How are we different from machines which are purely mechanical devices?

What is the internal behaviour?  What is the "light on inside"?

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How did consciousness evolve? How conscious are other animals?
How are we different from machines which are purely mechanical devices?
How is it possible for me to claim that I have awareness?
Voluntary movement and thought? How is that possible?
How cd a machine recognise itself?

Autonomy - we think, and move of our own volition , when there is nothing around. What kind of machine, which is perhaps programmed to constantly process input, heed biological conditions and pursue it's goals... What kind of machine could start questioning why it was doing those things.

Could a machine question things? Could u program something to question things? how wd it then start questioning it's own behaviour? It wd need to be able to observe it's own behaviour, and have a way of recognizing itself.


The Chinese room argument - even if you could program a machine to produce the same human behaviour, it doesn't mean it is the same system and therfore has the properties of self- awareness like we do.  Chess playing machines for example , they can do what we can, but they are built completely differently. We can also do a lot more things. 

What if our exact behaviour could be mapped out in terms of inputs, starting state, data and rules? If our behaviour is deterministic, then in theory something could emulate that external behaviour. But things would not be happening the same way, involving the same machinery, so you could not claim the internal behaviour was the same.

Does 'internal behaviour' make sense?if yes, how do we describe this internal behaviour as part of the physical world?

By 'internal behaviour' I mean sensations and self-awareness. Can u have awareness without self-awareness?

What are these ghostly properties 'qualia' ? Why do we think there is more going on than mechanical computation? What is consciousness?

I can imagine a computer that can process visual input such that it can detect objects. It can be programmed to say that it can see an object when an object has been detected. 

When you ask the computer if it can see something, it will say yes, but there is nothing going on other than 'mechanical' computation there.

We can imagine things we see - form a picture in our mind. Visual representation.

Could u program a computer to recognise it's own output?

What is this stuff that we think we experience that is more than just blind mechanical cause and effect chains. I say I can 'see' really see. I say I can see this room and myself and all these colours, and describe what Im thinking, but what if we are just wired to think and say that how do I