Pre-Grant Publication Number: 20100299299
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Facilitator's Comment 
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In the section "Impracticality and irrelevance: the Turing test and AI research" of the prior art, we clearly see the difference between the actual research on AI and the the theoretic definition of "phenomena of life" this particular article tries to prove. The application tries to connect the implications of Turning test and AI research, which is argued impractical due to: 1. "There being an easier ways to test their programs other than Turning test" 2. "Creating life-like simulations of human beings is a difficult problem on its own that does not need to be solved to achieve the basic goals of AI research."
I feel that the article submitted as a prior art is biased heavily on neurological analysis only. Although the patent application definitely lacks practical explanation of implementing "phenomena of life", I feel that this prior art and the patent application should be looked at from two totally separate views. In other words, I don't think the article submitted as a prior art has much relevance to the patent application. The patent application requires more of a computer science logic and algorithmic view, not neurological analysis.
The key "invention" appears to be a predicate or rule requiring that if there is evidence of a physical self and evidence of a mental self, then a "self" exists and the system must report this conclusion through some action (e.g., "speech, text, bodily motions, signals, etc."). Program "B" does this by monitoring the products of Program "A." Program A operates on the hardware to receive sensory information and to execute hypothetical "mental" programs, like "thinking," "emotion," etc. If Program B detects operation of the "visual program," the "sound program," etc., then evidence of a physical self exists. If any of the "mental programs" are detected, then a mental self exists. If both exist, the predicate is true and the existence of a self is mechanistically reported. That's it.
The author relates this to Descartes' famous line as follows: the physical self or sensory programs correspond to Descartes' "I" and the mental programs correspond to "think." Together they become "I am" (through the erroneous, nonsensical application of transitivity). The author then defines the recognition of self-existence (i.e., the execution of the predicate) as "self-consciousness."
With this, we can interpret the intent of claim 1 to be the method of executing the predicate. As it is effectively a simple predicate implementable as a single line of software code and of no apparent use, I can't imagine it would be granted, even if properly expressed.
As written, claims 2 and 3 are meaningless, as they claim an unspecified method.
Claim 4 is a vast overreach by the author to claim any technology attempting to achieve an "individual self, life, true intelligence, or self-conscious program." Since the author did not show how to do any of this (the self-consciousness of claim 1 excepted), there is no basis for this claim in the teachings.