we become aware that we have a self—we become truly self-aware.

Allostasis means the process of achieving stability through change, as compared to the more familiar term “homeostasis,” which simply means a tendency toward a state of equilibrium.

essential variables are physiological quantities, such as body temperature, sugar levels, oxygen levels, and the like, that must be kept within certain rather strict limits in order for an organism to remain alive.

closed-loop feedback from output to input. One conspicuous feature of this approach was that such systems could appear to have “purposes” or “goals,”

Functionalism is the idea that consciousness does not depend on what a system is made of (its physical constitution), but only on what the system does,

and every perception is the way it is in order to help guide action.

a mathematical recipe for going from what we already know (the prior) to what we should believe next (the posterior), based on what we are learning now (the likelihood).

There is a six-layered cortex, a thalamus that is strongly interconnected with this cortex, a deep-lying brainstem, and a host of other shared features—including

it doesn’t really explain anything and that it doesn’t lead to testable hypotheses.