Holy crap, it's another "answer me these questions three" post

- What is consciousness or self-awareness? (and are they the same thing?) If Brains Cause Minds, like people often assert, then how? This is more subtle than you might think on the surface -- you're all like, "okay, so it's some really complex electrochemical system that does stuff, just by virtue of following physical laws" ... but what or who is experiencing all of this? This is probably the same question as "how does a physical thing somehow generate an aware agent?" To answer this, do you need to resort to a metaphysical soul of some sort?

- You can know that you yourself are awake/experiencing, but can you know that other people are as well? (as in, they could very well be non-cognizant systems that just produce output, without doing that mind-thing that you think you're doing... right?)

- Could something that's not "alive" in the traditional sense, say a computer, reach a level of sophistication that would allow it to be aware in the same way that you are?

These are likely terribly trite questions for our brain-and-behaviour and philosophy/religion folks (zip4096 and eponis, particularly)... but if anybody feels like taking a stab, have at!