Consciousness: Everybody's talking about it, especially whether AI has it or will have it, and whether we can ever know. Thus, it's time to define it. It's a big word with many facets. Below, we give the barest outline. The lesson to learn is that measuring it must be difficult. SUGGESTED HIERARCHY For our personal investigation, we organize consciousness into five broad levels, with further explanation to come in the next post. 1. Experiential consciousness: Sensation, perception, pleasure, pain, and subjective experience. 2. Cognitive consciousness: Attention, memory, comprehension, thinking, and reasoning. 3. Reflective consciousness: Self-awareness, introspection, and metacognition. 4. Executive consciousness: Intention, decision-making, volition, and self-regulation. 5. Existential consciousness: Identity, mortality, meaning, purpose, and awareness of one's existence. These categories are so broad and inclusive that one could doubt whether t...
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