ABSTRACT
“What is it like to be a bat?” is a question to which science can have no answer. Similarly, qualia, private sensations, are also outside the purview of science. Science can hope to understand the causes of verbal statements about private events but not those events themselves. Such data we have suggest that introspective reports are very inaccurate, sometimes ludicrously so in the case of brain-damaged people. Something called metacognition has been suggested as proof of consciousness. It has been demonstrated in rats, but there seems to reflect nothing more than risk-aversion. Human intelligent systems, such as the Jeopardy-winning Watson program, also show metacognition, although no one has suggested that they are conscious.
