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Originally Posted by David I know it isn't much of an answer, but if you don't require that consciousness be created by physical 'stuff' but simply exist like electrons exist, you don't have a problem - you just have a new component to the universe. That does not, of course, mean that you couldn't have a science that studied mental 'stuff' - indeed the preliminary version is called psychology and maybe parapsychology, but you would get away from the impossibility of making a radio out of non-conducting plastic bricks! Another analogy would be the impossibility of explaining electrostatic attraction within Newtonian physics (i.e. without adding the new concept of electric charge). |
Consciousness simply exists in all its full-blown glory? That's almost impossible to believe. But let's say it does. What is experiencing the consciousness? Where is the little man?
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Why can't a little man exist inside a computer - well as I have argued before, all a computer really does is check equations of the form input+P=>output. If the program is conscious while it is doing the checking, why not the abstract equation - which delocalises the consciousness over all space-time!
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Do you not think that a computer program could be sophisticated enough to make statements about its consciousness that would be indistinguishable from human statements? If so, then what is the difference between human and computer consciousness?
Delocalise what sort of consciousness? Full-blown human consciousness? Are you suggesting that if the vacuum could speak, it would say the same sort of things I do?
~~ Paul