besides humans, are there any animals which have developed this state of understanding?
Most people have a strong intuition that some animals, such as cats and dogs.
Consciousness
Most people have a strong intuition that some animals, such as cats and dogs, are conscious, while others, such as insects, are not; but the sources of this intuition are not obvious, and are often based on personal interactions with pets and other animals they have observed.
the type of consciousness we experience when we are conscious of external sensations UNANSWERABLE what is the definition of consciousness? The Cambridge Dictionary defines consciousness as ""the state of understanding and realizing something." what are the different types of it? Ned Block proposed a distinction between two types of consciousness that he called "phenomenal" (P-consciousness) and "access" (A-consciousness).
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Consciousness [SEP] Animal consciousness
Most people have a strong intuition that some animals, such as cats and dogs, are conscious, while others, such as insects, are not; but the sources of this intuition are not obvious, and are often based on personal interactions with pets and other animals they have observed. Philosophers who consider subjective experience the essence of consciousness also generally believe, as a correlate, that the existence and nature of animal consciousness can never rigorously be known. Thomas Nagel spelled out this point of view in an influential essay titled "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?". He said that an organism is conscious "if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like "for" the organism"; and he argued that no matter how much we know about an animal's brain and behavior, we can never really put ourselves into the mind of the animal and experience its world in the way it does itself.