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Human consciousness. Is it measurable? Can it be isolated and identified? What is consciousness – and can it be discussed on a scientific forum, or is it a topic more suitable to the philosophical ones? Mod edit - I've formatted your subject as a question - this helps to keep the forum tidy and easy to navigate - thanks!
On p.106 of 'Leadership and the New Science', Wheatley refers to an observation by Nobel laureate chemist, Prigogine, that in 'non-living' chemical solutions, communication occurs, generating order. In the chemical clocks he studied, the random mix of molecules became coordinated at a certain point. A murky grey solution would pulse first black and then white. Prigogine is quoted as saying: The amazing thing is that each molecule knows in some way what the other molecules will do at the same time, over relatively macroscopic distances. These experiments provide examples of the ways in which molecules communicate... That is a property that everybody always accepted in living systems, but in non-living systems it was quite unexpected.
Could you provide an example of consciousness in a non-[primate] system?
Consciousness occurs in systems that do not even have an identifiable brain. Margaret Wheatley (1992) 'Leadership and the New Science'. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
"might be a termite mound" - Peppercorn, have you read "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstatder (may have spelt his name wrong here)? A very amusing, though also profound, book by this protaganist of Strong AI that has a character he refers to as Aunt Hillary and who is really exactly that!