“My central claim is that Consciousness, – even the consciousness of pain, – is essentially a responsible condition; that is to say, consciousness, (unlike the pain of which you’re conscious) is an interpersonal status, not a physical state. Consciousness arises from a relation not between neurons in the brain, but between speakers in the world. To put it another way, consciousness is indistinguishable from conscience. One consequence of this claim is that dumb animals aren’t conscious; that is to say, they aren’t conscious even of the pains their bodies are racked by.
I am approaching the subject of consciousness here by way of the idea of pain precisely in order to counter an argument which runs as follows: Dumb animals obviously react to pain; reaction to pain is a sign of consciousness; therefore dumb animals must be conscious. I say pain is not a form of consciousness: pain is only an event of which you can be conscious if you happen to be a conscious creature. I shall argue that language is a necessary condition of consciousness and that, though they exhibit what the Cambridge Declaration calls “the neural correlates of consciousness”, dumb animals lack its linguistic correlates.”
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