Reply #269: Not in my opinion.

[The Doctor.]

I believe 'observation' has as much a basis in 'effect' as it does in 'conscious interpretation'.

I believe that even rocks have a form of 'consciousness'... even if that consciousness is comprised simply and entirely of the mere alterations in its existence.

While a rock is not 'aware' of its slow corrosion over millenia, its corrosion is an 'observation' of the effects of the elements in and of itself.

I simply believe that consciousness goes both in a more sentient direction (than as exists in humans), and a less sentient direction. Both terminals being at the nth end of the spectrum.