[kashyapc]

> where people passionately project the term consciousness onto LLMs

They have all drunk too much AI cool-aid. I doubt these people have any meaningul education in fields such as biology, neuroscience and related life sciences.

Quite simply, we don't yet understand how consciousness arises. There are a lot of theories, but they are just that—theories.

Related reading: Antonio Damasio wrote a book in 1994 with the spicy title, Descartes' Error[1] to rebut his famous quote that you cite.

Also look up "Somatic Marker Hypothesis" by Damasio.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes%27_Error