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A comment on Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition. Parent comment

Re:Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition by TeMPOraL on Thursday February 14, 2019 @03:57AM (#19160571)
> I only assume other human beings have consciousness because they are like me, but I have no way of proving that they are not just sufficiently complicated automatons pretending to be human.

The materialist(?) view that consciousness is entirely contained within the "material things" seems pretty clean and consistent. If you're experiencing consciousness, and I seem to be experiencing consciousness, and our brains - to the best we can tell - are essentially the same "sufficiently complicated automatons", then you can assume I'm experiencing consciousness too.

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Re:Scientists Are Rethinking Animal Cognition by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Thursday February 14, 2019 @09:47AM (#19162210)
The problem with that view is that it assumes consciousness is correlated with mind. It may seem reasonable that, since I have consciousness and a mind, and you have a mind, I can assume you have consciousness, but there is no way to prove this. Does someone with Down Syndrome, who has a less functional mind than you or I, correspondingly have less consciousness? Perhaps, but we have no way of knowing.
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