consciousness?

[Neo-Scholastic]

If that was true then all the medication in the world would not be able to help you treat depression.

In order for psychoactive drugs to work it is only necessary to affect the way the brain mediates consciousness. You have a long way from there to saying that physical processes generate or cause physical experiences. Right now, the best that can be said is that there is a correlation between neural activity and Felt experience since there is no evidence for a causal link.

(re: telephones) The absence of required redundancy within the network to make it conscious and self-aware.

Suppose the redundant system was not one brain but two. You call a friend to tell him about an idea. Information is relayed across the wire to your friend. Then you forget your idea. Later your friend calls you back and reminds you of the idea. The question is this: are the two brains part of a single consciousness processing entity. If so, then an extremely large, say worldwide, communication network such as exists to today, acts as a single consciousness process of which parts of it are self-aware. (we're talking about it right now). Viola! super- or cosmic consciousness. (this is known as the Chinese telephone thought problem).

...books lack the required mechanism to access their own information.

Books serve as a more rustic version of information storage for the telephonic superconsciousness.

Yesterday I saw a traffic signal turn red and all the cars stopped. Did I see a thought happen?

You would have if you had been looking for it - i.e. scanning the brains of the drivers.

used this example in order to show that the electrical impulse of the zebra fish was an observed physical event that resulted in physical activity. There is no proof that the zebra fish felt anything at all. No body saw a thought, as the poster claimed, only the result of one. Brain scans would only relocate the problem. Your only things you can observe are physical correlates, not causes. Correlates can be the basis of a reasonable assumption that thought did occur, however in the absence of a theory of causation it is just that, an assumption and not proof. And since that same assuption justifies the belief in absurd positions, like attributing consciousness to simple systems which we have no reason to believe are conscious, that assumption is suspect. In other words, its not nearly as reasonable an assumption as you would like to believe.

Actually, proving it is very simple. People who have their brains removed are not conscious.

Your example proves nothing because it begs the question. Removing the indicator of consciousness does not mean consciousness has ceased. If you remove the hands of a clock that doesn't mean the inside gears have stopped working.