Hi Jim,

Thanks for the reply. Your comments about attention are interesting to me. I don't have a framework in my model that readily explains what attention is and how it fits with the rest of what I know. It strikes me as possible that having the ability to focus our attention at will, to whatever extent we can, may itself be a function and evolutionary benefit of consciousness, along with the ability to plan in deep time and coordinate action with others. I'll have to ruminate on that.

I don't even understand the hard problem, which is partially what I was addressing. In fact the original title was something like "the hard problem of consciousness isn't hard at all." I simply don't know what Chalmers is talking about. Either I am completely missing the idea, and maybe too uneducated to understand it, or he is making a mountain our of nothing. Qualia is what it feels like to have a cortex would be my simple answer. Why does it feel like anything to have a consciousness? Simply because biology works through sensation. When you become aware of it, you can talk about qualia. But simpler animals still feel it. If we could add consciousness to a lizard or amoeba, they would also feel something.

The ideas of super organisms that you raised in your article are also interesting. Group mind is a fascinating topic. I once read a book called the Global Brain which was about that. Do you know it?

Have you read Jeff Hawkins? He is VERY worth reading. On Intelligence is amazing and his new book is also great so far.

Thanks again.