For a theory to be good science, it must fit a very large number of observations and not contradict any a single one. Here's my attempt. We must get a tight de

For a theory to be good science, it must fit a very large number of observations and not contradict any a single one. Here's my attempt. We must get a tight definition of consciousness to begin with. Are animals conscious as well (and to what degree)? What about amoeba and plants? If you classify "living" things as conscious, and "dead" things as unconscious, what is your definition of "life"? In their work, various people (notably, Metzinger) have isolated certain characteristics that make up various degrees of consciousness. The "conscious experience" is a product of evolution: clearly, "self-aware decision makers" have better chances of survival than "hard-coded automatons". In recent evolution, the part that has changed most significantly is the neocortex. Scientifically speaking, it's very easy to figure out what is responsible for a high degree of consciousness: removing neocortex consistently leads to a lower degree of consciousness => the neocortex is responsible for a large part. Dissect, stick electrodes, and get unbiased data: then do a best fit. Quantum mechanics is quite misunderstood: if you separate out the observer from what is being observed, it looks like humans are operating the universe (because their "observation" causes "collapse", right?). Highly egotistical and inelegant. If you exclude M-theory (because it's not able to make verifiable real-world predictions), a lot of people subscribe to quantum decoherence as an alternative to the classical Copenhagen interpretation. On conscious computer programs. Essentially, I think of consciousness as a higher degree of interaction with its surroundings (it "learns" from its surroundings and adapts more quickly than it would normally take for natural selection to pick a genetic mutation). Aren't we just describing computer programs that interact with humans via a high-level language?