Thousands of species of animals probably have consciousness

In any case, it may be easy to see what is meant by "amygdalas" but it is not right. "Amygdalae" is the right form of the word, whether you want to take it from Latin, Greek, or, indeed, English.

Btw, there is a lot of confusion about what is Latin and what is Greek. Both languages are used for scientific terminology (for reasons unknown, this habbit has persisted in modern times) but Latin words often borrow from Greek, but keep their Latin endings... which are often similar to the Greek ones. So it's hard to know which is which. I used to resolve this kind of confusion by perusing a good etymological lexicon of Ancient Greek, but unfortunately this was taken from me in a flood and I can only now rely on the internet, and my native knowledge of Greek.

No, thats exactly wrong inverse-style.

Simply producing outputs from inputs is not consciousness. Being actively aware you exist is the whole and being of consciousness: Absence of inputs and outputs we can understand invites us to say "not conscious, no evidence of consciousness" but thats subject to validation.

I don't personally believe plants are conscious, but I'm open to somebody demonstrating a sense of awareness. It probably won't be a mirror-test.

I guess I probably see plants like fish not exactly conscious though they certainly respond to their environment. Plants are quite noisy if you pet them, the audio is just outside our hearing range but we have devices that can track that sort of thing now. And some fish actually like to be pet, my great grandmother apparently had some fish she would pet, never met her just know of the stories. Probably everything that can grow has some level of it.

Also fun fact worm memories are stored outside the brain, their are some trained worm studies you can Google that are interesting too.

So your counterpoint should be actually split into two parts:

1. Should we work on the unsolved problem even when it is very hard and ambiguous and there is no even clear hypothesis for the solution? Of course we should.

2. Should we make new conclusions derived from the the unsolved problem #1? No, we must not.

So listing the different parties:

a) Scientists should work on the researching consciousness problem.

b) Animal activists should continue protecting animals, but not because they are supposedly conscious, but because they MAY be. We just don't know yet.

c) Journalists MUST stop writing that such and such animal has consciousness.

- Whether animals are asleep or awake (conscious or unconscious)

- Whether animals have subjective experience / qualia

- Whether animals are self-aware

Etc. etc.

Once you narrow down then you can try to precisely define the topic or not, but without narrowing down, it's pointless.