Are you comparing life to consciousness? They seem like two completely different things.Given the blatant duality of life and death, that's clearly not the case.
Overall this "black and white" approach is pretty limiting in my experience.
No dissembling required. Consciousness is a scale, as are most other biological parameters.If you have to rely on dissemblance to float your definition of consciousness, you are relying on something factitious at the onset.
Nope. He is acting against his self interest. Intentionally killing oneself is the very definition of acting against ones self interest.What an absurd question. The fact that he does it for his comrades (and not his enemies) establishes his self interest.
He may, of course, be acting in support of a higher moral cause (like choosing the lives of many over his own) but that is a decision absolutely made against his self interest.
Sounds like you've painted yourself into a corner with your definition of consciousness and are now trying to redefine words to "win."Only if they, like you, are relying on a miserly definition of self interest.
I will let you play such games by yourself; they are ultimately not very interesting. I think you now realize that your requirement that anything conscious must exhibit self interest is invalid.
It offers a better perspective on why you think that an aircraft's working environment is many times less complex than a car's when it comes to avoiding collisions. If you had ever flown the Manhattan VFR corridor, for example, you would not think that was the case.No, but unless that somehow offers another angle on understanding why the successful roll out of complete driverless assistance for aircraft occurred about seventy years ago . . . .Are you a pilot?
There is certainly a difference between abiogenesis (beginning of life from lifelessness) and 'ordinary' biosynthesis. However, reproduction ('synthesis of life') _is_ biosynthesis, just writ large.Hence (regardless of whether one thinks its appropriate to add or drop a "bio" in regards to chemical synthesis), there's a big distinction between the synthesis of life and the ?bio?\synthesis of chemicals life utilizes.