10 Mar 2025
As I go through the world and encounter things, some of those things are inanimate objects. Some are some form of life, mostly plants and animals (the ones I directly perceive anyway). Some are conscious beings. But what is consciousness?
My current hypothesis, which I am becoming more and more convinced of, is that consciousness is simply a model of the self.
That is, when you interact with something in the world, you can develop a model of that thing. But you don't necessarily have to have a strong model of yourself as a thing in the world.
Our cat certainly can interact with the world, but I'm not sure how much of a model of self he has. The complexity of a cat brain is significantly less than the complexity of a human brain.
He certainly has some awareness of himself, or he wouldn't be able to do anything in the world. But I don't know whether his self awareness rises to a level that I would call consciousness.
Perhaps consciousness is a continuum. And perhaps somewhere near the high end (if there's an end) of consciousness is something people call "agency" - which honestly I have never quite fully understood.
What is agency? Hmmm, different question which I suppose I will want to grapple with at some point.