The Nervous Systems Of Animals

Consciousness is so often ignored as a metaphysical existent despite its basic existence being one of the only self-evident things there is.  When it is not overlooked, it is more likely to be mistaken for an extension of the material brain and broader nervous system than recognized as an immaterial thing that might create matter or that is created by matter, with neither possibility being verifiable, unlike the fact that consciousness is intangible and logically distinct from the body.  Animals that share nervous systems comparable or somewhat analogous with those of humans are abundant (not that visual sensory perceptions that observe animals prove anything beyond that the sensory perceptions are there), and yet there are reported organisms with nervous systems quite different from our own.  Even apart from the logical necessities and possibilities that render empirical observation of animals unnecessary to realize some of these ramifications, there are plenty of animals that serve as counterexamples against prevailing myths about consciousness and neuroscience, including the myth that a particular kind of nervous system is intrinsically necessary for creatures to act as if they have minds--or to have a mind, though no minds besides one's own can be proven to exist.

Not even all animals have nervous systems resembling the human brain, however, and some of them have no brain at all.  Octopi have nine brains, each of their eight arms equipped with enough neurons to act as a brain alongside the central brain located in the head structure.  Around two thirds of the total number of neurons are found not in the head's brain, but in the arms of the octopus.  Jellyfish have neurons distributed all over their bodies without a central brain these nerve cells report to.  Other underwater creatures, like starfishes, likewise have no brain, sharing only looser neurological similarities to humans and land-based animals.  Sea sponges are supposed to have no neurons at all!  Even on the level of empirical observation, which is very obviously not the core of metaphysics or epistemology (logic, consciousness, and more abstract things such as these are), animals do not at all serve as evidence for the idea that all mind-body composites on Earth would have wholly comparable nervous systems or neurons to begin with.  These aforementioned creatures still seem to be conscious, not that their actual consciousness can be proven, and yet on the physical level, their nervous systems are rather alien to ours.

If octopi and jellyfish have their own actual consciousnesses--which is something that, for other humans, for animals, or for AI, could never be determined from perceptions of bodily movements or speech or anything externally observable--then they are metaphysically unique among most terrestrial, biological creatures, having an immaterial consciousness as many other beings appear to and yet not having conventional nervous systems correlate to their minds.  It is primarily creatures that live in oceans which have these kinds of alternate neurological systems, systems that are very foreign to that of humans, yet their distinctiveness can remind people of a logical truth that could already be realized apart from any examples: there is nothing logically necessary about having a nervous system composed of a brain, spinal cord, and billions of corresponding nerve cells in order to be a conscious being.  Then there is of course the easily demonstrable truth that consciousness is not a physical thing no matter its exact metaphysical origin, as in whether or not matter creates or sustains its existence.

Beyond this, there is nothing logically necessary about having a nervous system at all in order to have nonphysical consciousness, not that this means that neurological structures/events and the existence of human consciousness and its contents do not correspond to each other.  It only means that there is no contradiction and thus no impossibility in consciousness existing independent of a nervous system like ours, a nervous system whatsoever, or a body as a whole.  Empirically, perhaps more species will even be discovered one day in the depths of Earth's oceans or from a planet other than our own, having bodily/neurological phenomena that does not match their seeming mental states in the same way that ours would; there is nothing impossible about this because only contradictions like logical axioms not being true or something existing and not existing at the same time are inherently impossible (in a secondary sense, something might be impossible in light of contingent factors like the laws of physics, but the fact remains that these laws of physics and any other factor besides logical necessity could have been different than it is).

Other than the uncaused cause, there is no demonstrable example of such a being existing as a mind without a body, though examples of something are not necessary to know it is true or possible wherever it is only a matter of logical necessity or possibility--what all things ultimately hinge upon in the first place.  As far as terrestrial creatures go, it is just already the case that the nervous systems found in various organisms conflict with false ideas about consciousness, such as the the idea that it is only logically possible for seeming consciousness to exist in correspondence with a specific kind of nervous system.  Scientific observation is utterly irrelevant when it comes to actually proving if animal consciousness exists at all, as well as if other humans even have minds, but either way, it is not logically necessary for consciousness to be metaphysically integrated with humanoid nervous systems, even if they were tied in certain creatures to neurological structures (even then, in a contingent sense, for there is no contradiction in consciousness not having a body at all).  It is also true that animals like octopi, if they have their own consciousnesses, could have minds that are like ours far more than their differing bodily structures and functions imply.  One just could not know.