Consciousness is being aware of being aware. Being aware means knowing what is happening. Computers know how to do things but don't yet know what they are doing.
Qualia are deeply mystifying. It is very hard to imagine how electrical signals passing through the microtubules of the brain could possibly produce something like the perception of colors.
But imagine a computer (an information processor) that "knows what it is doing" that is hooked up to a camera. Imagine that the computer is able to identify objects and intelligent enough to answer questions about what it is seeing. Obviously it must be perceiving some sort of sensation. But it is my belief that that sensation would be like our perception of black and white. It would not be like our perception of attractive colors like yellow, red, or blue (Yellow = attractive white. Red = attractive grey. Blue = attractive black). It would be devoid of beauty. it would just be information.
We find black and white to be neither attractive nor repulsive. Black and white only convey information and the perception of black and white and qualia like them can therefore be explained by information processing. But if beautiful attractive colors like yellow, red, and blue cant be explained by information processing then what does explain them? What more is there?
Perhaps a clue lies in the language we use to describe psychological phenomena. We speak of 'willpower' and not having any energy and finding something attractive or repulsive.
Energy, force, and mass are terms that apply to physical objects but they, or rather their psychological counterparts, seem to apply to some sort of psychological entities too. But what sort of psychological entities? A fact is just data but a belief in that fact is a force. It exerts a force on other beliefs and is acted on by other beliefs. Maybe if we understood how a fact becomes a belief then we would understand how white becomes yellow (attractive white).
The computer would live in a world without beauty or pleasure. But it would also live in a world without pain. It's hard to tell whether one should feel sorry for it or envy it, especially when one considers how much time and energy we spend doing stuff we hate in order to avoid something we hate even more. Without beauty or pleasure the computer wouldn't know why it was doing what it was doing. How do we teach the computer why it should do any particular thing? This question is no longer academic. If we want self driving cars to take us where we want to go then we must give them a reason to want to do so.
Midbrain[]
Notice how our eyes are 'attracted' toward the 'attractive' red tulip.
If the cerebellum is our hands then the midbrain is our eyes. The midbrain identifies simple common objects.
If our brains functioned the way they should we would see a black and white image of the world with only those parts that needed our attention colored yellow, red, or blue by the midbrain. But our brains don't function the way they should. Instead, we see a full-color image all the time and as a result we must live without the help and guidance of our midbrain. We must find our own way. And sometimes we can't do it. Its the ultimate gilded cage.
Bear in mind that there are two kinds of pain. Scary pain and non-scary pain. The difference is not intensity. They are two fundamentally different sensations. (Fear of heights is actually fear of pain.) Some people do not experience scary pain. These people give the impression of not being afraid of anything.
While pain and pleasure arouse us, it is satisfaction that we ultimately are seeking.