The most funny problem with defining consciousness is the ability of definition to mark people as conscious and everything else as non-conscious. It is bad to k

The most funny problem with defining consciousness is the ability of definition to mark people as conscious and everything else as non-conscious. It is bad to kill human and it is acceptable to kill animal -- why? Because of consciousness of human, isn't it? So if animals are conscious then they should have "human" rights, including access to education and medicine. Moreover, there are groups who would fight any definition which treat new-born humans as non-conscious (because from their point of view the most important property of such a definition is it is the first step to legalizing child killings). But there are theories that point to an idea of consciousness as of something acquired by humans in their individual development. It means that in some special cases child could develop into a non-conscious adult. Does it mean that it is ok to slaughter such an adult and to eat his meat? Does it mean that abortion is a morally neutral thing? At some point psychology was forced to stop using word "soul", because results of a research of a soul led to troubles for different religions, for example, if a soul is a function of a mortal brain, so a soul cannot be immortal, isn't it? Psychology mechanically replaced 'soul' with 'mind' and continued. I believe we came to a point, when psychology would need to find a new term for "consciousness", so psychologist's findings didn't lead to disastrous conclusions in a social plane. From the other hand, biology managed to research life all this time without changing terms, despite of the fact, that biology pinned life to a matter, and therefore there could be no life after death.