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Let's assume emergent consciousness is possible (whatever consciousness might mean), so that a program can eventually say "OK, I exist / feel / think".
How would this program understand time though? You and I (even animals) understand time by being present here and now. We can rely on our memory to know what happened before, but we don't confuse right now with the past. Not even a second back.
But for a program, with (say) a memory defined as a traversable memory, and cpu cycles defining the moments, all it can "see" is a database with states. It could traverse to any such state independently and declare that to be "now". It has no way of really knowing when is the real now.
Interaction with an agent solves some part of this problem. The newest feed from its sensors could define the now, or the last line of the database. But with perfect recall, why would the conscious program choose to stay there? For it, every state is as real as any other. Any interaction with its sensors might just be interpreted as noise in one dimension, something that can be tuned out with the appropriate response. With every passing tick, the traversal scope keeps increasing.
We don't have such a choice. I can't choose to live in the past (barring mental illness). But I guess what I'm saying is that such a program could choose to "live" in any state in its past.
Clearly this is absurd. Permutation City discusses this problem a little, but still thinks emergent consciousness is possible. I didn't find that satisfactory for the reasons above.
Any thoughts?