Consciousness: awareness and metacognition (General)

by David Turell , Friday, September 22, 2017, 15:02 (2617 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: An awful lot of words to describe the obvious and absolutely vital fact that there are different levels of consciousness. My bold suggests panpsychism. Your agreement that consciousness may not be “generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain” is, of course, essential to your dualism, but also makes a mockery of your claim that brainless organisms cannot be conscious.

DAVID: You forget that being conscious is not the same as consciousness. Of course, the brainless receive stimuli and have responses which are generally automatic.

dhw: Unless you're talking about syntax, I don't know what you mean. Being conscious is the same as having consciousness. But being conscious is not the same as having the same degree of consciousness as a human. I like your "generally". I’m interested in the responses that are not automatic.

Do any organisms but humans have consciousness? Not proven. We do not know where in the progression of evolved organisms, being conscious appeared. You and I debate this all the time.