XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-10   
   From: rotflol2@hotmail.com   
      
   ["Followup-To:" header set to alt.philosophy.]   
   On 2025-04-18, Newyana2  wrote:   
   > On 4/17/2025 6:40 PM, Anton Shepelev wrote:   
   >> Newyana2:   
   >>   
   >>> If you believe in scientific materialism then you might   
   >>> believe that consciousness is an emergent quality, arising   
   >>> from chemical reactions in the brain.   
   >>   
   >> Is this compatible with us perceiving our own consciousness   
   >> and being able to discuss it, which means it is casually   
   >> active?   
   >>   
   >> Do you mean strong (aka miraculous) emergence, or weak   
   >> emergence? IMHO, the weak variety is out of the question:   
   >> chemmical, electrical, and other material processes can   
   >> produce only other material processes, but not feelings,   
   >> emotions, qualia...   
   >>   
   >   
   >   I don't support either premise. Do we perceive   
   > consciousness? That seems questionable. "I think,   
   > therefore I am" is a desperate grasping at ground,   
   > not an observation.   
   >   
      
   Consciousness being an emergent quality seems like handwaving to me.   
   "We don't have the foggiest idea of how it works, so I suppose a   
   computer would become conscious because are like computers".   
   Computation and intelligence are two different things, and our brains,   
   our minds work fundamentally different to a Ryzen chip.  Also, if   
   conciousness arises from chemical reactions, why not elsewhere?  Why not   
   in a beaker?   
      
   Consciousness doesn't make sense outside of a living thing, and it   
   likely was selected for during evolution.  This leads to two suggestions   
      
   1: Consciousness has a real-world difference in how a brain thinks,   
   which provides an evolutionary advantage.   
      
   2: It isn't wholly emergent simply by virtue of a brain being a brain,   
   but is something that has to be specifically catered for.  That is to   
   say, a computer could only become conscious if we designed it to become   
   conscious, which we haven't.   
      
      
   I suspect Roger Penrose was onto something when he suggested a link   
   between consciousness and Quantum Mechanics, and somewhere during   
   evolution nature 'stumbled' on a way of introducing some chaos into   
   information processing which made sorting through alternatives much   
   faster.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)