Re: Does Searle's "Chinese Room" argument imply that consciousness is non-scientific?

Alpha wrote:
PS:

1) It isn't blobs of ink and cellulose atoms that make you want to read War and Peace, it is the meaning - something that exists that is *other than* "just* the atoms of ink and cellulose. I.e., Meaning over and above "just" the atoms has causal power in Universe and thereby constitutes existence as much as atoms behaviing do.

2) And why choose "atoms behaving" as your preferred level of description, to which you anchor everything? Why not molecules behaving? (We know that many molecules *cannot* be reduced to the attributes/behavior of the constituent atoms due to emergence).

Erm, that was true a couple of decades ago, but nowadays there is increasing understanding of how the properties of the atoms control the shape(s) of the molecule, and hence its properties and behaviours, including interactions with other molecules. The same holds true for properties of molecules, and the crystals and polymers they form. However, AFAIK there is not a general theory that relates atom's properties to molecules' shapes.

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