As Barbra Streisand said in Yentl when asked if she was pensive. “No, I was just thinking”.
Consciousness is one of the more straightforward steps in creating a sentient mechanical being. Stream of consciousness (psychology) – Wikipedia and Train of thought – Wikipedia explains the process of forming your next thought. Interesting that the train of thought article only has one meaningful link.
I will start with my definition of consciousness – It is what happens when the brain has nothing else to do. Normally, brains (and computers) have a specific task to accomplish. They are reacting to stimuli, making a decision, and taking action based on the circumstances. If there is no immediate decision to be made, the mind wanders (or is it wonders?). Without a clear goal in mind (no chuckling please), it produces rational thoughts with no immediate objective. Then, proud that you have uncovered a totally novel thought, you use it.
There are whole bookshelves filled with explanations of consciousness. 4 Major Theories of Consciousness | by Diego Velez | Dec, 2022 | Medium
Perhaps Mr. Velez should look at external intelligence to see how Train of Thought is being manipulated.
As I explained in the introduction and the logic section, We make decisions based on
Deductive Reasoning We use the laws of logic and make our choice. Obviously, this only works if our assumptions are correct and we did not commit a Formal fallacy – Wikipedia.
Inductive Reasoning Preponderance of Evidence (or as the English call it “balance of Probabilities”) Burden of proof (law) – Wikipedia
Abductive Reasoning It ends up that this is the driving force for most of our decision, commonly known as Occam’s razor – Wikipedia. We “don’t need no stinking” logic or a preponderance of the evidence. We decide on gut feeling, which is why I mentioned in the introduction to include your hunger level.
