[kazinator]

> I'm not sure "consciousness" really exists.

If so, then the work of anesthesiologists is quackery. :)

> Why point to things like "consciousness" when our brains being biological automatons is a perfect explanation already?

Because reductionism doesn't provide a satisfying explanation for higher level emergent phenomena.

For example, x86 disassembly isn't particularly informative about what is happening in a theorem-prover written in Lisp.

> I think most people would agree if a human is conscious a dog is. Is a squirrel? I think most people would agree. Is a lizard? Maybe. Is a spider? eh... Is a worm?

Probably, there is a continuum. A squirrel is conscious in a less "rich" way than a dog, and so on.