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Comment by card_zero | Hacker News Reader

That's fine, but I'm a materialist and I don't think rabbits are conscious, so the whole thing falls apart. I'm down with Descartes, I think they're just a kind of proteinaceous Roombas, be they never so sweet. I don't think they have a clue what's going on, or any true ideas in their heads (probably rabbit memes though). So in my conception of consciousness, which is self-awareness, entailing understanding and explanations, they aren't conscious. Of course if you want to make consciousness into something more basic like reaction to a stimulus then sure, a rabbit is conscious, and so is the US, and a slime mold, and possibly a rock, since it will fall down when prodded. You could actually manufacture an argument for the United States being properly self-aware and understanding itself! But this isn't it. Besides, nobody really understands the United States.

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Can a rabbit suffer? I don't think a rock can. I doubt slime moulds can either (though I admit I don't know a huge amount about how their internal makeup). But I suspect rabbits can.

I am not at all impressed by the concept of suffering, which I ascribe to Jeremy Bentham, who I have down as a silly person and responsible for a lot of confusion.

May I ask why? If one can suffer, one by definition can have subjective experience. And I understand that for you, that is not sufficient for consciousness, which is fine: one of the biggest problems of the whole consciousness debate is what is actually meant by the word. But it does indicate that there is something going on inside rabbits that isn’t going on inside rocks (assuming that rabbits can indeed suffer and rocks cannot).

What about nonhuman animals that pass the mirror test, use tools, form social bonds, communicate, learn from one another, have a cultural memory, and mourn their dead? Would you consider those conscious?

So, not dogs? The mirror test is balls, and "mourning", give me a break, it's anthropomorphism don't you think?

I have a strong suspicion that a lot of humans aren't conscious. The full p-zombie solipsist theory clearly isn't true, because the concept of consciousness wouldn't have arisen if nobody had it. But that doesn't mean everybody has to have it.

Nonhuman animals? No idea. We don't even know how to phrase the question rigorously, let alone how to even conceptualize answering it.

Ha. Well, OK. What do you mean by conscious, though? I think the vast majority of humans understand who they are and what's going on around them, if that's the definition. (The rest are in comas and etc.)

That's the big question. What do we mean by conscious?

I think the key thing is qualia. That is, there's some subjective experience. If you prick us, not only do we bleed, but we feel it.

This is pretty vague, which is the whole problem. But if you feel it when you're pricked, you know what I'm talking about.

This can't be measured or even observed except from the inside. Nobody even has the slightest idea of how it could be measured, even theoretically. The existence of this phenomenon in people other than myself is something I have to take largely on faith. (But, as I mentioned, not entirely, since the existence of this concept shows at least some other people have it.)

It would certainly make it less baffling how many people seem to insist they're not aware that they exist when Star Trek transporters etc come up.

I do not mean this in an insulting way whatsoever, but have you ever been evaluated for psychopathy? To me it is profoundly obvious that almost all humans are conscious.

No, and from what I know of the diagnostic criteria, it doesn't fit.

The main reason I think this is because there are people who don't seem to get the concept. These threads often have people arguing that consciousness is no big deal, it's just your brain making decisions based on sensory input, etc. I can't imagine an entity with qualia making that sort of argument. This might just be a failure of imagination on my part, but that's what it looks like.

It's very tempting to apply this idea to e.g. idiots who stand in the middle of a doorway and chat while others struggle to get past them, but I recognize this is just an irrational desire to diminish people who annoy me in the moment.

When you say "almost all," is that just to accommodate people in comas and such? Or does that mean you also think there are people who are walking and talking but don't have consciousness, and you just don't think there are very many?

I'm a materialist and man your opinion is going to give materialists a bad name. It is easy to jump from "rabbits are not conscious" to "rabbits can't suffer" to "it is OK to skin rabbits alive".

I believe we are all just bags of chemicals playing out the laws of physics, no libertarian free will at all. Consciousness is an orthogonal issue. Humans have it, and if you have ever lived with a dog you'd agree they have it too despite not being verbal ... hell, it isn't rare for humans to have no internal dialog yet nobody would say they are not conscious.

Consciousness is a continuum and there is no bright line where it starts/stops. Bacteria react to their environment but they are conscious in the same way that one minute after shaving I have a "beard" -- technically the hair stubble rises above the surface of my skin, but it isn't a beard. Wait a month and clearly I do, but there is no bright line where I transition to having a beard.

I don't think it's OK to skin pet rabbits alive. As soon as a human is in a relationship with a rabbit, or a pigeon (pigeons are lovely), the animal acquires rights, in my worldview, and I want to emphasize that point lest people think I'm a cunt. I mean they're going to think I'm a cunt anyway but I want to perform whatever damage limitation I can. The same applies to your beloved plushie too though (mine is Iron Man), it's all about the human really.

This really doesn't make it better.

The brain of a rabbit is many orders of magnitude closer to a human than the USA or a rock. Do you really think the specific form of human cognition is core to the definition of consciousness? This seems like an arbitrary place to draw the line, especially since you define qualia as central to consciousness. Human cognition is less clearly tied innately to qualia than the feelings we may have in conjunction with that cognition

Rabbits are closer than a rock to a human, but clearly something is missing from the rabbit that (waking, socialized) humans have. A core part of phenomenal consciousness is being able to think about the fact that you are an awareness separate from your surroundings. Exactly what it is that humans have that rabbits do not, in the physical sense of what causes this awareness of awareness, is not as clear.

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