I specifically, believe every normal human is conscious. I have no idea whether animals are conscious, but I'll err on the side of caution and assume they're conscious for the sake of making ethical decisions. I doubt plants are conscious. All these beliefs I've just listed are basically religious, in the sense that I have no testable basis for them. "But what makes you special! If you're conscious, how could anyone not be conscious!" Well, I don't know? Maybe consciousness arises from circumcision, or from baptism, or from chicken pox, or from a certain benign parasite in my gut? Pretty ridiculous sounding, I agree, but no less ridiculous than "consciousness emerges from sufficiently many interacting neurons".
Studying consciousness by reading EEGs is like trying to figure out how computers work by dissecting them. Maybe you can learn some things about computers that way, like, "they're full of weird chip-like board thingies and wires". That's not meant to belittle neuroscience, of course. Studying something empirically is better than studying nothing empirically.
Studying consciousness by reading EEGs is like trying to figure out how computers work by dissecting them. Maybe you can learn some things about computers that way, like, "they're full of weird chip-like board thingies and wires". That's not meant to belittle neuroscience, of course. Studying something empirically is better than studying nothing empirically.