Consciousness

Consciousness seems to be a "big problem" in Neurology and Philosophy (see, e.g., the writings of John Searle on this topic). Here is my small solution to this problem.

The issue is how we shift from "red" to "I see red"; from perceiving our environment to being aware that we perceive it. I would argue that the first step is to be able to think about "he sees red"; e.g. having a model of the cognitive processes happening in other sentient beings, and being able to use this model in order to understand the behavior of other human beings. "He sees a tiger and, therefore, he is taking cover"; "he does not see the tiger than I am seeing, because the grass is hiding the tiger from him; therefore, he has not taken cover". The ability of making judgments of this kind are essential for communication using a developed language.

Once we have a model that we can use to understand the behaviors of other (what they perceive, what are their goals, what are the expected actions), it is a relatively small step to apply the same model on ourselves. We became aware of the cognitive processes in other humans, now we become aware of cognitive processes in us: we can reason about our cognitive processes. Unlike Searle's claims, there is no reason to believe that this awareness is continuous and unavoidable. After all, we are unaware of times where we are not aware of our cognitive processes; and introspection seems to indicate that we have long periods when we act mechanically, without any self-awareness.

I was struck a few years ago by an article about communication among chimpanzees. They ave a vocabulary and will use different "words" for warning about dangers coming from a snake, or a bird of prey, or an animal of prey. Indeed, the reaction to these different warnings is different: climbing on a tree is a good defense against an animal of prey, but a bad defense against a bird of prey. However, the chimpanzee will continue to shout its warning long after all the animals took cover and acted on the warning: They do not seem to have an elaborate enough model of the cognitive process at other chimpanzees -- and especially they do not seem to have a cognitive process that relate their actions to the reaction of the other chimpanzees; such a model is essential of intelligent socialization. The same problem seems to affect autistic children.

The next step after having a model of the behavior of the "human automaton" as it reacts to its surroundings, is developing a model of the interactions of several such "automata": "he said and, therefore, I said, and, therefore he said..." this is what computers are still very bad at and this is what clearly distinguishes communication between humans and communication between chimpanzees, or communication with computers. "I said x and, therefore, I expected him to do y, or to smile, or to nod his head, and he did not, so he probably did not understands what I said, or what I said had an unexpected effect, which can be explained perhaps