People stretch the word "consciousness" to include things like free-will, human-level intelligence, articulating an understanding of the world, having ideologies, etc.

It's very close to the classical greek word ψυχή, soul, from where we get psyche. And very close to how many christians have understood "soul".

But often scientific inquiry leads us to realize how fictional and self-serving our understandings are. Souls aren't real and consciousness in the brain is just an information sorting process.

Much of life may exhibit that process to some degree. Unsurprising, really - information sorting as complex as ours should have precursors.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Still we don't know how consciousness functions, so how come you figure it's a "sorting process"?

[–] Hegar@fedia.io -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm summarizing my understanding of these panpsychism type theories.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

So, "gut feeling"