>>14007511This, whatever animal with a sufficiently-developed nervous system to have it, is conscious. The livestock whose meat you ate, your cat, etc. It's not that special at fucking all and has been around for hundreds of millions of years.
Now, if OP is really meaning to specify sentience, self-awareness etc that's different - but yet again also not unique to us either. Reaching for some metaphysical/spiritual explanation for biological phenomena is and always will be wanting a lazy shortcut explanation for attempting to rationalize how the world works, that there must be some answer that conveniently does not require them to learn science/math. If it puts their mind at ease whatever, I guess if they will go crazy trying to deal with how boring reality is/how unspecial they/we all are maybe it's better for them to cling to a coping mechanism like a security blanket. It's just, please don't go around trying to share that blanket with everyone. It's embarrassing to witness.
