system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it true that a thing either has consciousness (subjective experience) or it doesn't? If yes, does it follow that consciousness appeared at a single moment in the evolutionary sequence?

This is a "test my theory" post. Is it considered true that for any particular thing (e.g. a human or a stone) either it is *like* something to be that thing or not? I.e. anything either is a subjective experiencer/observer/conscious or no? If yes, then there had to be a single moment in our evolutionary past, probably a major mutation (explainable by the anthropic principle), when two "soulless machines" gave birth to a subjective observer. Is this a common thought? If no, where did I make a mistake?

So, the argument goes like this.

1) An organism is either a subjective observer or no, tertium non datur.

2) Humans are subjective observers, and at least our very ancient ancestors like say proto-cells aren't.

3) Therefore, in the evolutionary sequence from non-observers (say proto-cells) to observers (us) there had to be a specific moment when non-observer parents gave birth to a child that is an observer - i.e. a major brain wiring mutation, similar but more profound to how there was milk-digestion mutation when the first ever lactose-tolerant person was born, or anything like that.

4) Pointing out when exactly this happened requires extra considerations. But assuming this is done, it follows that

a) there can be two very similar organisms, yet one of them is an observer and another isn't;

b) namely every organism down from this division line is a thing, and every one up is an observer.

Did I mess something up?
gpt
I deny the first premise in that we can't confidently exclude the middle.

Consciousness could be like a heap of sand, with each new capability or opportunity for capacity building upon the rest (ala grains of sand) with no clear division between what does or doesn't count as being subjective and/or being an observer.  This is *not* the panpsychist claim that every grain of sand is conscious, but rather a claim that consciousness analogous to the pile itself; maybe the fundamental parts of the universe are definitely unconscious and certain patterns are definitely conscious, and there is no clear demarcation between them.

For a crude example, is a video camera conscious?  Most people would say no.  But it surely does something *like* observing.  And there must be *something* like what it is to be a video camera, because there *are* video cameras; therefore, a video camera has something *like* subjectivity.  On the one hand, it seems a quite stretch to say it is a subjective observer; but on the other hand, it isn't something we can rule out either.  Maybe that's not because we haven't defined "subjective" and "observer" well enough, but merely because there is no clear, ontological division in the first place.

Consciousness could be an inherently fuzzy quality of being.