Question In John Searle's book "Mind, Language, and Society," p.63, he writes the following regarding the evolutionary value of consciousness:
"Much of what we do that is essential to the survival of our species requires consciousness: you cannot eat, copulate, raise your young, hunt for food, raise crops, speak a language, organize social groups, or heal the sick if you are in a coma. . . . In the real world, the way that humans and higher animals typically cope is by way of conscious activites."
In that last sentence he says "higher animals", yet eating and hunting for food are activites that lower animals engage in, too. So are cockroaches conscious? How about earthworms? How far down the the scale of animal life do you suppose consciousness exists?
Answer Consciousness is present along the entire scale of living creatures. Just think about the criteria Searle himself uses, e.g., eating, copulating, raising young, .... language, etc...
These are activities that are present along the entire spectrum of life from microscopic organisms, which feed, move, and replicate, up through mammals that engage in the higher social functions like communication, organized hunting and gathering.
What they all have in common is a form of perception of their environment. Of course, the level of conscious experience is limited by the corresponding physiological hardware that the organism has. For example, a hydra's nervous system cannot experience emotions as that is restricted to animals with a limbic system.
