Post #2022490
2026-05-03 05:21 UTC
Man, those conversations are eye roll inducing
I like the shift away from "are they conscious" towards "what's a way to define consciousness?"
Because that's the actual important question. And literally nobody can answer it. Any discussion is more philosophy than hard science
The most interesting part is the last paragraph
> Or, thirdly, are there two ways of being competent, the conscious way and the unconscious (or zombie) way? Could it be that some life forms on Earth have evolved competence via the consciousness trick — while life on some alien planet has evolved an equivalent competence via the unconscious, zombie trick? And if we ever meet such competent aliens, will there be any way to tell which trick they are using?
Replies (2)
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@pennomi@lemmy.world 2026-05-03 05:36
It’s very difficult to define, isn’t it? If I were to give it a shot, I’d say that consciousness is akin to proprioception - the ability to know the state of oneself and understand how actions taken will change that state. It has very little to do with intelligence, just the “sense of being”. Or maybe in other words, object persistence (but for yourself) is all it takes in my opinion. Even the simplest of animals could be considered conscious by this definition.
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@Godwins_Law@lemmy.ca 2026-05-03 09:55
Blindsight by Peter Watts is a great sci Fi novel about consciousness