OK, in this book that I called The Emotion Machine – by mistake – I have a chapter on what’s called consciousness. And it seems to me that this is a very popular word and a very mysterious word. So many otherwise very smart people like to talk about the mystery of consciousness. What is this wonderful thing that we have and how could a machine have such a thing? Most people believe somehow it's... it couldn’t be artificially constructed because it’s so mysterious and so powerful. And I have three typical statements of... that people make... no one in particular. Consciousness is what give things... gives things meanings to us. Without it, we would not even know we had feelings. Consciousness makes us aware of ourselves; gives us our sense of identity and gives us the sense of being alive. Consciousness is what binds all our mental events together, unifies our past, present, and future into a continuous sense of experience. And I just have a little comment: Wow. Wouldn’t it be astonishing if any one power or force could endow us with all those abilities?