From Don Taylor, Cheadle, Staffordshire, UK
In his review of Jeff Sebo’s book, Michael Marshall writes that we “can never be 100 per cent sure if another being is conscious”. Perhaps we can if consciousness is a question of degree, a continuum of levels of awareness, not an either/or thing. Think back to your earliest childhood memory – it may be vague and episodic, but you were certainly conscious then, just not as conscious as now. Maybe those early memories give us an inkling of what it is like to be a chimp or an elephant. We can be reasonably sure that they are conscious to some extent (1 February, p 26).
