I am not sure that is a response to me, but Daniel Dennett would not care. He would not care if elephants cried deeper tears than humans, or if sperm whales could solve higher dimensional maths in their heads for fun, or if humpback whale song was the greatest artistic achievement on earth. As long as they could not create a global economy that changed the atmosphere of the planet, identify that and at least try and fix it they are not conscious.
That is an interesting answer, but it seems less useful than yours, and he is paid to think about things like this.
Well, we're even then, because I don't care about Daniel Dennett's opinions, and he can stuff them. Elephants are social animals and they suffer when separated from their families and they grieve when other elephants die.
Elephants have mourning rituals. They bury their dead, they visit their dead, and they mourn their dead.
How one defines consciousness is the key to what one allocates consciousness. The definition one begins with will determine the outcome.
Consciousness: The capability of an "entity" to respond to things outside of itself. As an entity increases in complexity, its capabilities of response increase.
So anything that responds to a stimulus from outside itself has consciousness?
The Moon must have be conscious, then, since there have been geological (whatever the correct term is when discussing the Moon) responses when comets, asteroids, and meteors have crashed into it.
Pretty sure they did; but I was going for how the use/invention of inner though, language and communication evolved our consciousness (that already existed). To use a 2001: A Space Odyssey analogy, the tribe of apes are exposed to the Monolith and one of them suddenly connects a new abstract idea of a weapon/tool to an otherwise worthless bone and the rest is history; the dawn of man.
More than a Million other species exist or have existed on this planet, many of them have been along for considerable longer than humans. But humans and select mammels and birds are - as far as I know - the only species that developed a more advanced level of consciousness; some display empathy towards members of their own and other species, some play, some can look in a mirror and recognize they're looking at a reflection of themselves and so on. Cold blooded animals in particular, wasn't invited to the party.
It seems evolution didn't choose or prioritize the path of more evolved brains, than what was strictly necessary for survival. Perhaps we are kind of a fluke; a lightning in a bottle?
2001 was a story, not a documentary. The sudden realization that a bone could become a weapon doesn't mean that pre-humans never found any other uses for bones. They became a variety of tools and ritual items (there's evidence to indicate that the Neanderthals had spiritual/religious beliefs).
Evolution is survival of the most adaptable, and it doesn't care if a species does or does not develop the ability for abstract thought. As long as it survives to procreate and there's a way for the offspring to mature and procreate, that's all that evolution expects. So yeah, we've gone beyond that, but so have other species.
No. the thermostat is not, but I would say that the matter that makes up it has a level of consciousness. Matter does respond to its environment at different levels. Mostly those are chemical or molecular changes and I think of that capability as a very low level of consciousness, but it is a still an "awareness" of things outside itself. I do not imbue consciousness to objects we make like your thermostat, or shoes, or tables. It is that very limited consciousness held by matter that makes many objects we create function. when two molecules/atoms come close there is often a reaction triggered by that proximity. You might call that just physics or chemistry; I would say that the physics and chemistry work because of consciousness.
I dunno... my thermostat has been really annoying lately. At least my socks haven't been playing hide-and-seek in the laundry, so there's that.
However, the thing about molecules and atoms coming close and a reaction being triggered by that proximity... how many thunderstorms do you usually get in your region? I doubt that there's consciousness involved, even though there's a nonsensical story that some people tell naive children about storms: Thunder is what you hear when the angels go bowling.
According to
someone (no one read books anymore anyways),
Consciousness = Feedback.
So if you kick something and nothing comes back at you, this something is not conscious.
Furthermore, and disagreeing with many here,
Xpost with Birdjaguar: Exactly!
Edit: poll has too few options. Where is
everything?
Agreed. There are a lot of options the poll lacks.
