Comment by empath75

I think there is a point there, in that people have refused to attribute consciousness experience to _actual human beings_ at various times when it suited their ends.

I think it's more that consciousness can be _ignored_ in subjects that you don't care about, rather than that you consciousness can be realistically attributed to subjects that you do care about, but even then people attribute consciousness to "nature" or even the universe as a whole, or if you want to stretch the argument, quite a lot of religious belief is exactly attributing consciousness to abstract entities.