Slightly off-topic, but here's what Wikipedia says (in part): """ Consciousness — The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is im

Slightly off-topic, but here's what Wikipedia says (in part): """ Consciousness — The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of equating consciousness with self-consciousness—to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.[19] Philosophers and non-philosophers differ in their intuitions about what consciousness is.[20] While most people have a strong intuition for the existence of what they refer to as consciousness,[21] skeptics argue that this intuition is false, either because the concept of consciousness is intrinsically incoherent, or because our intuitions about it are based in illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. [...] More generally, many philosophers and scientists have been unhappy about the difficulty of producing a definition that does not involve circularity or fuzziness.[19] """ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness Suppose that consciousness didn't actually exist, but within this theory you grant that people really do have perceptions and experiences. Is that really so bad? What does it miss?