> we can't really define the difference between humans and other species? Or can we? Am I missing something? The difference is genetics, manifested via neocor

> we can't really define the difference between humans and other species? Or can we? Am I missing something? The difference is genetics, manifested via neocortex and thumbs. The question isn't purely philosophical though, as there are entire fields devoted to the topic (cognitive sciences, areas of neuroscience, areas of ai research) Personally, I subscribe to something along the lines of attention schema theory and panpsychism, and the last time I mentioned this on HN, lots of people agreed with this notion: the state of physical imbalance is, in mathematical terms, both sufficient and necessary for consciousness to evolve. (So if there is an imbalance in the realm of electromagnetic forces on some atom, the atoms 'urge' to adapt is what we describe as consciousness, albeit we usually experience the same phenomenon from a vastly more complex and abstract viewpoint (through the attention-mechanisms of our brain))