I don't especially believe that humans are maximally conscious, any more than we were any of the other pinnacles of biological development that we always thought we were. Our main super powers are that we sweat, run, and easily consume starch, and you don't really need more than that to explain us. If consciousness is indeed a gradient, I think it's just more hubris to assume we are the "most conscious".

But it's a really hard thing to discuss, let alone quantify. I'd love to know your kind of feeling of what more or less conscious looks like.

[–] CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

When my dog sniffs a pee stain out in the bush he instantly knows what species left it there, how long ago it was left there, whether there is a threat to him, whether whoever left it is in heat, a whole bunch of actual information useful for his survival. I can only smell stale piss.

My dog knows whether it was an other dog that peed, or a fox, or a wolf, or a lynx, or a marten, he knows there is a difference between them and knows how to react to those differences. He can map their geographical movements over time and establish patterns of his own movements that could give him the advantage in the event that their path crosses his at some point. But he isn't aware enough to know that that is what he is actually doing when he smells pee.

I can recognize and taxonomically label all of the potential piss perps, look through their geneological history and map out their ancestors over millions of years, and I can describe in detail the fur trade history in the region and how it impacted the European economy over the past 300 years. But no matter how hard I try, it still just smells like stale piss to me.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe the dog can do all that but we have no conscious means of understanding his communication style?

[–] CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth 1 points 1 day ago

Maybe!