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

On Sep 27, 1:26 pm, forbisga...@xxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 27, 12:30 am, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:
If that were only true. You also reject the notion that consciousness
is the behavior of the atoms. I say this because you hold that
computers
are or can be conscious even though they are composes of completely
different atoms and structures of atoms.

So what? Computation is a function of logical units, it does not
matter what said units are made of (silicon transistors, or biological
neurons). It is a mistake to say computation is not a function of
atoms in both these cases - the fact that the atoms are different is
inconsequential. Your argument is akin to saying a house can be made
of wood, or a house can be made of concrete. Since wood and concrete
are two different substances a house does not depend on the behaviour
of materials. Of course it does, what it depends on is the set of
behaviours those materials hold in common. There is no excluded
middle here, materials are not all totally different to each other.

You claim that consciousness
rest upon the behviors of sturctures at such a high level that they
are atom type independent (similar to a ball, whose behaviors don't
depend upon rubber for its bounciness.)

I don't see why this is even relevant. What matter if consciousness is
best described as emergent at the atomic, molecular, or logical unit
level - all that matters is that is is recognised that it is an
emergent property of interacting items. No matter what level you
choose to admit the emergence happens, we can conceivably set up an
artificial system to match it.


.

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