[CuriouslyC]

I don't think consciousness is a distinguishing characteristic. We are all just highly complex chemical chain reactions occurring in the context of a changing environment. Our chain reactions are sufficiently complex that they're capable of communicating information to other chain reactions, and we happen to communicate about our experience as a chain reaction. You can't infer from the absence of communication that other chemical systems don't have experience.

I do agree that self-awareness and intelligence exist along a spectrum, along which we are apparently the farthest point.

[ilugaslifg]

Unless I'm missing something, you've just described "materialism", which is exactly what I am arguing for.

I'm not saying that we are the only "conscious" systems, or that "consciousness" is something set apart from the rest of reality. I'm saying the exact opposite of that.

Your point (at least, as I'm reading it) is exactly what I was getting at with "and other systems you recognize as sufficiently like you", which I did not intend to be chemical-biology-centric.

What I am arguing against is "dualism", and its many hidden forms and names (including the one goatlover is espousing). Which is the idea that "consciousness" is some fundamental property of nature, set apart from (really: privileged above) the rest, that exists on some plane beyond material reality.

Which, I argue, there is no good reason, besides pure unexamined chauvinism, or wishful thinking at best, to believe

This is what you are also saying, no?

[CuriouslyC]

I think it is logical to conclude that we are not "blessed" matter, and there really isn't a good basis for excluding non-biological matter from the property of having an internal experience. I wouldn't call myself a materialist though, because I don't know that mental states are caused by physical states. It is just as possible that the arrow of causality goes the other way - evidence only demonstrates correlation. Additionally, while I'm skeptical of the possibility of matter without consciousness, I'm willing to consider the possibility that consciousness can exist in a state that doesn't correspond to what we currently consider "matter"

If I had to label myself I would say I'm a monist, in that I don't think mind and matter are separable or independent. I lean towards idealism in the sense that I suspect the set of possible states of consciousness is a superset of the set of states of matter that are possible according to the current "laws" of physics. Don't read too much into those labels though, that's only a first order approximation of my view.