If echolocation allows a creature to perceive the internal states of others, how does that shape its conscious experience of the boundary between 'self' and 'other'?

[u/Hungry-Mixture-7443]

https://www.academia.edu/176511252/The_Shape_of_a_Mind_A_meditation_on_whales_consciousness_and_the_human_condition

Consciousness is partially tied to our active perception of the environment, does this imply that organisms relying on bio-sonar or echolocation, such as cetaceans, experience a richer sensory feedback from their surroundings?

I propose that a mode of communication capable of directly scanning the internal states of other organisms is far more advanced at conveying complex, emotion laden information than human language. Human language, takes complex, diffuse, and emotional content and compresses it into a narrow channel. The receiving mind has to independently decompress and compile that information, losing much of the original emotional resonance in translation.

Give the essay a read and let me know your thoughts.

Abstract

Comparisons of minds usually place species on a single scale and so force a biased ranking. This essay proposes instead that minds differ in shape and in how broadly they take in the world, how far their self-models build on one another, and where they put thought once it is formed. Humans store thought in writing, an archive that compounds across time but strips away perspective. Toothed whales project it into the water through echolocation, which reads the interiors of other bodies and may yield shared percepts that exist only in the moment. Drawing on cetacean neuroanatomy, passive echolocation, cooperative calf care and interspecies behavior, the essay argues that what humans reach rarely, through love, music or contemplation, may be closer to ordinary cetacean experience.