I'm afraid you still don't understand the distinction I'm making between consciousness and congnition/intelligence. If you did you would see how hopelessly impossible it would be to study consciousness as an object and as something that could be empirically measured. You can study states of consciousness, you can study the mechanisms of the brain and intelligence, but none of these things are consciousness itself. Consciousness is without quality.
I'm not saying that some scientists don't think they're studying consciousness, but they are invariably studying an aspect of consciousness. You're outside of your knowledge-base on this one.
My statement was simply an observation and a non-essential one for my argument. With your statement you were trying to dismiss my entire premise based on your relatively weak understanding of another groups' schema.
@h.a. I watched Ghost in the Shell last night because of your reference to it. It was pretty cool. I really liked they way they drew their invisibility cloaks or whatever they called em.
You seem pretty confident that you have this one pinned down, and seem to reject perfectly valid comments on your ideas as either some form of personal attack (earlier in the thread), or berate others for being:
[...] outside your knowledge base on this one
You complain of appeals to authority yet do not apply this to yourself
Well i am speaking as a college educated individual who's intelligence is typically ranked as excellent
I think you might need a dose of Socratic medicine. Does your excellent intelligence allow for applying scepticism to your own position?
I believe there is general consensus that we do not yet know what consciousness is, nor what role it plays in self-identity, time and causality, being and nothingness.
You seem to be mixing scientific (AI, neurosceince), philosophic, and theological approaches to our understanding of consciousness. I admire your certainty that you know what consciousness is but your admixture of koans, the singularity and the hive-mind shows a paucity of cohesive/persuasive arguments for what seems to be a shifting concept.
On consciousness I thing Douglas Hofstadter's GEB is an essential starting point.
You mention many Transhumanist concepts but don't believe you've grasped the foundational concepts such as the singularity, the timing of such an event (our lifetime, why?), your stated panpsychism that oddly omits the internet (your presumed source of future collective consciousness).
You might appreciate Bostroms work (co-founder of H+) which I think would add some academic rigour to your argument (Just as he has brought academic acceptance of Transhumanism).
You might also ponder Bostrom's simulation hypothesis, an excellent paper explicating the probability of us existing in a simulation as a function of the probability of humans realising the singularity (a strange loop indeed!).
There is also a huge ethical debate surrounding Transhumanism, (see Fukayama or Harris, founder of the IEET) which is relevant to your argument.
I am sure you excellent level of intelligence has already researched such pertinent topics.
Or perhaps you are
[...] outside your knowledge base on this one
MENS AGITAT MOLEM