> It's fine to say that science does not support the claim that animals have consciousness, as long as you also agree that science does not support the claim th

> It's fine to say that science does not support the claim that animals have consciousness, as long as you also agree that science does not support the claim that humans have consciousness. It doesn't. Can you name the scientific theory that predicts the existence of consciousness? We know it exists from direct experience, nothing else. > I don't understand what you are saying about emrgentism being non scientific. Emergentism is the reason the reason that the Universe today has so many properties that it didn't have when it was a miasma of isolated hydrogren or whatever around the time of the Big Bang. In this context the philosophical term "emergentism" is commonly used to refer to the theory of mind, not the general concept of emergence. But no, emergence is not the cause for anything. Emergence is a human mental model, developed to deal with complexity, for example: "life emerges from chemistry". A brain the size of Jupiter might be able to maintain a mental model of all the fundamental building blocks of chemistry interacting to create complex biological organisms. We don't have a brain the size of jupiter, so we need shortcuts. The Universe clearly becomes more complex the more time passes, having started from a state of zero complexity. This is a direct consequence of the laws of physics, but there is no explanation for why the laws of physics are a certain way. They are just brute facts. If you keep asking "why" you will eventually bump into a wall.