How it is achieved?
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/neurobiology-of-consciousness-study-explained
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-generation-loss-13009/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722571/
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/tiny-brain-area-could-enable-consciousness
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-mapping-21146/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-network-17491/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-conductor-16352/
https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-organization-consciousness-15132/
https://neurosciencenews.com/l5p-neuron-conscious-awareness-14997/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-patterns-10756/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-patterns-10698/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-neuroscience-7189/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-time-slices-4034/
https://neurosciencenews.com/how-the-brain-loses-and-regains-consciousness/
https://neurosciencenews.com/math-models-brain-state-22789/
https://neurosciencenews.com/eyes-consciousness-22032/
https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/news/news-stories/2017/june/brain-decoding-complex-thoughts.html
https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121175/ — Nickolasgaspar

Yeah, I'm not going to read all that. I've read things people have suggested before on consciousness and it hasn't helped. Most notably Tononi on the IIT theory, which is just another kind of functionalism. It's interesting but irrelevant. Please would you:

1) Select two of those that you think are most relevant and I'll have a look
2) Summarise in your own words 'How it is achieved'

But they are given general anesthetic for certain surgeries, and we bury them when they are dead because we don't think they will mind -- are no longer 'conscious.' — green flag

I think this is muddled. It's not consciousness that ceases, but the self.

As I see it, the problem is assuming some kind of a dualism and then 'deriving' some limitation of science. — green flag

It’s not a case of assuming dualism, just as it’s not a case of assuming materialism on the other side.

It’s the case that either one finds a physicalist account of one’s first person experiences convincing or one doesn’t. And I’m not convinced by the claim that my first person experience of pain just is some particular arrangement of atoms (and other particles).

It might be that my first person experience of pain depends on and is caused by such an arrangement of atoms, but it doesn’t then follow that they are one-and-the-same.

I’m not convinced by the claim that my first person experience of pain just is some particular arrangement of atoms (and other particles). — Michael

Neither am I. I don't think 'pure' matter is anymore intelligible than 'pure' mind.

We live together in something like a lifeworld with includes claims about that world and norms for rational discussion. I suggest that first-person talk be examined in the light of the social role it plays.

Also, how do primates generate a complex language from one that is less complex ? Etymology suggests that metaphors became 'literalized' (as if lifted up to an 'immaterial' abstraction) so that concepts like causality and sensation and soundness were added to our system.

It might be that my first person experience of pain depends on and is caused by such an arrangement of atoms, but it doesn’t then follow that they are one-and-the-same. — Michael

If your pain is radically yours, radically private, then I cannot 'rationally' comment on it at all. It's like talking about a private ineffable walk with God. It's 'designed' to slip like wind through the nets of every inquiry.

Perhaps you are implicitly assuming that I have the same pain beetle in my box, but assumption is parasitic on ordinary criteria for being in pain, such as talking about it or taking aspirin. The pain itself is like the hole in a donut. It plays and can play no role in a public concept.

I think this is muddled. It's not consciousness that ceases, but the self. — bert1

So the dead do or do not have consciousness ?

Perhaps you are implicitly assuming that I have the same pain beetle in my box, but assumption is parasitic on ordinary criteria for being in pain, such as talking about it or taking aspirin. — green flag

I can be in pain without talking about it or taking aspirin. I assume you can too. Maybe I’m wrong, but the idea that I can’t talk as if I’m right just makes no sense to me.

I can be in pain without talking about it or taking aspirin. — Michael

Yes, that's part of the grammar of the word. And I 'know what you mean.' For me the lifeworld does not exclude that kind of thing. So it's not about denying consciousness but tying everything together. A certain kind of 'materialism' (whatever you want to call it) says that the world is not really colored and does not really smell like anything, etc. But I don't agree with that. The scientific image is a map that depends on the lifeworld for its intelligibility.

Perhaps there thereness of the world is what some people mean by 'qualia.' We can see that the rose is red and say that the rose is there.

Yes, that's part of the grammar of the word. — green flag

It doesn’t have anything to do with grammar. I can be in pain even if I don’t have a language. It’s not as if pre-linguistic humans never had headaches.

I really don’t understand this devotion to Wittgenstein and this obsession with language. It just has nothing to do with whether or not there are private, first-person experiences (or whether or not the external world is coloured).

It doesn’t have anything to do with grammar. I can be in pain even if I don’t have a language. It’s not as if pre-linguistic humans never had headaches. — Michael

But, respectfully, philosophy isn't the study of your private sensations. It can't be. What you want to say, I think, is that we can be in pain without language. That is of course quite plausible, but you are assuming a referential semantics. You are assuming that 'pain' is like a label somehow pinned on something simultaneously understood to be radically elusive and ineffable. You seem to ignore the difficulty of fixing meaning in a (private) dualistic framework and lean on the ordinary, successful use of the word in practical affairs.

I really don’t understand this devotion to Wittgenstein and this obsession with language. — Michael

Wittgenstein is just one of many excellent thinkers on this. Ryle is another obvious choice, especially since he presents his points more directly. Personally I'd stress de Saussure's structuralism. Imagine that we only had 26 symbols to send over the wire, back and forth. How would those 26 symbols refer to otherworldly radically private stuff ?

The 'obsession' with language is just caring whether we know what we are talking about. What was Socrates up to ? It can also be framed as an obsession with concepts. Painters take care of their brushes.

Suppose we create a mechanical brain that we believe is functionally equivalent to a normal working brain. For those who think science can explain consciousness, how would we scientifically determine whether the mechanical brain is conscious or not?

You are assuming that 'pain' is like a label somehow pinned on something simultaneously understood to be radically elusive and ineffable. — green flag

It’s hardly elusive. When I’m in pain it’s pretty obvious. I have a private experience which is immediately apparent to me and I refer to it using the word “pain”. I then assume that there’s nothing special about me and that you experience something much the same, and refer to that experience using the same word.

Now it’s entirely possible that there is something special about me, and that whatever you feel when you burn yourself is nothing like the pain I feel when I burn myself, in which case you don’t feel pain (as I understand it) but instead feel something else that you happen to also call “pain”. But that it’s possible isn’t that it’s true, and if it’s not true then it is both the case that I can talk about and understand your pain and the case that your pain is private to you.

I really don’t understand this devotion to Wittgenstein and this obsession with language. — Michael

What he attempted to do was to straighten out the kind of confusion we see here. A parent attending to a child with an ear infection understands pain better than someone enchanted by and entangled in free floating reasoned argument abstracted from experience.

Wittgenstein says:

Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels.

By philosophy he does not mean the kind of conceptual confusion philosophers get themselves into, but rather what he does to disentangle the knots they get themselves into. But too often readers get tangled up by the moves he makes to untangle the knots.

Another apt quote from him:

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.

When I’m in pain it’s pretty obvious. — Michael

I think this is a motte and bailey situation, where the motte is the ordinary use of 'pain' and the bailey is the dualistic metaphysical version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

But that it’s possible isn’t that it’s true, and if it’s not true then it is both the case that I can talk about and understand your pain and the case that your pain is private to you. — Michael

Let me try to paraphrase this. If 'pain' does not refer to different private experiences but rather to the same private experience, then I can sensibly talk about your pain, because it's the same as my pain.

How is this not a version of : if I happen to be right, then I happen to be right ?

For what it's worth, I'm not trying to deny something like raw feels but to make vivid how semantically tricky they are. The OP wants to exclude neuroscience from being able to help here. Pain and redness and maybe the meaning 'in' words and 'pure information' are all put inside the ghost that wears the machine. Both the ghost and the machine, removed from their complement, lose intelligibility, it seems to me. Radically private immaterial pain. Radically hidden reality-in-itself. Each the shadow of the other.

Let me try to paraphrase this. If 'pain' does not refer to different private experiences but rather to the same private experience, then I can sensibly talk about your pain, because it's the same as my pain.

How is this not a version of : if I happen to be right, then I happen to be right ? — green flag

I don't quite understand the question.

Consider this statement: your brother is older than you.

If you happen to have a brother then I am talking about him, and if he happens to be older than you then what I say is true.

I don't need to know that something is the case to talk about it, or be right about it.

So by the same token, even if I don't know that you experience something like my pain, if you do then I can (truthfully) talk about it.

I think this is a motte and bailey situation, where the motte is the ordinary use of 'pain' and the bailey is the dualistic metaphysical version. — green flag

If something like dualism is true and the pain I feel is some essentially private thing then there is no distinction between the "ordinary" use and the "dualistic metaphysical version". The "ordinary" use of pain is to refer to that private, mental phenomena. So this accusation seems to beg the question.

Suppose we create a mechanical brain that we believe is functionally equivalent to a normal working brain. For those who think science can explain consciousness, how would we scientifically determine whether the mechanical brain is conscious or not? — RogueAI

That's a nice question. Lets add it to the others that haven't been answered.

If 'pain' does not refer to different private experiences but rather to the same private experience, then I can sensibly talk about your pain, because it's the same as my pain. — green flag

It does not matter if it is the same or not. What matters is what caused it and how to alleviate it.

I don't need to know that something is the case to talk about it, or be right about it. — Michael

If that is so, and I pretty much agree, then it's because concepts are public and their applications are governed by public norms. Brandom's inferentialism is good on this. Sellars makes a distinction between thermostats and parrots on the one hand and philosophers on the other. To use a concept is not like emitting a beep or a recorded sound. It's to operate in the space of reasons. To use the concept red involves understanding (for instance) that red objects are also colored objects. To use the concept 'pain' involves understanding that animals avoid it (their own). The idea is that it's impossible to understand one concept without understanding many, because concepts are inferentially related.

Here's what doesn't make sense : "It really hurts to chew broken glass, so he stuffed another handful in his mouth."

"Private experience" has its own curious role in the system. "You can't know if my red / pain is your red / pain because seeing / hurting is private experience."

So the dead do or do not have consciousness ? — green flag

The dead don't exist any more. But as a good panpsychist I think that the rotting corpse is conscious. Just not conscious of very much.

It does not matter if it is the same or not. What matters is what caused it and how to alleviate it. — Fooloso4

I would like to emphasize that you seem to be quoting my paraphrase of another poster in order to correct me. (?) I offered that paraphrase in order to criticize it.

I'll be glad to discuss this issue with you if you can get a sense of where I am coming from (later Wittgenstein, early Heidegger, Ryle,...)

The dead don't exist any more. But as a good panpsychist I think that the rotting corpse is conscious. Just not conscious of very much. — bert1

OK. How conscious are the latest famous bots ? Do they have selves ?

If you happen to have a brother then I am talking about him, and if he happens to be older than you then what I say is true. — Michael

Just want to note that these are nice everyday concepts. 'Conscious' appears as both motte and bailey.

"You can't know if my red is your red because seeing is private experience." — green flag

Which is true. I know for a fact that the term "red" covers a variety of different shades. I don't know that what I see to be one shade of red is what you see to be another shade of red.

And by extension, I don't know that what you see to be shades of red is what I see to be shades of orange, or green, or blue.

Here's what doesn't make sense : "It really hurts to chew broken glass, so he stuffed another handful in his mouth." — green flag

Ambiguous use of the word "sense" here. The sentence is meaningful and internally consistent, even though we might not understand the motivation of such a person (maybe he's a masochist, or filming a new season of Jackass).

The "ordinary" use of pain is to refer to that private, mental phenomena. — Michael

I agree that it's private and mental in a certain ordinary sense. But I insist that we have public criteria for when it's correct to assert someone is in pain. We would not believe someone who was smiling and laughing and telling us how excruciating their migraine was just then. We'd say they didn't know that pain was, didn't know what 'pain' meant. But on your view we couldn't say that. Because your view allows for that person's pain to be what we call ecstasy. Ryle gives other examples like this.

Ambiguous use of the word "sense" here — Michael

I agree you could come up with some context where it makes sense like that , but hopefully you see the point. There's an average kind of use.

I would like to emphasize that you seem to be quoting my paraphrase of another poster in order to correct me. (?) — green flag

I took it to be in accord with your earlier claim:

If your pain is radically yours, radically private, then I cannot 'rationally' comment on it at all. — green flag

Your use of paraphrase is suspect. Several times you attribute something to what was said that was not. In this case that it is "the same pain", which can cause all kinds of mischief and misunderstanding

Elsewhere:

Perhaps you are implicitly assuming — green flag

What you want to say, — green flag

You are assuming that 'pain' is like a label — green flag

Most of us have experienced something we call pain. Pain is "radically private" in that when I am in pain it does not hurt someone else. Pain is public in that we know from our own experience what it means to be in pain.

But I insist that we have public criteria for when it's correct to assert someone is in pain. — green flag

This is misleading phrasing. "Correct" in this sense means "appropriate" or "justified", not "true".

But on your view we couldn't say that. Because your view allows for that person's pain to be what we call ecstasy. — green flag

Not really. If someone feels what I call "ecstasy" in response to cutting or burning their hand, they'd never learn to use the word "pain" to refer to it. If such a child burns their hand and laughs, they won't be told by their parents "you must be in pain", they'd be asked "why are you laughing?".

Pain is "radically private" in that when I am in pain it does not hurt someone else. Pain is public in that we know from our own experience what it means to be in pain. — Fooloso4

It's the grammar of 'pain,' yes, that it tends to belong a particular person.

But we don't know from our own experience what it means to be in 'pain.'

In other words, the concept is conventional and public.

"Correct" in this sense means "appropriate" or "justified", not "true". — Michael

You seem to be hinting at truth apart from language, but to me that's a round square. Statements are true sometimes. Or we take them to be true...to express what is the case, etc.

Inferentialism is a semantic theory. Meaning is normative. That's the idea. So a statement can be true in the first place because it's meaningful within a community. I don't believe that words are connected independently to some divine mind. The tribe's tongue is fundamental software.