RE: Is God a logical contradiction?
February 17, 2020 at 2:26 pm
(This post was last modified: February 17, 2020 at 3:41 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(February 17, 2020 at 1:57 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Saying they 'know' is reaching, saying that the available evidence points supports that conclusion and there is no available evidence that points away from it justifies a tentative conclusion that at least certain animals have some degree of consciousness and are capable of experiencing things like attachment, pleasure, and suffering. The level of evidence you seem to be demanding for the consciousness of animals is also unavailable for humans; you have experience that you are conscious, but all you've got for the rest of us is our behavior and brain states.
The most obvious justification is that you have no particular reason to think you are so unique that you are the only human who possesses consciousness. However, there is no particular reason to think consciousness is absolutely unique to humans, either; so why accept evidence that other humans are conscious but reject evidence that other species are conscious?
You're the only one (and perhaps Peebo) that has taken a more neutral stance. The others have spoken in absolute terms that animals have consciousness and that there's evidence. I've tried my best to keep your stance separate from the others. That said, it would be more appropriate to say the evidence is consistent with, or doesn't contradict, consciousness; not that it points to or away, supports or opposes, consciousness.
I also agree that the evidence is not available for humans; which is why those who study consciousness refer to the behavioral "correlates" of consciousness (BCC) or the neural "correlates" of consciousness (NCC), not the behavioral or neural "determinants" of consciousness, etc. Such correlations are possible for humans because he have language, and we can communicate (presumably) our consciousness to others, and correlate it with behavior or neural activity.
