For those of you who have been following my entries, I have been focusing primarily 
on the big question of consciousness.  What is it?  What causes it?  I beleive the 
answers are coming soon, so I think that rabid discussion about it needs to start 
taking place. It's no longer a matter of pure philosophy.    And to encourage this, 
I am going to use this article to propose a thought experiment that exposes a 
little of how we think about consciousness.
 

 
First imagine right now are you sitting in front of your computer.  (Or if you have 
more than one computer, pretend you are sitting in front of your favorite computer).  
We typically don't think of the typical PC as being conscious.  A PC is a tool.  We use our 
hands to interact with it.  We send it commands by using our fingers, and it responds by 
giving us visual and audio feedback.  
 
Now lets think to ourselves how our  own biololical nervous systems operate by themselves.  
Consider our eyes for a moment.  We normally wouldn't think of our eyes as being the place 
where our consciousness is  stored.  Although this may be arguable to only a certain extent, 
if someone loses an eye, we don't say that that person is any less of a person than he used 
to be, as in any less conscious.  We think of the eye as just a summed part to the whole of 
the human being, but it is not the human being itself.  Thus, the eyes can be considered to 
be a separate functional unit of the human being, with little or no loss to the overall 
consciousness of that human being.  We can now go foward with this claim, that the eye is 
not essential for what is known as human consciouness, and apply the same dichotomy in 
the above paragraph that we did with the computer.  We will compare how the the human 
being communicates with the eye.  
 
I don't know the exact details of this process, but I don't need them for the point I want to 
make.  I am going to show that the way in which I communicate with my computer is 
essentially the same fundamental process as the way I "communicate" with my eyes.  My 
eyes give me great infomation about the world.  They can tell me the wavelength, the 
intensity, and the direction of light.  That's a pretty good deal!  So I send my eyes and 
message and tell them I want to look at the tree over there, so my eyeballs dart towards 
the direction of the tree, and now I am happily staring at the tree.    If you beleive the argument I gave 
in the above paragraph, then is it also not impossible to accept the logic of what I mean 
by "communicate" with me eyes.  This can happen, because I can safely disregard my 
eyes as being the carrier of consciousness, and I can say remove my eye at will...if I really 
wanted to, it could be done...but I won't.   I will just leave it as a thought experinment for 
you.  But can't you see now that I have painted a picture of the human eye as something 
that could be conscious, but doesn't nessicarly have to be?  And if you accept that, then 
doesn't it make sense that a computer could be conscious, but doesn't nessicarly have to be? 
Computer's and eyes are essentially doing the same things.  They are both just 
communicating information to the human being, who has the consciousness, and then 
that conscciousness sends its commands based on the information just sent.  
Do people with computer chips "hardwired" into their brains as treatment for several different 
types of ailments, think of the chip as adding to their consciousness?  If it's just a computer 
chip, then what is the difference between that and the computer chips that are currently 
outside our skulls?  The only difference is that the computer chip communicates with you 
more directly, on what may be completely subconscious levels.  If these people consider 
the chips inside their brains to be part of what their consciousness is, then what's stoping 
us logically from thinking the computers currently outside our brains are really not part 
of our consciousness, besides a few layers of biology?