I had read that, but it didn't "click" with me, probably because I had never programed in Lisp before. I'm guessing the OS handle analogy would make more intuitive sense to the typical programmer.

BTW, in this line of thinking, there's nothing really special or mysterious about consciousness. It's just a mind or a part of a mind with verbal abilities. But that seems to rule out the approach of defining pain (as a moral disvalue) as negative reinforcement experienced by a conscious mind. If consciousness is just possession of verbal abilities, there seems no reason to assign special moral status to it. But then what is pain, and what is morally bad about it?