The debate is absolutely about animal consciousness. Why would we be debating if humans have consciousness and dogs do not. In one of the recent posts a poster wrote: "Because dogs and cats respond to pain stimuli does not make them thinking beings." There is this idea that there is a Phenomenal consciousness "P" and an Awareness consciousness "A" with the idea that animals only have a P consciousness so are acting only on environmental stimuli so the Robin building the nest is only out of environment and instinctual decision. While humans have both a P and A consciousness. So as a human architect if I design a nest I'm not doing so out of instinct and environment but about an awareness and ability to make other choices. The problem with that is the way you can deduce I have an "A" consciousness is that I can communicate why I am doing something through language or drawings. A few weeks ago I watched some Robins build a nest under my eaves. They couldn't tell me what design choices they were making so it's easy to just chalk it up to instinct. An alien watching me designing a house without understanding why I am making design choices could just as easily conclude that is instinct. For that matter the decisions both I and the Robin are largely constrained by environmental circumstances and also on previous learned behavior. To the extent that either of us are relying more on A consciousness isn't clear. Except that many animals have shown self awareness through the mirror test. They've also been shown to have a sense of personal identity and primates that have been taught human communication can identify themselves abstractly in language. In that sense they are as self-conscious. Going back to the ancient greeks language has been associated with thought so if we consider consciousness as being related to thought then yes language is very important consciousness. Sapir Whorf and several other theories state that language is intrinsic to thought. The practical issue though is how do you determine something is conscious without being able to communicate with it? Descartes couldn't talk to a dog so to him he couldn't ask the dog what was on its mind to determine if it was thinking. I would call this a species bias and again it was brought up in this thread by citing human DNA. Your response though doesn't negate that animals can display as much cognitive ability as many humans. We don't deny consciousness though to brain injured human as we seem to an elephant that can show self-awareness, problem solving ability and even abstract thinking. This is somethiing you frequently do. You cite someone and then when challenged on the content of the citation you fall back on claiming that the challenger misunderstood or is creating a "straw man" rather than actually explain why you feel that way. You appeal to an authority as though the authority itself explains the argument. Personally I find Dennett very compelling but he's not without critics and is also controversial. Dennett himself talks about consciousness a "Cartesian Theater" and has dealt with the Other Mind Problem. Current philosophers including Dennett are particularly challenged in regard to AI as current AI could be considered literal Philosophical Zombies. Beings that give the perceptual appearance of consciousness but don't have consciousness. This comes to the point that I brought up. How do we determine what is consciousness other than what we can percieve? We percieve that we are communicating with another conciousness yet as we know now with things like Chat GPT that could be mimicked in a very sophisticated simulacra. In the case of Dennett he believes that consciousness is an algorithmic process arising out of complexity from an evolutionary system. Based on human perception though algorithms have and do fool humans all the time. So perceptually then there shouldn't be a difference between a human, computer or animal consciousness if we can percieve similar behaviors in all.
Have your cockapoo do your taxes for you, then decide if it has the same cognitive ability as a human. It is preposterous. You know how I know humans are uniquely intelligent? How many aircraft carriers have been built by dolphins, elephants, chimpanzees, or gorillas?
there's a lot here and I'm pressed for time, but a couple of responses years ago I read a book called Illumination in the Flatwoods about a guy who discovered a nest of turkey hatchlings after the hen had been killed. He raises them and wrote a book about it. Contrary to his preconception that turkeys "learn" from imprinting on their mother, the turkeys imprinted on him; and along the way, virtually every standard turkey behavior emerged "naturally" via instinct--no learning involved (obviously as a human he couldn't teach them anything). So as usual the nature versus nurture issue is really important to acknowledge and understand in these kinds of conversations not sure about this. even the claim that great apes "recognize" themselves in the mirror are questionable. Part of what Dennett explores in the Kinds of Minds book that's not my understanding . I'd caution against relying on Dennett too heavily--I cited the one specific book for one specific reason. Otherwise Dennett is all over the place and easily misunderstood in large part because he himself is confusing. I think it was Ned Block who complained about Dennett's Consciousness Explained that it should have been called "consciousness ignored" or "consciousness explained away." Supposedly Dennett denies that consciousness is real, but that would be like Trevor Pinch claiming that he's a scientific relativist while all the while happily jumping on airplanes to go to conferences and driving over bridges in his car: presumably Pinch "knows" or assumes that the science and engineering that goes into developing things like planes, bridges, and cars is sound and that the professionals have done their science/engineering jobs correctly. If Dennett denies consciousness he in effect denies himself a subject to study--as well as place himself in the rather untenable position of denying the evolutionary tool that he is using to produce his denial.
