The answer, of course, is that there is no consciousness: if you try to precisely define what consciousness is, you’ll end up with increasingly absurd “you know when you see it” kinds of definitions. Objectively there is no any “special” consciousness, it’s just information processing systems, simple or complex.
>The answer, of course, is that there is no consciousness: if you try to precisely define what consciousness is, you’ll end up with increasingly absurd “you know when you see it” kinds of definition
There's nothing absurd about “you know when you see it”. Those are just things we don't have (or can't have, or don't yet have) good definitions for, but do exist.
"Family resemblance" [1] classes of things are often like that.
"What is a game", is a classical example. Any definition you can give can be violated, including "having a goal", or "not having real impact" etc. And yet we know a game when we see one. And there's lots of other such distinctions.
While such definitions are good for casual conversation, they are not good for scientific discussion. Or you end up with nonsense like “my doorknob has consciousness“, well, lets define what consciousness is first.
With “consciousness” in particular having good definition became important since there are a lot of discussions about “is AI conscious?” which might in the future dictate policy decisions.
Let me try an easy definition: consciousness is that which makes you get out of bed in the morning and get something to eat. Life is a series of experiences and choices and something needs to make those choices in such a way as to continue life.
If it weren't for consciousness your body would not survive, or grow to adult size, or reproduce. Of course, 'get something to eat' sounds simpler than it is in reality - you would need to be able to see, walk, grasp, understand the environment and objects at your disposal, shop, cook, earn money, be a functioning member of society - the whole bag.
But all organisms “get out of bed and get something to eat”, yet we don’t pretend that bacteria have consciousness. If you go down this road you’ll have to decide if apes, dogs, crocodiles, sharks and ants have consciousness and make arbitrary cut-off somewhere along this path.
> yet we don’t pretend that bacteria have consciousness
In my view, life is a process that is governed on the grand scale by evolution (species adapting to the environment) and on individual scale by consciousness (individuals adaptating to environment).
Bacteria do both, like humans. Some AI agents also do both - evolution and learning, such as AlphaGo, just that its environment is a Go board.
