Do you think that the machine you are reading this story on, right now, has a feeling of “what it is like” to be in its state?
What about a pet dog? Does it have a sense of what it’s like to be in its state? It may pine for attention, and appear to have a unique subjective experience, but what separates the two cases?
These are by no means simple questions. How and why particular circumstances may give rise to our experience of consciousness remain some of the most puzzling questions of our time.
Newborn babies, brain-damaged patients, complicated machines and animals may display signs of consciousness. However, the extent or nature of their experience remains a hotbed of intellectual inquiry.
Being able to quantify consciousness would go a long way toward answering some of these problems. From a clinical perspective, any theory that might serve this purpose also needs to be able to account for why certain areas of the brain appear critical to consciousness, and why the damage or removal of other regions appears to have relatively little impact.
