What is the difference between Animal consciousness and Human consciousness?
Humans have long range consciousness, meaning they can retain preceptions, cogitate on them, abstract from them, then recombine the abstractions into new concepts. This allows for sapience. Man’s latin name is Homo sapiens sapiens (Homo sapiens is long dead. We are his only living cousin in the Homo genus.) The double use of the word means we have consciousness of our consciousness, and can build upon our knowledge, increasing the amount of sapience we contain in our minds. Anthropologisit Loren Eiseley said the consciousness of animals left them in the “eternal present,” meaning because they cannot retain perceptions, then abstract, then recombine what they know, they are forever stuck in the same moment of time as their ancient ancestors. Ayn Rand called it “range-of-the-moment” consciousness, meaning that whatever ability they have to be aware of what is going on about them, it lasts only for the length of that moment, and when that moment is over, they are back in Eiseley’s “eterna
