Eh—I'm as much of a solipsistic skeptic as the next guy, but leaving aside questions about the fundamental knowability of truth (or brain-in-a-vat-isms) a precondition of consciousness is the possession of a mind. There is no evidence or causal factors to suggests that rocks have a mind. Your argument taken to its logical extents allows us to say anything is anything; so we're not really saying anything, because any word is any word and the whole process of communicating is gutted and even this rebuttal is pointless.
Sorry I drifted off into solipsism in the last few sentences. Didn't mean to. Just meant to point out that even rocks can be said to have any number of the "components" required for consciousness. If consciousness is expected to emerge from things that look like neurons and neural networks, then we can consider the molecules of the rock to be its neurons, and the electrons (or sound/heat/energy) travelling between molecules of the rock to be neuronal pathways, and then we should expect it to be possible for consciousness to emerge from that structure, atleast theoretically.
What is a rock though? Is it not just a construct? A piece of dead skin on the surface of a living rock? Is it not like saying a synapse is not conscious because it doesn't have a brain?
The issue is not with the op's argument, it is with the nature of (our) reality. We are not saying anything because we are talking semantics. This is about definitions, not reality. The differences between a rock and a human mind are semantic constructs built on sensory constructs. Semantics are all circular.. and we lack the philosophical construct to understand circular argument.
What is the purpose of this question if a rock is anything but? I'm not arguing you're wrong I'm arguing that if there is a debate here it's circularly inconsistent because it presupposes that words have meaning by sole virtue of their own ineptitude. I see no proof that truth is knowable by a mind (in our world, anyway) so at some level I agree with you that it's circular on a multitude of levels but this argument goes no where and to argue the other side of it (that a rock is a mind) to me amounts to someone saying something along the lines of "words have no purpose" it's even worse than circular dependancy it's circularly _inconsistent_.
Hence my point that our reality is the issue, rather than the argument. If we are using language which is inept, ie. unable to capture the reality, then how is cementing the meaning of that language supposed to help?
Are we supposed to limit our understanding of reality by limiting the questions we ask of the language with which we articulate it?
Or another way, how can we ask what consciousness is for a person or an animal or a computer, of we cannot answer it of a rock?
It is not at all to suggest that words have no purpose or are meaningless. Words are currently our best definition of consciousness.
