A minute after that discovery, we will find ourselves a third rate backwater desperate to catch up. It should be fun.

That way of talking about conscious you could think of as intelligence — their primitive nervous system. Where you have phenomena experience you have intelligence.

Since the brain is the intelligent instrument anything taking place there is intelligent! You’re using the brain as an instrument even if not thinking in ‘straight line’ or computational-mode, say by meditating, drugs, instinct. I tend to think where there is qualia it has to be a side-product of intelligence, & the more of it the more qualia.

My main point is the quality of what we call consciousness is a product of our brains so is not something capable of being synthesized, which is what I understand from your Lifeboat. It only exists in our heads.

Computer systems can have intelligence with NO consciousness. For the Lifeboat, intelligent consciousness (e.g. human consciousness) would be worth preserving).

We know the brain performs many forms of cognition involving intelligence, including sensory processing, complex behavior, learning etc. We more-or-less understand these as computation among neurons. In some instances these cognitive processes are non-conscious (Chalmers easy problems, zombie modes or auto-pilot). But in other instances the same functions are conscious (the hard problem).

For example when I drive to work every day along a familiar route, I often daydream about various things, and am not really conscious of the road and traffic. I am on auto-pilot or zombie mode (and a perfectly safe driver). But when a horn sounds or something novel occurs, my consciousness returns to driving and I am no longer on auto-pilot, but consciously perceiving the scene and in conscious control. Consciousness is an added feature to cognition. What is that feature?

Research has shown that consciousness 1) correlates with gamma synchrony EEG, and 2) moves around the brain. I describe this as a mobile agent, a spatiotemporal envelope of gamma-synchronized brain neurons moving through input/integration layers (via dendritic-dendritic gap junctions) of the brains neuronal networks. Whether or not the model is correct, I think the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) is indeed a mobile envelope moving through the brain, as imaging studies of mind wandering clearly show.

As to WHY consciousness occurs in this mobile envelope, my own opinion is that quantum computational processes occur in microtubules within the envelope, the Penrose-Haeroff Orch OR model. But as a first step, i.e. the NCC, we should be looking for a function moving around the brain. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/

Yes, pain and feelings are properties of the brain, and are therefore part of “intelligence”.

> The brain is both neural computer and quantum computer
Even if the brain is dependent on quantum physics/simulation, does not mean that “qualia” is dependent on quantum physics.

Stuart
Not true. In the axon hillock (axon initiation segment), firing of each and every action potential involves ion channels which open almost simultaneously, rather than sequentially

Neil
Here’s your description of quanta-events. That type of consciousness is a sort of widespread event, non-localised as you say, ie. not something like pain. It seems to me that could well be a part of conscious thought but the idea you can dissociate events in the higher brain into something called ‘abstract consciousness independent of higher brain functions’ doesn’t seem to follow.
One other point is drugs. the effects of these depend on higher brain functions. Your ‘lifeboat for consciousness’ is something independent of higher brain functions.

I do think consciousness and intelligence are different and dissociable, e.g. pure feelings, meditative bliss etc. Have you ever had an overwhelming toothache pain? Any intelligence directly associated with that?
And we can perform intelligent functions without consciousness, like driving on auto-pilot while daydreaming.