🚀 go-pugleaf

As so often occurs, you folks are falling into the philosophical 
trap of trying to produces a precise definition of consciousness,
that passes the standard philosophical tests of 'reasonableness'
(namely, 'does it sound reasonable to me?'):

to wit: considerations of giant look up tables, exact physical 
replicas of people, Turing tests, talk of 'redness', etc, etc.

Since none of these considerations are _ever_ going to be implemented
and tested, and a satisfactory precise definition itself seems quite 
elusive and non-canonical, I suggest this is not a fruitful line
of inquiry.

Allow me to suggest:

A precise definition of consciousness, or the ability to 
easily distinguish  the non-conscious from the conscious, is
_not_ the interesting question about consciousness. The interesting
questions:

(1) Why and how did consciousness evolve
(2) what are the stages of development and possible types
    of consciousness within an individual organism.
(3) How can we create consciouss entities.


To investigate these really interesting questions, one only needs
the practical---but impresise---idea that consciousness is a sense of self;
an ability of an entity to distinguish itself from its surroundings. 
Or, perhaps a very precise but limited aspect of consciousness for
investigations in (2) (Like 'when do children start using 'I' and 'me' 
correctly?)

Perhaps (probably) in the course of investigating (1)---(3) we will come to 
a clearer understanding of consciousness. Perhaps not. But in either
case, (1)---(3) are scientifically interesting and important questions
_related_ to consciousness.

The search for a 'definition' of consciousness that passes all philosophical
tests is not. (And probably doesn't exist, or it would have been found
after ~1000 years of searching.)

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)