*Excellent* article on the nature of consciousness and whether it can be measured accurately in The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/awakening/309188/?single_page=true The basis of this article is not "What is consciousness per se," although it touches on that, but "What is consciousness when a person is supposedly anesthetized, and undergoing an operation?" I use the word "supposedly" above because there is a little-discussed phenomenon called "intraoperative recall" or "anesthesia awareness." Imagine that you are having an operation, and you suddenly wake up on the table. You can hear the surgeons' voices, feel them cutting and sawing away inside you, but your eyes are taped closed and your body is paralyzed, so there is no way to communicate this to the doctors. Sadly, this is not the script of a horror movie, but something that happens to an estimated one out of every 1,000 surgery patients. Naturally, many of the people that this happens to develop symptoms of PTSD after the operations. But, as horrific as all of this sounds, it has launched fascinating research into the bigger question -- What *is* consciousness, and how do we tell whether it's present or not present? Fascinating read. Edg will probably love it. Or hate it. Hard to tell with him. :-)
