An Unproven Hierarchy Of Consciousness

Creatures from cockroaches to octopi to dogs to horses to other people all act as if they are independently conscious, having their own awareness and ability to think, act, and react to sensory perceptions.  Since some of them might display a broader range of behaviors or behaviors that appear to have more understanding of humans behind them, some people come to the unproven idea that certain creatures are not conscious even though they act as if they are, while others are.  They might even arrive at a whole arbitrary hierarchy of animals they think have lesser or greater consciousness, as if something is not either conscious or inanimate as opposed to more or less conscious.

However, a totally rational person will not make the assumption that other minds for any creature or being exist just because it seems like they do, and neither will he or she make the assumption that no other minds exist because is it possible that their own mind is the only mind in existence.  Logical possibility and proof will be what they cling to; they will reject logical impossibilities while not believing beyond what can be proven.  Their own consciousness is directly before them, proven by reason and immediate experience.  Its existence is a necessity as long as one experiences anything at all.  The possible consciousnesses of other beings, in contrast, is ultimately uncertain, no matter how much it might seem other minds do or do not exist.

One of the ramifications of this that might never need to be thought of except as a response to a fallacious thinker is the idea that some animals which act as if they are conscious are somehow more likely to be conscious than other animals that also act as if they are sentient.  Especially in light of the lack of absolute certainty that other minds are or are not there in the first place, there is no reason to think that an ant is not conscious and a dog is.  Both creatures outwardly act as if they are inwardly conscious, regardless of how deep their grasp of reason or tendency to self-awareness might be if they do have their own minds.  There is neither evidence suggesting nor proof confirming that one is conscious but not the other.

These random, supposed hierarchies of consciousness are the product of mere fallacies and leaps into unverified--and unverifiable--belief.  A cockroach and a spider might have the same intellectual and introspective nature as humans, but one could never know this by observing its outward behaviors.  A dog might be an inanimate thing with no thought, perception, intention, or emotion.  There is no way to prove anything more about the matter than that things like this are possible and that certain conclusions logically follow from other ideas about other minds that could be true.  When the consciousness of a fellow human might an illusion, animal consciousness could be as well, but the greater relatability of seemingly conscious humans does not mean other creatures are less conscious than us.