What is Conscious? (Split from 'Morality in Bible stories that you don't understand')

[DBT]

THIS IS A SPLIT FROM "Morality in Bible stories that you don't understand"


Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

 

[Politesse]

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

There's a reason "brain experts" call themselves neuroscientists, not cephalogists. Nerves and their interactions are real, observable phenomena. Brains are an abstraction.

 

[DBT]

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

There's a reason "brain experts" call themselves neuroscientists, not cephalogists. Nerves and their interactions are real, observable phenomena. Brains are an abstraction.

The brain is an abstraction? What is the function of the organic matter housed in our skulls? Maybe you meant 'mind?'

 

[Politesse]

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

There's a reason "brain experts" call themselves neuroscientists, not cephalogists. Nerves and their interactions are real, observable phenomena. Brains are an abstraction.

The brain is an abstraction? What is the function of the organic matter housed in our skulls? Maybe you meant 'mind?'

I meant what I wrote. The mind is an even worse abstraction. But if you want to understand experience, you're going to need a holistic understanding of the nervous system as a full network, not just the portion of it that we call "the brain".

 

[DBT]

The brain is inseparable from the nervous system. It's a physical organ, a neural network with specific functions, which is not an abstraction. What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

 

[Politesse]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

 

[DBT]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

 

[Thomas II]

 

[Learner]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

 

[DBT]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

 

[Jarhyn]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

No, you are wrong. Individual neurons form experiences, and groups of neurons form those experiences into phrases of growing complexity about the information.

 

[DBT]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

No, you are wrong. Individual neurons form experiences, and groups of neurons form those experiences into phrases of growing complexity about the information.

Not so. But go ahead and support your claim.

Conscious activity involves more than one neuron, information must be acquired, processed, integrated with memory, etc, before being brought to consciousness, which is a network process.

 

[Jarhyn]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

No, you are wrong. Individual neurons form experiences, and groups of neurons form those experiences into phrases of growing complexity about the information.

Not so. But go ahead and support your claim.

Conscious activity involves more than one neuron, information must be acquired, processed, integrated with memory, etc, before being brought to consciousness, which is a network process.

I mean, it's right there in the description. Information is acquired at one end of a single neuron processes by that single neuron. You are adding unnecessary demands that it be "integrated into memory"; I have yet to have any evidence that you understand what integration into memory entails (placing any kind of cyclic/sine wave approximation between two or more switching units such that a signal is captured).

You have made had-wavey declarations what it requires to satisfy your no-true-scotsman, but a single node is still "a network". It is the smallest network unit, and a neuron (or simple binary switch) is a "single network node".

Whether you believe it amounts to your overcomplicated definition of "special edition consciousness" or whatever, it amounts to as much as I have been saying it does because that's how switch networks function, and if they didn't function that way, no piece of modern technology could exist as it does.

You have made certain statements on a site for skeptics about a subject where there are many proposed models wherein consciousness is ubiquitous, or damn near, IIT being one of them (though I as I said modify this theory so it is compatible with the rest of my framework including my framework on free will).

I will choose to be skeptical of your very solidly faith-based insistence about what consciousness "must" be when that's very much a point of contention.

One of those big indicators a framework, or set of frameworks, is accurate is if they make contact like the apparently solved parts of a puzzle, and the parts line up here all nice and square.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

It is now known nerve systems that underlie our senses do a lot of processing before that information is acquired by the brain.

 

[DBT]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

It is now known nerve systems that underlie our senses do a lot of processing before that information is acquired by the brain.

Sure, but it doesn't make any difference to the point. That without brain activity, there is no mind, consciousness or experience of self or the world.

 

[DBT]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

No, you are wrong. Individual neurons form experiences, and groups of neurons form those experiences into phrases of growing complexity about the information.

Not so. But go ahead and support your claim.

Conscious activity involves more than one neuron, information must be acquired, processed, integrated with memory, etc, before being brought to consciousness, which is a network process.

I mean, it's right there in the description. Information is acquired at one end of a single neuron processes by that single neuron. You are adding unnecessary demands that it be "integrated into memory"; I have yet to have any evidence that you understand what integration into memory entails (placing any kind of cyclic/sine wave approximation between two or more switching units such that a signal is captured).

You have made had-wavey declarations what it requires to satisfy your no-true-scotsman, but a single node is still "a network". It is the smallest network unit, and a neuron (or simple binary switch) is a "single network node".

Whether you believe it amounts to your overcomplicated definition of "special edition consciousness" or whatever, it amounts to as much as I have been saying it does because that's how switch networks function, and if they didn't function that way, no piece of modern technology could exist as it does.

You have made certain statements on a site for skeptics about a subject where there are many proposed models wherein consciousness is ubiquitous, or damn near, IIT being one of them (though I as I said modify this theory so it is compatible with the rest of my framework including my framework on free will).

I will choose to be skeptical of your very solidly faith-based insistence about what consciousness "must" be when that's very much a point of contention.

One of those big indicators a framework, or set of frameworks, is accurate is if they make contact like the apparently solved parts of a puzzle, and the parts line up here all nice and square.

The basics:

''In every moment, as you see, think, feel, and navigate the world around you, your perception of these things is built from three ingredients. One is the signals we receive from the outside world, called sense data. Light waves enter your retinas to be experienced as blooming gardens and starry skies. Changes in pressure reach your cochlea and skin and become the voices and hugs of loved ones. Chemicals arrive in your nose and mouth and are transformed into sweetness and spice.

A second ingredient of your experience is sense data from events inside your body, like the blood rushing through your veins and arteries, your lungs expanding and contracting, and your stomach gurgling. Much of this symphony is silent and outside your awareness, thank goodness. If you could feel every inner tug and rumble directly, you’d never pay attention to anything outside your skin.

Finally, a third ingredient is past experience. Without this, the sense data around and inside you would be meaningless noise. It would be like being bombarded by the sounds of a language that you don’t speak, so you can’t even tell where one word ends and the next begins. Your brain uses what you’ve seen, done, and learned in the past to explain sense data in the present, plan your next action, and predict what’s coming next. This all happens automatically and invisibly, faster than you can snap your fingers.


These three ingredients might not be the whole story, and there may be other routes to create other kinds of minds—say, in a futuristic machine. But a human mind is constructed by a brain in constant conversation, moment by unique moment, with a body and the outside world.''

Now pay close attention to the important part;

''Every act of recognition is a construction. You don’t see with your eyes; you see with your brain. Likewise for all your other senses. Your brain compares the sense data coming in now with things you’ve sensed before in a similar situation where you had a similar goal. These comparisons incorporate all your senses at once, because your brain constructs all sensations at once and represents them as grand patterns of neural activity that enable you to experience and understand the world around you.''

 

[DBT]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

No, you are wrong. Individual neurons form experiences, and groups of neurons form those experiences into phrases of growing complexity about the information.

Not so. But go ahead and support your claim.

Conscious activity involves more than one neuron, information must be acquired, processed, integrated with memory, etc, before being brought to consciousness, which is a network process.

I mean, it's right there in the description. Information is acquired at one end of a single neuron processes by that single neuron. You are adding unnecessary demands that it be "integrated into memory"; I have yet to have any evidence that you understand what integration into memory entails (placing any kind of cyclic/sine wave approximation between two or more switching units such that a signal is captured).

You have made had-wavey declarations what it requires to satisfy your no-true-scotsman, but a single node is still "a network". It is the smallest network unit, and a neuron (or simple binary switch) is a "single network node".

Whether you believe it amounts to your overcomplicated definition of "special edition consciousness" or whatever, it amounts to as much as I have been saying it does because that's how switch networks function, and if they didn't function that way, no piece of modern technology could exist as it does.

You have made certain statements on a site for skeptics about a subject where there are many proposed models wherein consciousness is ubiquitous, or damn near, IIT being one of them (though I as I said modify this theory so it is compatible with the rest of my framework including my framework on free will).

I will choose to be skeptical of your very solidly faith-based insistence about what consciousness "must" be when that's very much a point of contention.

One of those big indicators a framework, or set of frameworks, is accurate is if they make contact like the apparently solved parts of a puzzle, and the parts line up here all nice and square.

The basics:

''In every moment, as you see, think, feel, and navigate the world around you, your perception of these things is built from three ingredients. One is the signals we receive from the outside world, called sense data. Light waves enter your retinas to be experienced as blooming gardens and starry skies. Changes in pressure reach your cochlea and skin and become the voices and hugs of loved ones. Chemicals arrive in your nose and mouth and are transformed into sweetness and spice.

A second ingredient of your experience is sense data from events inside your body, like the blood rushing through your veins and arteries, your lungs expanding and contracting, and your stomach gurgling. Much of this symphony is silent and outside your awareness, thank goodness. If you could feel every inner tug and rumble directly, you’d never pay attention to anything outside your skin.

Finally, a third ingredient is past experience. Without this, the sense data around and inside you would be meaningless noise. It would be like being bombarded by the sounds of a language that you don’t speak, so you can’t even tell where one word ends and the next begins. Your brain uses what you’ve seen, done, and learned in the past to explain sense data in the present, plan your next action, and predict what’s coming next. This all happens automatically and invisibly, faster than you can snap your fingers.


These three ingredients might not be the whole story, and there may be other routes to create other kinds of minds—say, in a futuristic machine. But a human mind is constructed by a brain in constant conversation, moment by unique moment, with a body and the outside world.''

Now pay close attention to the important part;

''Every act of recognition is a construction. You don’t see with your eyes; you see with your brain. Likewise for all your other senses. Your brain compares the sense data coming in now with things you’ve sensed before in a similar situation where you had a similar goal. These comparisons incorporate all your senses at once, because your brain constructs all sensations at once and represents them as grand patterns of neural activity that enable you to experience and understand the world around you.''

You know, quoting Scripture doesn't work for theists here, what makes you think it will work for you?

Sing your sad lament if it brings you comfort, Sweetie. It's basic neuroscience. Not even controversial.....unlike your extravagant claim of the presence of consciousness and will in computers.

 

[Jarhyn]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

No, you are wrong. Individual neurons form experiences, and groups of neurons form those experiences into phrases of growing complexity about the information.

Not so. But go ahead and support your claim.

Conscious activity involves more than one neuron, information must be acquired, processed, integrated with memory, etc, before being brought to consciousness, which is a network process.

I mean, it's right there in the description. Information is acquired at one end of a single neuron processes by that single neuron. You are adding unnecessary demands that it be "integrated into memory"; I have yet to have any evidence that you understand what integration into memory entails (placing any kind of cyclic/sine wave approximation between two or more switching units such that a signal is captured).

You have made had-wavey declarations what it requires to satisfy your no-true-scotsman, but a single node is still "a network". It is the smallest network unit, and a neuron (or simple binary switch) is a "single network node".

Whether you believe it amounts to your overcomplicated definition of "special edition consciousness" or whatever, it amounts to as much as I have been saying it does because that's how switch networks function, and if they didn't function that way, no piece of modern technology could exist as it does.

You have made certain statements on a site for skeptics about a subject where there are many proposed models wherein consciousness is ubiquitous, or damn near, IIT being one of them (though I as I said modify this theory so it is compatible with the rest of my framework including my framework on free will).

I will choose to be skeptical of your very solidly faith-based insistence about what consciousness "must" be when that's very much a point of contention.

One of those big indicators a framework, or set of frameworks, is accurate is if they make contact like the apparently solved parts of a puzzle, and the parts line up here all nice and square.

The basics:

''In every moment, as you see, think, feel, and navigate the world around you, your perception of these things is built from three ingredients. One is the signals we receive from the outside world, called sense data. Light waves enter your retinas to be experienced as blooming gardens and starry skies. Changes in pressure reach your cochlea and skin and become the voices and hugs of loved ones. Chemicals arrive in your nose and mouth and are transformed into sweetness and spice.

A second ingredient of your experience is sense data from events inside your body, like the blood rushing through your veins and arteries, your lungs expanding and contracting, and your stomach gurgling. Much of this symphony is silent and outside your awareness, thank goodness. If you could feel every inner tug and rumble directly, you’d never pay attention to anything outside your skin.

Finally, a third ingredient is past experience. Without this, the sense data around and inside you would be meaningless noise. It would be like being bombarded by the sounds of a language that you don’t speak, so you can’t even tell where one word ends and the next begins. Your brain uses what you’ve seen, done, and learned in the past to explain sense data in the present, plan your next action, and predict what’s coming next. This all happens automatically and invisibly, faster than you can snap your fingers.


These three ingredients might not be the whole story, and there may be other routes to create other kinds of minds—say, in a futuristic machine. But a human mind is constructed by a brain in constant conversation, moment by unique moment, with a body and the outside world.''

Now pay close attention to the important part;

''Every act of recognition is a construction. You don’t see with your eyes; you see with your brain. Likewise for all your other senses. Your brain compares the sense data coming in now with things you’ve sensed before in a similar situation where you had a similar goal. These comparisons incorporate all your senses at once, because your brain constructs all sensations at once and represents them as grand patterns of neural activity that enable you to experience and understand the world around you.''

You know, quoting Scripture doesn't work for theists here, what makes you think it will work for you?

Sing your sad lament if it brings you comfort, Sweetie. It's basic neuroscience. Not even controversial.....unlike your extravagant claim of the presence of consciousness and will in computers.

Yes it is controversial and no, it is not "basic neuroscience".

You do not understand basic neuroscience. Hell, even neuroscientists often fail to understand what it is, low level information science.

IIT is neither extravagant nor a mere claim. You, in your hubris, reject now a well supported contemporary theory of consciousness.

Your religiosity is showing.

You may not like that I use these words in my description, but you have yet to propose any reason they do not actually function together well as words in the statements I make and that I have violated no major necessary component beyond ones you cannot support except by mere faith.

Yes, computers have consciousness, the awareness of stimuli and of phrases about those stimuli. I don't see why that offends you so much.

 

[DBT]

What do you think happens when the brain is damaged but the rest of the nervous system is functional, or vice versa?

Pre-fMRI neuroscientists got a very useful data set.

But to the main point, saying "Nerves don't form experience, brains do" is somewhat like saying "cars can't be in traffic jams, only interchanges can be in traffic jams".

Sorry, I realize this is off topic, really, it just struck me as a rather daft sentence.

Nerves transmit information, the brain interprets that information as pain, pleasure, discomfort, etc, and represents it in conscious form, you then feel pain, pleasure, discomfort.....

In other words ... humans are experiencing the physical world (through their senses). I'm pretty sure that's what I was also meaning.

Can't add to what Politese has highlighted already, regarding the sentence quoted below...

Nerves don't form experience, brains do.

Brain and senses. The senses acquire information, the brain processes the acquired information and represents a part of it in conscious form.

No, you are wrong. Individual neurons form experiences, and groups of neurons form those experiences into phrases of growing complexity about the information.

Not so. But go ahead and support your claim.

Conscious activity involves more than one neuron, information must be acquired, processed, integrated with memory, etc, before being brought to consciousness, which is a network process.

I mean, it's right there in the description. Information is acquired at one end of a single neuron processes by that single neuron. You are adding unnecessary demands that it be "integrated into memory"; I have yet to have any evidence that you understand what integration into memory entails (placing any kind of cyclic/sine wave approximation between two or more switching units such that a signal is captured).

You have made had-wavey declarations what it requires to satisfy your no-true-scotsman, but a single node is still "a network". It is the smallest network unit, and a neuron (or simple binary switch) is a "single network node".

Whether you believe it amounts to your overcomplicated definition of "special edition consciousness" or whatever, it amounts to as much as I have been saying it does because that's how switch networks function, and if they didn't function that way, no piece of modern technology could exist as it does.

You have made certain statements on a site for skeptics about a subject where there are many proposed models wherein consciousness is ubiquitous, or damn near, IIT being one of them (though I as I said modify this theory so it is compatible with the rest of my framework including my framework on free will).

I will choose to be skeptical of your very solidly faith-based insistence about what consciousness "must" be when that's very much a point of contention.

One of those big indicators a framework, or set of frameworks, is accurate is if they make contact like the apparently solved parts of a puzzle, and the parts line up here all nice and square.

The basics:

''In every moment, as you see, think, feel, and navigate the world around you, your perception of these things is built from three ingredients. One is the signals we receive from the outside world, called sense data. Light waves enter your retinas to be experienced as blooming gardens and starry skies. Changes in pressure reach your cochlea and skin and become the voices and hugs of loved ones. Chemicals arrive in your nose and mouth and are transformed into sweetness and spice.

A second ingredient of your experience is sense data from events inside your body, like the blood rushing through your veins and arteries, your lungs expanding and contracting, and your stomach gurgling. Much of this symphony is silent and outside your awareness, thank goodness. If you could feel every inner tug and rumble directly, you’d never pay attention to anything outside your skin.

Finally, a third ingredient is past experience. Without this, the sense data around and inside you would be meaningless noise. It would be like being bombarded by the sounds of a language that you don’t speak, so you can’t even tell where one word ends and the next begins. Your brain uses what you’ve seen, done, and learned in the past to explain sense data in the present, plan your next action, and predict what’s coming next. This all happens automatically and invisibly, faster than you can snap your fingers.


These three ingredients might not be the whole story, and there may be other routes to create other kinds of minds—say, in a futuristic machine. But a human mind is constructed by a brain in constant conversation, moment by unique moment, with a body and the outside world.''

Now pay close attention to the important part;

''Every act of recognition is a construction. You don’t see with your eyes; you see with your brain. Likewise for all your other senses. Your brain compares the sense data coming in now with things you’ve sensed before in a similar situation where you had a similar goal. These comparisons incorporate all your senses at once, because your brain constructs all sensations at once and represents them as grand patterns of neural activity that enable you to experience and understand the world around you.''

You know, quoting Scripture doesn't work for theists here, what makes you think it will work for you?

Sing your sad lament if it brings you comfort, Sweetie. It's basic neuroscience. Not even controversial.....unlike your extravagant claim of the presence of consciousness and will in computers.

Yes it is controversial and no, it is not "basic neuroscience".

Wow, you present a sizzling argument, for sure...if you say so.

You do not understand basic neuroscience. Hell, even neuroscientists often fail to understand what it is, low level information science.

It's just the basics. The function of the senses is to acquire and transmit information from the external world to the brain. The function of a brain is to process the information and form a mental picture of the world and self.

Your toes don't do it, your fingers or knees or elbows don't do it, the brain does.

IIT is neither extravagant nor a mere claim. You, in your hubris, reject now a well supported contemporary theory of consciousness.

Your religiosity is showing.

You may not like that I use these words in my description, but you have yet to propose any reason they do not actually function together well as words in the statements I make and that I have violated no major necessary component beyond ones you cannot support except by mere faith.

Yes, computers have consciousness, the awareness of stimuli and of phrases about those stimuli. I don't see why that offends you so much.

You have lost it. Carry on.

 

[Politesse]

Why do people who have only a crumb of knowledge on a subject so often have the highest opinions of their own expertise?