[FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be "mystery...deeper".T

[Nicholas Thompson]

While I find all the  ancillary considerations raised on the original
thread extremely interesting,  I would like to reopen the discussion of
Conscious as a Mystery and ask that those that join it stay close to the
question of what consciousness is and how we know it when we see it.  Baby
Steps.

Where were we?   I think I was asking Jochen, and perhaps Peitr and anybody
else who thought that animals were not conscious (i.e., not aware of their
own awareness)  what basis they had in experience for thinking that..  One
offering for such an experience is the absence of language in animals.
Because my cat cannot  describe his experience in words, he cannot be
conscious.  This requires the following syllogism:

Nothing that does not employ a language (or two?) is conscious.
Animals (with ;the possible exception of signing apes) do not employ
languages.
Ergo, Animals are not conscious.

But I was trying to find out the basis for the first premise.  How do we
know that there are no non-linguistic beings that are not conscious.  I
hope we could rule out the answer,"because they are non-linguistic",  both
in its strictly  tautological or merely circular form.

There is a closely related syllogism which we also need to explore:

All language using beings are conscious.
George Peter Tremblay IV is a language-using being.
George Peter Tremblay IV is conscious.

Both are valid syllogisms.  But where do the premises come from.

Nick
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