alt Hacker NewsI still think we're looking for a shadow by shining a torch at it personally; we have a rather chauvinistic view on what consciousness 'ought' to look like and this fundamentally shapes what we're looking for. We assume that consciousness has to resemble human consciousness, something we can't even measure very well in people let alone extrapolate into other kinds of being.
For the sake of argument, let's take a particularly long-lived species and say oak trees have some form of awareness. An oak tree's perception of time would be completely out of line with ours, from its perspective it'd be this writhing, visibly expanding thing that can't even register individual humans since we're there for such a short period of its existence. If it were aware on some level, we wouldn't be able to tell either way because we can only really conceive of human-like minds; even though an 'oak tree mind' would look nothing like ours because it would be driven by entirely different evolutionary conditions. I don't think it's possible for us to be entirely objective when it comes to naturalistic theories of consciousness, we cannot avoid being biased by our 'version' of what we're studying.
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Mold is reactive in some senses but an equal mass of brain cells probably can be said to produce more abstract computation about self and other matters.
It may not ultimately be very useful to define consciousness so broadly as to include the tree whilst being willing to include mind's unalike our own.
It seems to me that it must necessarily include abstract computation inclusive of the self and volition separate from simple processes taking place in individual cells.
While it may be accurate to describe our own selves as the sum of our individual cells operations it is also possible to look at it top down as accurately.
I'm not sure that the tree grew towards the light or the mold towards moisture is as meaningful a concept as the monkey climbed the tree to eat the fruit and I don't think the distinction is the similarities to self.
I don't believe that the tree had within itself an organized center with a computed symbol for light or growth.
I also don't think it contains any ability to change the fixed computation represented by the system of it's cells or to arrive at different speculative computation of past or future.
I agree with you except for one important nuance:
I think what many people are doing is looking for something that is fundamentally a higher dimensional object (dim>4) which casts a 4D spacetime shadow (our bodies) by shining a torch on _that_ shadow. Still doesn't allow for any satisfying direct observation.
This kind of dimensional analysis is part of the focus of my current research program.