The core issue with consciousness is first and foremost subjective experience. These are very private things and exists outside material world, i.e. the term “evidence” does not apply as evidences are based on appearances and appearances are content of senses and the entire existence for any experiencer first and foremost exists in his mind.

It's interesting how many people use the word consciousness for the ability to think thoughts or imagine stuff.

In eastern philosophy, consciousness is all that which is not material nature, that is unchanging, exactly the same in every living being and is separate from mind, intelligence and senses which are considered a part of material nature.

Damn you're worldy af. So interesting that you think that's interesting. Is it difficult to be you what with all your worldly ideas? We're way down here using accepted terminology generally agreed upon by 99% of the public but you're on a whole different level.

Consciousness is probably the most vague term in the west. At least in eastern philosophy they made an attempt at nailing it down.

Just because a lot of people use a word a lot, doesn't mean the word is well defined.

I believe that unchanged thing is awareness which in Yoga Sutra is called “pure consciousness” which is both the observer and the background of any changing senses. The pure awareness is the source of the feeling of “I AM” and the sutra began by saying this I AM likes to identify whatever it creates as itself.

Experiences are outside material world. There is nothing you can call “pain”, but only evidence of it, be it physiological or physical or metabolical or neurological.

Yet first and foremost, the entire world is based on senses isn’t it? The only thing any experiencer can prove without any “evidence” is that he is. The existence of experience is self lroving. Beyond that how can anyone prove that there is actually a world beyond mind? The world is a model in one’s consciousness. It is constructed with consciousness and is therefore full of consciousness.

How can anyone assume things beings or animals without consciousness exists?

Objectivity?

I love Sāṁkhya philosophy, how it tries to objectively and logically come to the conclusion of the presence of prakṛti (nature, observation) and puruṣa (observer).

And you're quite right. Patanjali in the Yoga Sūtras says that the seer abides in its own nature, that is what pure consciousness is. The consciousness being conscious of its own consciousness. The only way to know that is to have citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ or the absolute stilling of the mind by shutting down all senses.

It's definitely very difficult to wrap my head around it, but it's still fascinating that if one follows the Yoga method properly, there might be a possibility of having that pure-consciousness experience.

Hi thank you for your reply. In his conversations I AM THAT Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj teaches to focus on the sense of I AM , as I AM is the true self and pure awareness is the transistor of every bit of consciousness and therefore it is in every moment of conscious life… yet it is true the sense of stillness is a godlike presence and the mind likes to be distracted by the content of senses and not focused on the knower. To have that absolute stillness with us all the time is Guru’s grace. But I AM THAT is also on YouTube, I really like the audio book.

At least read some book before mixing two different terms. There is difference between 'consciousness' and 'chit'.

'cit' is the term used for consciousness in eastern philosophy. There is no other word.

cit is definitely consciousness, citta is not, it's a part of prakṛti.

What you're probably referring to is citta. There's a difference between citta and pure consciousness.

For most people it is a very important part of ethics. Most people would consider it unethical to boil alive a being with a sense of self and the ability to feel pain, but are perfectly happy to do that to things that don’t have those characteristics. So it’s a very interesting question for most people whether a lobster is conscious.

I’m not sure I would ever want to interact with you if you don’t think that consciousness should have anything to do with how you treat other creatures; at best you might be indifferent to cruelty towards pets and at worst you might be a psychopath.

"Most people" is carrying a lot of weight there and really just characterizes some of the people who participate in a very specific culture that's quite new and anything but universal.

Most people around the world haven't really internalized the pointedly modern idea of "conciousness" in the first place and some people around the world and even in distintcly modern cultures don't find it a very fruitful way of making sense of their own experience, understanding it comceptually (as you might define a foreign word) but not engaging with it experientially (as you might in speaking a word). It's just a belief, a recently invented one, and one that only bears fruit alongside a constellation of other associated beliefs.

When it comes to actually navigating the world, most people don't orient themselves through such an abstract, intellectual lens let alone that specific one. They raise, eat, and sacrifice animals; they apply violence to other humans; etc etc -- or actively refrain from these things -- without thinking in terms of consciousness at all and often without thinking in terms of any comparably intellectualized rubric.

The way we treat animals and humans and fish and birds and forests and mountains and rivers is just an expression of culture. Cultures change over time and trade practices and beliefs with each other along the way, but there are nearly as many cultures as there are families in the world and to treat everyone like they do and should be part of your own, and that their failure to do so makes them morally detestable (rather than culturally alien), is extremely narrow minded and exclusionary.

In a pluralist, diverse society, like many of us live in, that kind of thinking often engenders strife, division, and eventually violence -- which I'm going to guess is something you don't want to add to the world.

I think you are overthinking things. Of course most of the human beings on planet earth do not perform some kind of philosophical analysis.

However most people actually have an intuition of what it is like to be human and apply it unconsciously to everything that they encounter. I posit that a significant part of that is “acts like a human acts in such-and-such situation” and, inferred from that, “experiences things like a human”.

When I look at my fellow human beings (hell, when I look in the mirror), I have no objective knowledge that they are conscious. If I were to encounter someone badly injured it might not even be clear to me that they were human, much less conscious- so I use observations of behaviors and reactions to put $NEW_THING into the right ontological bucket.

My bucket for “mosquitos and other pests” is absolutely inappropriate for humans; but it is interesting to me to know whether things belong in some bucket that deserves special treatment.

The last few years has seen a lot of research (some of it obviously animal rights activist driven) into consciousness of arthropods and mollusks. I read a couple of the papers to understand what was being measured and how, and now I’ve moved lobsters into the “should be killed humanely before cooking”, where I would put cows and chickens etc.

I think most people, if they were given this kind of information, and if they were economically able to act on it, would make similar choices.

> My bucket for “mosquitos and other pests” is absolutely inappropriate for humans; but it is interesting to me to know whether things belong in some bucket that deserves special treatment.

Mosquitos are ethical creatures who only bite because they must. "Blood is essential for mosquito reproduction and survival. Female mosquitoes take blood meals to get the protein and iron needed to produce eggs that will properly hatch." [0]

"Mosquitoes enjoy feeding on plant nectar like juices from flowers and fruits, plant sap, honeydew and other fluids from plants. This sugary mosquito food gives them the energy they need to fly, reproduce and sustain themselves." [0]

https://www.orkin.com/pests/mosquitoes/what-do-mosquitoes-ea...

> For most people it is a very important part of ethics. Most people would consider it unethical to boil alive a being with a sense of self and the ability to feel pain

I disagree. I think that many people who attribute consciousness to animals do so insincerely in order to promote their political views. I say this because there's a huge overlap between vegans and pro-choice people. You can't say animals should be protected from people eating them, but it's perfectly fine to end human life.

(Not trying to derail the conversation with abortion. I actually agree with it, I just take the Bill Maher position: abortion is murder, but I'm mostly okay with that.)

So there's a lot I could say about fetal development, but I won't even bother, because this argument fails at a much simpler level:

Torture and death are very different things.

>Even admitting animal consciousness still leaves you a very long way away from anything like a framework of human rights.

In the UK we mostly admit to animal consciousness and have a framework something like human rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_the_United_K...