3 ms·

Do you mean "consciousness" as being aware of one's own existence and relative position in a larger reality, or as having subjective experiences (qualia, feelin

• Practicality 10y ago
  It's a state of being able to say "I am doing X, I am doing Y. I am thinking Z. (but not necessarily in words of course)" It's also a creation of an executive process that is separate from the analytic processes. The executive process can be aware of the analytic processes (Like we can know about our heart beating, but it's a separate process) Subjective feelings are not necessarily part of that. This article on how consciousness evolved does a good job of explaining how it works (finally), and I think it's something we could emulate. http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-consciousness-evolved/485558/ http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-consc...
• marcoperaza 10y ago
  I'm going to give the opposite answer as u/Practicality here and say that it's the qualia/subjective experience. What's really extraordinary, currently not understood, and certainly a major part of actual human cognition, is subjective experience itself. Coding up a simulation that understands itself as one conceptual entity among many is not that interesting. The trick is having a subjective experience of that understanding. It seems to me that: subjective experience + sufficiently advanced conceptual understanding is what gives rise to, is the definition of, self-awareness. See my other posts in this thread for more thoughts on this.