Abstract This chapter argues that the subjective quality of a conscious experience can be understood in terms of how similar it is to all other possible experiences. We discuss how these similarity relationships can be implicitly and conveniently assessed, given the structure of the mammalian sensory cortices. These mechanisms allow the subject to “know”, without effort, what an experience is...
Abstract Most of us agree that consciousness emerged at some time through our evolutionary history. Many also find probable that it is a relatively recent invention; simple organisms like bacteria are presumably not conscious. However, evolution is a long and complex process. Consciousness could have evolved mostly as a byproduct or for reasons that we do not intuitively expect. So, what good...