like i’m watching blue planet and i’m yelling at the tv!
there’s all these yimmer yammer hand-wavey scientific rigor lines where it’s like ‘we may believe that these animals do on occasion have a base brain-related impulse that allows them to experience feelings somewhat like to those of friendship’ or whatever in the script on top of footage that they then describe as ‘it seems as though these two groups [of fish, different species] are old friends…’ in an almost whimsical manner.
can’t they give them some credit! they have eyes and a face, why is it so insane to think they can’t experience friendship or love or joy just like us? ‘buhhu uhhh its only accurate science if we only observe observable behavior’ why?? you’re neglecting a whole part of any living thing’s experience! inner life can’t be hand waved away! even for a mollusk!
and people loved doing this on reddit as well – oh actually your cat doesn’t understand love or joy or humor, it is simply reacting to the physical warmth of your lap, they don’t actually care for you. don’t worry, depth and emotion does not exist!
You can’t prove it for people either.
You’re right we can’t.
What we can do though is make educated guesses about the biological structure required to support the thing we call consciousness I.e. a brain.
A mollusc does not have a brain so it’s reasonable to conclude it is not conscious in the same way as humans.
Now if you’d like to argue that the biological structures contained in a mollusc still are capable of containing a complex consciousness I’d be interested to understand that hypothesis and your evidence.