To be clear, though, it’s not the mere fact of modelling attention, but that attention is modelled in a way that makes it seem mysterious or unphysical, and that’s what explains our intuitions about phenomwnal consciousness
A big part of the issue is self-reference is hard to reason around, and not just for humans, and it took until the 20th century to get a formal justification for how self-reference could work at all, combined with consciousness being a polarizing and conflationary term since it determines in a lot of people’s ethical systems whether uploading is desirable, and whether they should have rights.
I’d also guess this as a good first guess, though it really depends on the self-modeling ability of animals in general, and in particular the more general the scenarios they have to end up in, the more they are conscious.
I’d weakly guess consciousness is closest to a continuous property, rather than a discrete one in general.
And yes, I think Graziano’s Attention Schema theory combined with Global Workspace Theory with it’s associated Global Neuronal Workspace is a key component in why human consciousness has the weird properties that it does (aside from the fact of being conscious, which a lot of animals are to some degree.)
A big part of the issue is self-reference is hard to reason around, and not just for humans, and it took until the 20th century to get a formal justification for how self-reference could work at all, combined with consciousness being a polarizing and conflationary term since it determines in a lot of people’s ethical systems whether uploading is desirable, and whether they should have rights.
I’d also guess this as a good first guess, though it really depends on the self-modeling ability of animals in general, and in particular the more general the scenarios they have to end up in, the more they are conscious.
I’d weakly guess consciousness is closest to a continuous property, rather than a discrete one in general.
And yes, I think Graziano’s Attention Schema theory combined with Global Workspace Theory with it’s associated Global Neuronal Workspace is a key component in why human consciousness has the weird properties that it does (aside from the fact of being conscious, which a lot of animals are to some degree.)