Seeing red

[emjay]

I've always wondered about that, whether whole galaxies or indeed the entire universe could be conscious, because to me it's all about the system, not the underlying hardware i.e. there's nothing special about neurons as information carriers, and there are indeed certain relationships manifested in nature - gravity for instance - that could play a part in creating system structure on such a large scale. But going off on one there, sorry about that

Minor point of correction.  There actually -is- something about neurons that is "special" with regards to nuerons and galaxies (if there weren't we couldn't tell them apart..think about it).   You probably don't expect a cloud of dust to be conscious.  I'm also not sure how sensible the notion of separating the system from it's hardware is......give me an example of something where a comment regarding a system can be made without reference either explicit or implied to the hardware?

This isn't to say that there could not be a galaxy out there which would be capable of carrying, processing, and retaining data in such a manner..or of being conscious....but you're flirting with the fallacy of composition in the manner in which you've arrived at the notion.  A t-shirt has properties that cotton doesn't...and cotton has properties that a t-shirt doesn't.

All I meant really was that I have no problem with the idea of man-made machines being conscious... that the components of the system could just as easily be man-made chips and circuits as biological components like neurons. So in reference to galaxies etc I'd have no idea what the components would be (or could be, if they could be) but I just wonder if they could be, but I'm totally out of my depth there, so that's all it was really - just idle curiosity   But there do still have to be components of some kind, and arranged/structured in a certain way for it to form a system, so sorry about that... a system cannot be separated from its components so my wording there was bad