The notion that consciousness is a state -- or a class of states--of the body+mind state machine--is intriguing from an informational perspective, I agree, Smokey. But there are a couple of kinds of events which tend to disqualify that model. One is the connection of the state with information from beyond the scope of interaction of the state machine; simple knowing about a remote loved one, or memories of data from prior to the specific machine's existence, and so on. This kind of violation occurs with many of the various spiritual phenomena that have been touched on in these threads--NDEs, OBEs, mystic connections of various kinds.

The other is the simplest kind of understanding, and how such a state machine could actually modulate from complex nets of transmission to a bubble of clear comprehension--an "aha!" moment--and how it could generate understanding mechanically given how distinctly unmechanical understanding itself is.

Rule all those non-conforming data out, on some grounds, and of course you have a neat and complete model.

Why you would want to just forcibly rule out data that was anomalous to your model, I am sure I don't know though. The anomalies are always the most revealing sort of data, because they tell you where your paradigm is leaking.


A