague and misleading. The concept of other animals than humans being completely instinct driven is outdated. That said, there's no reason to link being instinct driven to lacking consciousness.
Seems like you're talking about metacognition. Not sure that's required for consciousness.
Yes, exactly. I find that that is what distinguishes us from animals. "I am happy because of this cool new toy that I got gifted to me because it's my birthday" versus "I am happy because I'm playing with this toy"
I'm always a little skeptical of anyone who denies conciousness / sentience to animals. We all do stuff based on stimuli.
Also there are layers to conciousness. If you want to make an argument that a fish doesn't have the same level of higher thought as a human I would agree with you depending on the type of fish, but to assume something operating on a more base level isn't having their own version of a concious experience is arrogant. Just because we don't have perfect empirical evidence does not mean it's not happening; we may need different measuring devices.