Hacker News Reader

I agree.

The ultimate question of consciousness regards the phenomenological experience of being - what is it? Where does it come from? What does it mean about us? Who else shares it?

Any theory of consciousness that doesn’t address those questions may indeed be addressing some version of how we might define consciousness, but it’s redefining the mountain from the foothills - justify it all you like, but nobody’s giving you credit for the summit.

View on HN

Before any of THOSE questions can be asked, we first have to arrive at some sort of consensus concerning what constitutes a phenomena...

> Who else shares it?

Or what else shares it?

At the point at which we can determine with certainty something else shares a phenomenological experience of consciousness, I think we're obligated to grant it personhood.

Not sure about that. There is a hypothesis that what you describe is simply a fundamental property of matter:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

Reply on news.ycombinator.com