Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by MaxBarraclough 1944 days ago
> I don't know what it means to define consciousness without self awareness

Any entity capable of suffering presumably counts as being conscious. (I'm not claiming the converse here, though.) I don't see an obvious reason why every entity capable of suffering must necessarily be capable of self awareness.

With the right blend of psychotropics, I suspect it would be possible to dissolve a person's sense of self while still causing them to suffer. They would still count as being conscious.

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24910009