A machine does not have the ability, and nothing material ever will, to immediatly experience anything. The thing with experience, is that it must flow through you. But by definition, nothing flows through particules of matter.

But the ego of scientism is too great isn`t it?

Apprehension in psychologoy is a term applied to a model of consciousness in which nothing is affirmed or denied of the object in question, but the mind is merely aware of (“seizes”) it. [Wikipedia]

Accoding to those two definitions, a machine can apprehend its environement. You must have meant understanding.

Then again, understanding has a few definitions and many of those are applicable to computers except of course for the religious one.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_gifts_of_the_Holy_Spirit) However, this religious definition presupposes Creation or a similar event and this comes at odds with the premise this post is based on.

You speak of the necessity of observation. But do you even understand the essence of human observation? The essence of consciousness, is human observation, i.e. our ability to apprehend ideas. Take a machine for example. It does not observe. The closest it can get to that is by being fitted with a sensor (ex: a webcam) and a processor to process what is sensed. You can put as much sensors, and hardware and software in it, as intelligent as it may be, it will never apprehend. It will only sense and process. The human body senses and process’ not so different than a machine could hope to do. But the body does not apprehend anything, it senses and process’. The apprehension is done at another level, a conscious level. No one knows for sure what happens at that conscious level from a reductionist perspective because the conscious level is purely subjective; (continued)

thier is no objective processing. Whatever processing takes place at the conscious level is somehow determined by the will of the conscious being and what is apprehended. To the body, this conscious level’s output is sensed and another input into the system, although with more powerfull rules I suppose. To the conscious level, the body is an input that is somehow consolidated into what it is you and I are apprehending right now. What makes this consciousness so special? It can only exist in the present, at one time. You see yourself see when you should see your conscious self apprehending.

Consciousness is not an material element. It is not a string, a particule, an electron, an atom, a wave, a molecule, a protein, a dna strand or anything material. Consciousness is a feeling, an observation, an apprehension, an acknowledgement, a sentiment, etc. Such a thing is not a result of evolution, just like a particule is not the result of evolution.

Consciousness is not determined by an arrangement of matter in the body. It is the arrangement matter in the body that is determined by consciousness.