The problem goes deeper in that we don’t even have a good grasp on what we actually mean by “consciousness”, and that there are wildly different opinions on what significance it has.
Well exactly. If we did we'd be on or a hell of a lot closer to describing the math, entropy, network or some other formal model of it which would pay major dividends to talking about AI.
Right now it's like we didn't learn anything from Wittgenstein who said most philosophy was just argument about language and definitions ... which is a lot plus anecdotes of what we read here
