Someone here

@catcat69123 I'm usually isolated most of the time. It happens when I'm alone at home .

Do you think a man-made computer could ever become conscious? Can it have a soul? Why or why not? , I think consciousness is a faculty of the soul and I think the soul was placed by some higher power (God if you please) and regardless of what technology we produce I don't think we can get to the point where we can create a soul or consciousness. I do however I think there is a point we could get to that is a exceptional simultion of consciousness. For example, If any of you have ever tried those new 20 questions games. Those things are scary and it is aparantly thinking and reading your mind. I do not know how it does it but it's pretty convincing. Just to note It asks you 20 questions and then it tels you what you're thinking of, it guessed spider monkey..not just monkey, spider monkey!! It's unreal

How so? Could you elaborate?

@Adamq8 @Carl-Richard Materialism or otherwise known as naive realism is a metaphysical philosophy known as substance-dualism. That reality is split into two different substance. One is the appearances or phenomenon or consciousness or qualia (this stuff right here)..which is a second order emergence from the essence which is matter. That matter has no phenomenonolgical qualities. It's not conscious yet it gives arise to consciousness. Do you guys agree with this description ?

This is the "Duck Test". Or if you prefer the "Turing Test". If the robot were to walk and talk like it had consciousness and self awareness, then for all intents and purposes it has consciousness and self awareness. It's a philosophical question whether it has a conscious inner life, not a practical one. Actually, you are applying the Duck Test whenever you interact with people. You are mapping their speech and movements and form to yours and concluding that they too are experiencing what you are experiencing, a.k.a. consciousness. But, you will never know. Even if you magically expanded the reach of your consciousness to enter the "mind" of another person, that still wouldn't answer the question. Instead you would be some sort of hybrid consciousness, neither the original you or the original them. This is akin to the measurement problem in quantum physics. You can't measure the state of a system without disturbing the system. More accurately, whenever you measure a system, you are merging with it, to create a hybrid system. You can't disentangle the observer from the observed.

Decrease .

@Carl-Richard @Adamq8 I do consider that computers will have consciousness although in a distant future. Consciousness is, as I see it, just an (indeed extremely complex) composition of neuronal impulses, which are electrical signals. I think that, how was already mentioned, with enough power and the right build a computer could mimic the human mind and develop consciousness.

I don't know.

I cannot see why a machine could not transfer its unit of specifically unitary memories and specifically unitary predispositions to other machines which because they occupy diiferent spaces or times are regarded as separate body- analogues. Over all I guess that the intuitive objection to machine self consciousness is that machines are deemed incapable of emotions. True, it is unlikely that machines will ever function by the use of chemical messengers(which processes are what emotions are), but the analogue for machine 'emotions' is the installation of self preservation devices together with a predilection for computing the interests of others.

Lol but what you're not seeing is you're creating the duality between conscious vs unconscious. Go and try and verify an actual difference between something conscious and something unconscious. Sure you can say a rock or a ? is unconscious and a human is but where's your evidence for that? How you know people are not philosophical zombies and as a corollary how do you know rocks and brains don't feel, see and hear you in the same way you feel hear and see . its definitely not wild speculation. Furthermore how do you explain th brain's more than obvious correlation with consciousness? If your brain gets damaged there will be damage in your consciousness accordingly. Etc You seem to assume that just because you can't imagine consciousness emerging out of unconscious objects that it can't. But says who? Don't confuse the limits of your imagination with reality. Just because God exists does not disprove materialism. It could be the case that consciousness is a material by-product that has developed over time out of material objects that have developed over time out of nothing. That nothing is the ultimate God that does not have qualities, and is not even conscious, therefore it can take any shape or form. In this case, it happens to take the form of "consciousness". So consciousness is not God but just a tiny part of it. I'd like anyone to challenge this perspective.

@Tim R no worries. We simply disagree .it's OK ?

Those things depend on consciousness and consciousness depends on them. Its a strangeloop. I know a man-made computer can become conscious. Human life is not so complex as people believe. People are egotistical and ignorant. If you ever believe that there is no higher intelligence than human life, then you are gravely mistaken. Just like humans can dissect, understand, and control every aspect of an insect or simple animal, such as a dog, all that can be done to humans. There is no reason to disbelieve humans cannot be dissected, controlled completely, replicated, and that a "soul" can become downloaded onto a computer disk. There is nothing sacred about a human's life. It can be copied or destroyed freely. There is nothing essential or special about any particular human being. You can call this "dehumanizing", but, what again is human anyway? What does it mean to be human? My answer is, not much. It means very little to be human. I believe there are much, much higher forms of existence than human life. Not just "aliens", but, I believe some men and women can transcend human nature, and become godlike. There are no limits in nature, no limits anywhere. All is possible.

Yes .at least there is an undeniable correlation. To explain consciousness as a physical process we must acknowledge the role of energy in the brain. Energetic activity is fundamental to all physical processes and causally drives biological behavior. Recent neuroscientific evidence can be interpreted in a way that suggests consciousness is a product of the organization of energetic activity in the brain. The nature of energy itself, though, remains largely mysterious, and we do not fully understand how it contributes to brain function or consciousness. The modern scientific understanding of the "self" is that its temporary and subject to time and change and death as the body is.. And the 'mind' or 'personality' is not an abstract spiritual essence that is separate from the body.. But it's a byproduct of the brain.. There is no 'self' separate from the body or inside the body.. But rather its an emergent phenomenon of the body.. The body and mind grow together and decay together.. And we can actually change your personality by playing with the chemicals in your brain... A little injection of chloroform can erase your thinking process completely and can turn 'you' into a psycho completely lost control.... That shows you that your self is a byproduct of chemicals in the brain.. And the personality dissolves once you get older enough.. As a result of the dissolve of the neural network in the brain.. You see? That' personality ' completely dissolves in elderly people because it was never a substantial thing onto itself.

I think maybe people are confusing "can" iwith "will" with this question. Obviously, our consciousness is the result of something in our brain -- I'm not really sure what part that might be, but the fact that taking away a certain part of your brain might cause consciousness to go away tells me that ultimately a brain is a thing made up of component parts working together, just like anything else. All you have to do is find a way to artificially create brain impulses or something that works in a very similar way. But that's not to say that in the practical sense it will ever happen! Maybe such a task will turn out too hard, or maybe there is no material we will ever find to mimic the above. But if we are talking thousands, maybe millions of years in the future, who knows! Something that looks impossible now might be executed way into the future, who knows!

When we have so much neuoroscience, there is plenty indeed, to elaborate on. I do in fact doubt how to read your comments, without interpreting them as being basically ignorant of neuoroscience, though maybe it's just that it's easy to misinterpret your comments--I mean, what, you know that the brain is in the head, right? That's the brain, that's where the mental processing takes place. Not in the big toe. Cut somebody's big toe off, and they are still who they are, they're still conscious. Cut up their brain, though, you know how to do damage to consciousness. Perhaps you have a notion of the soul, which exists after death, is reincarnated maybe, these are common beliefs today, in which case, you can be made aware, that it sounds pretty absurd to a lot of people who take an interest in science. I'm not precisely an atheist or materialist myself (I don't like to be tied down with too much metaphysical baggage, what do we know? What would we do with the knowledge if we did?), but the scientific perspective on the relationship between the brain and 'consciousness' seems like a very big and comprehensive perspective. Especially to me, the one who argues that a computer can be conscious

I can also add two cents here. The idea is, that, hey, c'mon, we know that the human mind does not reside on the moon, and somehow perceive itself to be in a human head which it sees out of, and hears with. We know that if you cut up somebody's brain, he loses brain function, hit him hard enough, in the head, with a hammer, and he will promptly lose consciousness, perhaps permanently. You can also break something else, like a window or a lamp, by hitting it with a hammer. In this sense (in every sense), the brain is physical. You, 'you', subjectively, your experiences, your memories, this is happening in your body. Try drinking some wine, you get drunk, that's the alchohol getting into your brain and messing w/its functionality. A child is growing, and its brain is maturing, getting bigger, and you see a mature individual emerge from something that originally, physically, was only a few cells and didn't yet have a distinguishable brain organ. As the brain physically organically is built, the mental functions are enabled. If we totally figure out how the brain functions and generates consciousness..it's possible to then recreate an electronic neural network that mimics the brain ?.

I get you .if the human conscious ability is beyond our understanding, nor can we pin point its location, how in hell can we imagine we could instill this mysterious beast into a machine? It ignores all the other philosophical arguments for simple engineering ability. However I put my faith that within the next 100,000 years of the endless advancement of technology. We can simulate intelligence and consciousness. I know it's hard but I don't think it's impossible

@Nahm we're good. No worries! ?

@IAmReallyImportant are you trying to say that there will be no way for us to ever determine if an intelligent computer experiences consciousness?

This is a very difficult topic and is made more difficult because the various statements do not distinguish clearly between the different possible meanings of words. The confusion which reigns supreme on the subject of consciousness is due to the fact that nobody has an objective valid definition of consciousness, or indeed any subjective human experience, and nobody can have one, as I hope to explain. As a result of this impossibility of defining consciousness, people talk about things that are not really consciousness or a subjective experience - just the physical phenomena, such as brain waves, brain responses to stimuli etc., which may be correlates of consciousness, but cannot be assumed to be consciousness itself because correlation does not imply causation. That is an obvious and accepted principle of good science, that some scientists in the field of consciousness seem to regularly ignore. To understand clearly the place of consciousness in science, we must distinguish between objective science and subjective science. Objective science involves itself exclusively with the rules governing the behavior of matter. Subjective science deals with the personal, individual experiences of each human being. All objective phenomena must be detectable and measurable entirely by material means. This implies that experiments to detect any property of matter must be possible to perform using material means only and not having to rely on the truth of reporting a human experience. This means that consciousness and all of our subjective experiences cannot be material properties because if they were they would be detectable by physical means, and not just through their correlation with physical phenomena.

@Nahm i was talking about your persistent talk about the no self. No matter how much you say that there is no 'you 'it won't change that you are you and not your mom. Apparently at least as experienced. You can imagine yourself to be a table.. But if someone comes and cuts the table into halfs you won't be affected at all..if someone comes and cuts the Nahm avatar into halfs.. The real you will freak the fuck out.

@Nahm for real though..I think it's ridiculous to police ourselves to such a degree that we avoid any reference to "individual other." I think you are limiting yourself to a great degree. I mean if you want to get down to it.. simply responding and writing responses on a forum equally assumes that there is an "individual other" as much as any other post even if you are careful about how you write. please don't take this as offence ..I'm only pointing out the hypocrisy of even bringing up that criticism in the first place when you are on a forum interacting. I'm NOT interested in having this conversation about language and the implicit assumptions held within the normal way we communicate.

I always see things from a practical view. I don’t think you can knock on wood and say it is just a thought. It is a physical object. Likewise there certainly is this entity here called me that's typing this message.

If by 'computation' you mean the act of someone using a computer to perform some symbol manipulation or calculation, then I would be able to agree with this. The computation is not meaningful to the computer itself, it's meaningful to the human user. Shall we say, that machines like computers do what they do because they have no other choice in the matter. It is not meaningful to them. A thermometer displays the temperature. However, this issue concerning the nature of conscious experience--there is only one reasonable interpretation of the ontology of conscious experience, perhaps. You seem to be presenting a view that consciousness is in fact an internal replica of the external world rather than the world itself, or some such--that is, 'it is a different kind of thing altogether..'.

the problem when you think that the whole world is perfectly simulated with perfect consistency, the artist itself complexifies, its non-audience ``self'' splitting up among all the virtual selves it creates. If all of these (you who are reading this, and your dogs and cats too) are really part of the artist, and the artist is equated with the audience, then Solipsism is isomorphic to Pantheism. We are all God, split into all that is. Somehow a Western Solipsist (driven to explain why he cannot bring a loved one back to life no matter how hard he tries) ends up as an Eastern Hindu, accepting that Brahma split himself up to create the Universe (one fragment of which is him, all of which is still Brahma and eternal). I disagree .