It seems that all discussions of consciousness share the same problem: definition. It is not a mystery, Descartes had it almost right. I THINK (in words), THEREFORE I AM (conscious). There are two levels of awareness, level I is animal awareness, and level II is human awareness. The human awareness is the one that is aware of animal awareness. Bats and cats cannot do that. Only humans can put labels (words) on their experiences and share them with other humans. We call it speech and it reflects the brain's ability to process language. Our language uses conscious, unconscious, self-conscious, and subconscious to refer to states of awareness without differentiating between aware I and aware II. The real 'hard problem of consciousness' is getting the users of the concept word 'conscious' back into the real world and stop talking about rocks having a level of 'consciousness'.
It seems that all discussions of consciousness share the same problem: definition. It is not a mystery, Descartes had it almost right. I THINK (in words), THEREFORE I AM (conscious). There are two levels of awareness, level I is animal awareness, and level II is human awareness. The human awareness is the one that is aware of animal awareness. Bats and cats cannot do that. Only humans can put labels (words) on their experiences and share them with other humans. We call it speech and it reflects the brain's ability to process language.
Our language uses conscious, unconscious, self-conscious, and subconscious to refer to states of awareness without differentiating between aware I and aware II. The real 'hard problem of consciousness' is getting the users of the concept word 'conscious' back into the real world and stop talking about rocks having a level of 'consciousness'.