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.