Sam Harris On Defining Consciousness

[Rhondazvous]

You keep saying just, and that's "just" begging the question.  Again, ever seen sentience persist -after- the flatline? Even, as Ive said, for purposes of discussion..granting the sentient energy, that still doesn't rule out the brains involvement.  Those impulses and chemical signals might "just' be what the brain does...after all.  That is our current understanding, btw, that the impulses and chemicals are the signal traces, the means of moving data along the lines.  Even if the energy itself provides sentience, and not the manner in which it manipulates the various components.........that manipulation still occurs, and sentience is present when it does, but not when it doesn't...so far as we can tell.  There's a dependence or relationship there -at the least.  Remember, the campfire isn't sentient, the light from the bulb, nor the bulb (both, ultimately, made of energy) aren't sentient.  So energy doesn't simply, by virtue of being energy, satisfy your 1, 2 and 3 (or possible 4).  Nor does the brain, by virtue of being an organ..also ultimately made of energy, get itself ruled out by 1, 2...or 3.

At present your theory looks to be undemonstrable, unfalsifiable, and inconsistent.....not good signs.  Lets make the third go away, and make the first two appear, or at least get closer to that ideal situation?

your argument rests on the assumption that just because the energy that flows through a light bulb is not sentient therefore the energy that flows through the brain is not sentient either. That is a non sequitur. I have shown that those impulses do indeed meet the criteria 1-4.