While I find all the ancillary considerations raised on the original thread extremely interesting, I would like to reopen the discussion of Conscious as a Mystery and ask that those that join it stay close to the question of what consciousness is and how we know it when we see it. Baby Steps.
Where were we? I think I was asking Jochen, and perhaps Peitr and anybody else who thought that animals were not conscious (i.e., not aware of their own awareness) what basis they had in experience for thinking that.. One offering for such an experience is the absence of language in animals. Because my cat cannot describe his experience in words, he cannot be conscious. This requires the following syllogism: Nothing that does not employ a language (or two?) is conscious. Animals (with ;the possible exception of signing apes) do not employ languages. Ergo, Animals are not conscious. But I was trying to find out the basis for the first premise. How do we know that there are no non-linguistic beings that are not conscious. I hope we could rule out the answer,"because they are non-linguistic", both in its strictly tautological or merely circular form. There is a closely related syllogism which we also need to explore: All language using beings are conscious. George Peter Tremblay IV is a language-using being. George Peter Tremblay IV is conscious. Both are valid syllogisms. But where do the premises come from. Nick
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