Is actually one of the better definitions I've seen of "consciousness". Consciousness is literally the thing that leaves in deep sleep, occasionally visits during REM sleep, and comes back for the day when you wake up.
Is consciousness emrgent or fundamental? - source: Max Pixel
In our dreams our consciousness isn't constantly bombarded with sensory input from the real world, so the models it builds during dream-sleep, or Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM), aren't constrained by it's constant fact-checking state when we're awake. Dreamworlds are fantastical worlds, or they can be. But when we're awake, when we're conscious of reality as we perceive it, we build a model of the real world in order to survive in that real world.
Science has a hard time when it comes to consciousness. It's kind of paradoxical, because science tries to explain reality, tries to make sense of the real world, the world we consciously perceive with our senses. Science tries to find out what's true, with truth being "that which conforms to reality". The paradox is that consciousness is the one thing we all know for sure is real. Even if we are all brains in a vat, connected to billions of electrodes and we're all living in a simulation a la Matrix, it still feels like we're real, like the world is real; this is the brilliance of the film, you cannot prove we are not living a simulation.
I can't even be sure if you're conscious, dear reader, even as you're reading this. You say you are, but there's no way of knowing for sure; consciousness isn't measurable. WE humans just assume that the rest of the world population is conscious, and we take everyone's word for it. Although... there might be some politicians who's consciousness is debatable... The problem for science is that it is our conscious perceptions that are the basis of each measurement we make.
An A.I. could do that. A computer is perfectly able to observe, and make measurements, and even make decisions based on those; it could develop "behavior" if you give it a long term memory. If its brain were complex enough, it would be able to perform tasks as complex as we do, or even more complex maybe. But we would never be able to know for sure if it feels like something to be that A.I., if it would have a subjective experience of being in the universe. It could mimic and improve on our behavior to the point that they would be indistinguishable from the real deal, but we would never know if it were conscious.
It's a paradox that the only thing in the universe any one of us can be certain of, cannot be explained in scientific terms. For our brain the same holds true as for the A.I.; we can explain everything about our behavior, memory, free will even, by just researching the brain, the physical interaction through chemical reactions and electrical pulses between 100 billion interconnected synapses and neurons. We can measure the brain through various scanning techniques and see what happens when we're asked or forced into a particular conscious state. But all of that wouldn't even come close to explaining why or how I have a real sense of being me in the world. Why it feels like being me as opposed to anyone else, why I have this subjective experience of being myself.
They don't call it "The Hard Problem of Consciousness" for nothing:
The hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers 1995) is the problem of explaining the relationship between physical phenomena, such as brain processes, and experience (i.e., phenomenal consciousness, or mental states/events with phenomenal qualities or qualia).
source: Scholarpedia
What doe it feel like to be an octopus? Or are they self aware and are they individuals, so the question should be "what does it feel like to be that particular octopus?" Or what does it feel like to be a worm? I believe that is consciousness; to have a first person outlook on the universe and to feel present in that universe. As long as it feels like something to be something, that something has consciousness.
It's not a problem that will be solved in my lifetime, at least I don't think it will be. But that makes it one of the best things to reflect on :-) There's for example the question in Quantum Mechanics of what an "observer" actually is, what qualifies as an observer; does the observer have to be conscious to cause the wave function to collapse? Or does the measurement merely have to be registered by an automated system consisting of a camera attached to a computer? There's debate about that, but I lean toward the need for consciousness. A.I. can do the measurement, but will that mean anything to it? Will an extraordinary result make it feel like it has discovered something? I believe consciousness is needed for measurements to have meaning and I want to believe that the wave function collapses only at the point where meaning is extracted from the data, not by merely processing the data.
I'll leave you with David Chalmers, who discusses scientists' biggest problems with consciousness and why it is so important to not ignore it. I for one believe consciousness is at the very basis of reality, maybe even more fundamental than the physical, measurable and touchable reality in which we move around; it is, after all, the only thing we can be absolutely sure of.
Dirty Secrets of Consciousness by David Chalmers
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