On: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

[metabagel]

We know what consciousness is. It's our self-awareness.

We don't know where it comes from our how to test it, because each individual can only observe their own consciousness.

[llamaimperative → metabagel]

> We know what consciousness is. It's our self-awareness

Not really. There are plenty of disorders that destroy a person’s self-awareness but appear to leave a fully conscious person there anyway.

[mannykannot → llamaimperative]

I believe you are right to say that consciousness is generally regarded as more than self-awareness, but unless you want to regard self-awareness as specifically not a form of consciousness, then the consciousness of the people with the disorder you refer to are missing something - something that I believe was of great importance in the evolution of the human mind.

[llamaimperative → mannykannot]

Yeah, my understanding is that it's highly undesirable to have no sense of self-awareness.

[JohnAaronNelson → llamaimperative]

Then take off the “self” part.

How about conscious is awareness? The more aware you are, the more conscious you are?

[bckr → JohnAaronNelson]

Is 1000 bees more or less aware than 10 buffalo?

[polishdude20 → metabagel]

All we know is that we have it because its not about what the word means. It's about how we apply the category of "conscious" to things. It's a way of either distancing or bringing ourselves closer to things.

We might as well just ask "Is the universe like us?"