[ma2rten]

You seem to be missing my point.

So what's consciousness? It's the ability to think about things as abstractions.

No, it's not! (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness). Artificial NNs can also model memory (see Hopfield networks). However, I just used them as an analogy. Maybe Zombies work better for you and the Philosophical Zombie Wikipedia page does a better job of explaining the idea (thanks again xyzzyz).

[Retric]

Perhaps if I reword that a little you might understand what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness is the subjective experience of the ability to think about things and processes as abstractions. Apple, Airplane, Alphabet, Algebra, Balance, Self, or Obama they all exist as arrangements and connections of neurons in your brain. When a song is stuck in your head that's a physical thing that's happening to a some neurons in your head. But, so is everything else your thinking about.

These networks also connect to and build off of other abstractions so ((((peanut) + butter) + Jelly) + Sandwich) is built from more than one of these networks. Try and think of a pile of peanut butter next to some grape jelly. No problem it's brown next to purple.

Now try and do that for peanut butter next to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Most people feel something odd happen on the second one because they are reusing the peanut butter network for both of those. For me, I can't focus on their colors at the same time.

For a great subjective description of this watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y

Getting back to Consciousness, it's turning on these abstractions by choice. I want to think about Apple so I activate the Apple network and suddenly experience Apple. And it's the same network as if I had just read the word or saw a physical Apple. Language also get's mapped to this which is part of why philosophers think about thinks like platonic ideals yes there is an ideal Chair it exists and it's the Chair classifier in your head.

[ma2rten]

We have different ideas of what consciousness is. Like I said I don't even know for sure if you process consciousness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_other_minds

I don't think it makes any sense to talk about this any further, we might as well be speaking different languages. Otherwise you could also comment here, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3747462. Naveensundar did a better job explaining it.