Confessions

[emjay]

That's sweet... I'm glad I repped you

I'm aware in this situation that there's a possibility that they don't have consciousness and the empathy that comes for them comes from attributing human emotions and agency to them. Are they complex enough to have consciousness or are they philosophical zombies? That is the (rhetorical) question. But perhaps since you could never know, the default position should be to assume that all animals, no matter what size, have consciousness. Maybe as long as it has to represent state, and self-as-centre-of-multiple-sensations that's all that's needed? Who knows.

I imagine it works very much the same way with less complex life forms with no "self" consciousness needed. The physiological "environmental" consciousness of the body itself squirts out reactive hormones due to external stimuli. Like if you just see a tiger stick it's head out of the bushes 20 ft and it locks eyes with you...your body is going to flood with adrenaline and cortisol.

I'd imagine what ever kind of electric feedback mechanism that serves as their rudimentary consciousness gets swept up in similar, fight or flight hormone storms just as surely as we do.

Yeah, that's the problem - it would make just as much sense for it to be a purely physiological/reflexive response so no indicator of the presence or absence of consciousness. So again, perhaps best to just assume consciousness in all animals even if it could never be disproven.