The Differences Between Human and Animal Consciousness

Psychologists have been studying number systems across cultures and it turns out that a lot of languages only go up to four./nAnd then five plus is just a lot./nBy that standard, animals are geniuses, right?/nIt's always interesting because that is how most animal numerical systems would be. They're pretty good around two, three, four. And after that, it's just a lot versus not a lot, less or more./nThat's weird. But that seems to be, I guess, a universal in brains./nThat's such an unusual idea./nWhen I think about consciousness, you talk about metacognition and selfawareness. I also think about having goals as a key element of consciousness, right?/nI have a target for action that I want to achieve, and I can judge success or failure by that./nAnd that's really different from a basic drive that you see in animals, right? Like, I wouldn't say that an animal going to eat because it's hungry has a goal, right? It just has a drive and it wants to reduce the pain of, you know, feeling hungry./nBut I do feel like there's a case to be made that particularly primates have goals. They're excited when they achieve them. They're disappointed when they fall short of them.