>not even humans have consciousness before they have learned to speak

some humans never learn to speak because they can't hear. I'm pretty sure they are conscious

I have to admit that I am not good at distinguishing between the English words consciousness and awareness. I think animals are missing what we refer to when we say “I”. We embed the reality around us in a symbolic space. The necessary substrate for this is our conceptual language. The “I” is a virtual projection of this space into ourselves. If you pay close attention to young children, you will notice that they do not yet have this interior space: no self-image, no preconceived idea of who they are and what characterizes them. As they acquire language, they gradually turn into little egotistical assholes like the rest of us.

Animals and toddlers are not Decartesian automatons. They have perception and feel pain, can suffer and deserve empathy. But they are not speaking subjects and therefore not subjects at all. A deaf-mute person who can communicate conceptually is a speaking subject. A person who, under any particular circumstances, never comes to form concepts of the world, i.e. to open up the symbolic space, is not a subject.

It was probably premature of me to equate this with consciousness. It always triggers me a bit when people assume that animals are just like us, only with fur and on four legs or something like that.

So if humans are limited by the precondition of language, other creatures must be too?

This is a joke right? Even cats build custom languages for their servants, you think humans are worse then cats? Or are you talking about talkative babies? Most languages are somewhat like a type of math and pattern, similar to programming (I guess my logic class drilled that into me). If the majority of animals can count and show empathy they can certainly display consciousness without speaking. To me a better question is should plants one day be included since they "scream", some can see, hear and transform for their environment and they are quiet noisy it's just require better instruments etc. Figuring out how long to go on the list is where people struggle. If you can train worms without heads and plants to fear falling, it really becomes a question of what we want to use to define this. Which I think play is an important part.

It sounds like you and GP are talking about two different things when referring to "consciousness".

I guess in that case if it were true, it would be unnecessary to give such humans anesthesia. Is that what you mean?

Just because memories are not persisted? Or some other reason?