The really big difference is that, so far, we are the only creatures we've encountered who make self reports of subjective states. Our bodies inhabit space like every other animal as well as plants and minerals. But none of them will tell you in english (or some other human language) what it is like to be them. That doesn't mean they have no such experience. There is way too much similarity in wiring to believe that other mammals don't feel much of what we do, they just don't self describe their experience in a manner we can decipher.
There is every reason to think that the nature of what we experience is an emergent property for creatures such as ourselves. It is more economical to believe that the subjective bits which can't directly be mapped to an objective process are nonetheless produced by the material being who reports them. If consciousness were really something disconnected to bodies which bodies had to receive from somewhere else .. that would require extravagant amounts of explaining.
There is every reason to think that the nature of what we experience is an emergent property for creatures such as ourselves. It is more economical to believe that the subjective bits which can't directly be mapped to an objective process are nonetheless produced by the material being who reports them. If consciousness were really something disconnected to bodies which bodies had to receive from somewhere else .. that would require extravagant amounts of explaining.
