The existence of such feels may seem to some to mark the threshold for states or creatures that are really conscious.
For those unconvinced of the plausibility of dualism, however, and unwilling to restrict mental states to creatures physically like ourselves, the initial attractions of functionalism remain.
Similarly one could regard "consciousness" as referring to a component or aspect of reality that manifests itself in conscious states and creatures but is more than merely the abstract nominalization of the adjective "conscious" we apply to them.
Possible explananda would include the various sorts of state and creature consciousness distinguished above, as well as the seven features of consciousness listed in response to the What question.
Some days, they can hear a short lecture called "Turtle Talk" to learn about the state's slower creatures.
The bestiary manager, who had run a petting zoo in the Upper World, said he thought this was the natural state of the creatures.
The degree and quality of God's happiness is partly determined by the state of sentient creatures.
For Malebranche, even the internal states of a creature are mere occasions for God to bring about the relevant subsequent states.
On either model, however, the mental states of a creature are to be identified with such "machine table states" (S1,…,Sn).
The property of being in pain cannot be identified with this neurological state, however, because creatures of other kinds can be in pain in virtue of being in vastly different physical conditions.
(Nonconceptual content is usually defined as a kind of content that states of a creature lacking concepts might nonetheless enjoy.[1]) On this taxonomy, mental states can represent either in a way analogous to expressions of natural languages or in a way analogous to drawings, paintings, maps, photographs or movies.
