I once heard this basic idea from Paul Churchland: that the adaptive utility of consciousness begins with assessing ambiguous sense-data.
I’ve found Thomas Metzinger very interesting on the fusion of philosophy of mind with neuroscience and experimental psychology; a lot of what was mentioned in this discussion, I read discussed in much more detail in Metzinger. What I found most appealing about Metzinger’s theory is that it goes a long way towards explaining the centrality of narrative in culture. In Metzinger, consciousness is above all a matter of constructing simulations of worlds, and comparing them; ordinarily, we can easily keep track of which one is the primary simulation, the real one, through an innate awareness of the processes of our body.
Moore talked a bit about the feature of consciousness that allows us to identify with alien beings. I would have liked to hear more from him on that train of thought.
