I think it's reasonable to say that even thought, in all likelihood, we have slightly different experiences of reality, they are similar enough to us not to clash. In other words, I'm not, it's very unlikely, in fact, let's say impossible, for you to say the situation in which you and I are in right now, relative to the machinery that is capturing this.

We may smile and the dog may wag the tail, but in essence, we have a set program and those programs are similar across individuals in the species.

In the heart of consciousness is subjectivity, this sense of having a self that observes one's own organism and the world around that organism. That is really the heart of consciousness.

But whether we want to do it because we want to have people to have a different idea of who we are or not, we do it naturally. So the way we construct our narrative is different from the way we constructed it a year ago. The difference is maybe very small or it may be huge.

We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think.

Consciousness, much like our feelings, is based on a representation of the body and how it changes when reacting to certain stimuli. Self-image would be unthinkable without this representation.

Rather than being a luxury, emotions are a very intelligent way of driving an organism toward certain outcomes.