It seems Chalmers does what (2010?)was a fairly consistent conceptual slide, (at least as seen from outside.) That is, after taking consciousness as a subject, then - in this casual interview anyway - he goes straight to mixing it up with the external expression of mostly extrinsic self, almost implying a singular notion of both consciousness and perception (awareness). Ie, he as an organism might perceive a shade of a color intrinsically but, not having the categorization for it, not be aware of having perceived it and not express it. Yet if primed he will nevertheless exhibit behavior that implies he did perceive the variance. He uses a color-blind example in the video - she can't have a conscious experience of color - but what then is it he is aware of experiencing? (A categorically influenced self-referring experience, of course, that categorization of which he is not fully aware.) Let alone basic survival circuits and contextual influence. Just because a system can't express itself does not mean it can't identify and be aware of itself.
If instead you consider consciousness stratified, interacting and plural, then its evolution and emergence are pretty direct. The more, maybe singularly, human form of transiently more self abstraction from context is only one kind, even for us. We fabulate narratives. If one insists on defining and limiting consciousness as our kind, then you introduce a boatload of other problems. Which he seems to sort of do, in which consciousness becomes almost relative and entirely subjective. Which would bring you back to the beginning: since you can't be absolutely sure that anything else is conscious but can be absolutely sure that you are, how can you absolutely define anything else as not being so? Or, if some expression of self-awareness is a requirement, then you must have at least something else to identify it, which would imply that consciousness exits only within a larger system, which would in turn need a larger system to be identified, and on and on in an infinite regression.
The problem of defining consciousness and then observing it then remain a bit difficult, it seems. Ie, a personal example: at 16/17 in my last year of high school I learned to both dream in series and control myself in those dreams, I presume others may have done similarly. Though not every night... for a period of weeks I kept trying to maintain my consciousness or awareness or call it what you will within sleep even after bringing myself to wakefulness, which of course never worked. But being aware of experiencing, and bringing myself up from the identified dreaming state were easy things, then. In a Chalmer's or similar definition, despite being asleep I was actually experiencing a self within an environment (though I presume a nearly completely internal one, still within that state was quite conscious of my experience and could and did interact with it.)
Not much later, again like others, I suppose, affective inhibition from developing, more extrinsic left, dorsolateral and pfc networks pretty much ended that sort of fun. What seems dissuading is the notion that any system that is both self-monitoring and determinately interacting might be called conscious between input (less related to real and present/future time) and output. That is, it seems like many within those fields as Chalmer's prefer to emphasize self-abstraction in any definition of consciousness, something which seems intuitively resultant more from inhibition, or negative, rather than positive, network interactions. Which is sort of fine but why not qualify, effectively limit, the word or concept and make it both clearer and easier? And distinguish it more from awareness.
A 'set-consciousness' <'set-all' described is sort of what I'm getting at, (a negative, choosing a smaller set by inhibition.) An empirical or any definition of consciousness then might include that quality, and even extend it at least to interacting self-awareness ('set- self awareness'< 'set-self-unexpressed', necessary self-abstraction.) Agreeably, awareness descriptively doesn't necessarily need any kind of self awareness even if you include some form that doesn't imply consciousness. And as well - the problem seems in part awfully human - as that last bit remains disquieting, though for good reason. (Religion stuff seems more an inevitable form of consequence when 'set-self-aware'<'set-self-unexpressed'<'set self-all'.)
Which would lead to systems....
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