Consciousness, thoughts anyone?

Well - naturally it would take a book to cover this in the kind of detail that the topic demands. I think that by the time we've finished defining it, the other two questions you ask will be more readily apparent.The best description I can offer at the moment is that consciousness is the mental conceptualization of the self. This probably means most things with a brain are somewhat conscious. Our consciousness is given another layer of abstraction courtesy of language and an additional hardware acceleration courtesy of our PFC. In evolution, we talk quite a bit about 'spandrels'. These are structures which don't have a function themselves, but seem to be universal. That's not a good definition. The colour of bones is (as far as I am aware) universally white. This isn't because bones being white is required, its just that the material they are made of is white...but if they were black they'd function just the same. In fact, I've never seen any of my own bones so maybe....So consciousness may be a side effect of having the prefrontal cortex and language centres etc that we do.

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A spandrel (less often spandril or splaundrel) is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure.

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As per wiki. If you build a normal set of stairs, you create a gap under the stairs. You can put that gap to good use, but it would be silly to consider what use the spandrel serves in helping you get upstairs. Consciousness might be like that, so if it turns out to be entirely useless at helping us have grand children - then we shouldn't necessarily despair (scratching heads is still permitted). Again a difficult question. I see this as like asking how a symphony is formed by the various parts of the orchestra. Each part of the brain is trying to make sure whatever it specialises in is given the correct attention. At the beginning of this process it's just a noise, but each part learns how to influence the body (ie., the conductor) in such a way as to influence the other parts of the brains in a fashion that is to the advantage of the brain part.The idea being that the parts eventually come together in unison, all working towards a largely agreed upon set of goals and purpose. That collection of goals and purposes is constructed in a serial narrative in the context of memory and prediction, and that narrative is consciousness.So I'm kind of on Dennet's side of the argument, but I'm rather rusty on the topic.Welcome to EvC dimebag...are you a Pantera fan?

That's an interesting question. My intuition doesn't agree, but I am really not qualified to give authoratative answers at all.If we knew how general anaesthetics work, that might help. Do they make you lose consciousness because of the sensory shutdown?Aren't there medical conditions that leave people as 'floating consciousnesses', with nothing coming in from the outside world?I guess that would require a sense of passing time - which might be argued to be a sense. He doesn't do away with subjectivity. His entire point about qualia is that they are just a series of 'seems to me' discriminations about the environment. Dennett says that technically he thinks we are all zombies If memory serves when he talks in details about them he suggests that zombies are no different than us in his theory and that the problem with the concept is that it assumes there is a difference to conclude there must be a difference! Everyone's critics argue that their opponents are in error Chalmer's critics, like Dennett, argue that Chalmers ends up with the Cartesian theatre (I'm not sure if that is Dennett's argument, though I wouldn't be surprised if that's where it terminates). I don't reject that subjective experience exists, though I do agree that qualia is ultimately incoherent as a concept. I have not seen Dennett suggest that 'subjective experience' is not a coherent concept. Dennett just says that what a person reports as being their experience may not necessarily reflect the actual experience they are reporting.So Dennett (rightly, I think) suggests that subjective reports are not the only evidence we should be using to study consciousness, but if we treat subjective reports to the methodology of heterophenomonology and not just relying on our own subjective judgements (Descartes self-examination method) on what consciousness is. Actually that was my second thought - I only know what a dimebag is because of Pantera. The term, for obvious reasons, is not common in the UK

Important stuff first: We have the less creative 'ten bag' or 'twenty bag'. It's fallen out of fashion now but we would go:teenth or a Louis (1/16 of ounce - think French kings)
a henry (1/8 of ounce (English king))
daughter (1/4)
Loz (1 ounce)But most of our dealers are Arabs and Pakistani so 'ryhming slang' died out and we just have to go literal most of the time. I would also be reluctant. There is a sort of self-referential quality to consciousness so one could be aware of one's existence but I don't think anyone can confidently declare if it possible to become conscious under those conditions. I'll dig out 'Consciousness Explained' and re-familiarise myself with the outline, watch a few of his lectures and try and regurgitate it later