Thanks for addressing opinions like mine, and I would be very glad to admit you convinced me, both to avoid opinion fights, and also to show off my ability to admit I was wrong. However, in that case I would be lying.
Several days ago, I read almost all of this article (except some instances of prediction) and what I see is following:
You defined consciousness as self-reference, and this is not what I (and assumably Mr. Chalmers) mean by consciousness. However, I admit that the ability of the consciousness to see itself is done by some (or specific) self-reference in the brain. And the logic is, that the ability of the consciousness to see itself is not the same as the ability of the consciousness to see at all, where logically the latter is the necessary condition for the former, and the former is the special case of the latter, and in my article I have claimed the fundamentality only for the latter.
If I understood some of your prediction instances correctly, there was an experiment where non-self-referencing systems (now I don’t remember whether the natural or the artificial), that consequently showed the memories of the moments where the consciousness was not aware of itself (or that “they saw no consciousness”). And as I hope you understand (not necessary believe), would support the no-fundamental-consciousness thesis only in the special case (from the point no. 1), that was not meant by me.
However, not to just criticize your very worked-through article, I am realizing that it might not have been a good idea to post the article like mine on here on lesswrong, since it is too philosophical, and most believably not empirical at all, which might not fit here. And I assume that most of you are convinced the non-empirical topics don’t matter at all, and I would be very glad to agree, also because I feel this is one of the crucial points of Mr. Yudkowski’s RAZ. However, in that case again, I would be lying. Also because I am not as experienced philosopher, and also because I saw no logical/philosophical proof that non-empirical topics don’t matter at all so I want to avoid premature conclusion, and maybe because no one might know whether they do or not.
And I want to admit to believe that your article is both interesting and tentatively important (self-reference, IIT), however, in my thought-through opinion it doesn’t prove that thing.
Thanks for your reaction, and sorry for my late response (I noticed your comment just yesterday, because I assumed I will be notified immediately, which I wasn’t).
If I am correct, the economics and the psychology treat single human as the preference holder, however, in connection to biology and subsequently to physics as well, neither these preferences nor their holders are necessarily fundamental, and in connection to my idea not necessarily uniform/identical from one holder to another, and I wouldn’t be looking for these. So according to my idea, the method for selection of also-ethical-theory would demand such equality of the preferences across their holders (in terms of scientific simplicity). Thus, the division of reality to ‘fundamental’ preference holders that would result in their non-identical preferences would be treated as an incorrect division.
And therefore, the actual subject of scientific inquiry would be unknown from its start, and possibly revised from time to time, but still according to the same method of division of reality to uniform fundamental units and modeling their preferences and evaluating their fitness to observation, etc..
I hope I answered most of your most important questions. Best.